As you prepare your law school application, what part of your application has you most worried? What do you think the admissions committee will zero-in on? Is it a weak GPA, or a low LSAT score? Maybe you’re not sure what to write about in your personal statement, or you are less than confident in your recommendations. You might be thinking that your undergraduate coursework will fail to impress members of the admissions committee. Are you struggling with how to tackle a black mark on your record?
Whatever the weakest component is in your application, don’t worry. Nearly every applicant has something that can trip them up. In our latest podcast, Mitigating Waknesses in Your Law School Application: How to Identify and Fix Your Weak Spots, we take a look at where the weakest links are for most candidates and we get expert advice on how to best present them in your application.
While there are limits to repairing weaknesses, certain things can be done, as Ann Richard, Associate Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid at George Washington University Law School says. “The candidates are who they are. They’ve done what they’ve done, so there’s no magic bullet that can take care of a problem in the past. It’s just trying to put the whole package together in the most positive way possible.”
Make use of all your material, advises Rita Jones, Assistant Dean, Admissions and Financial Aid, Boston College Law School. “If you look at every part of the application as an opportunity to present yourself, you’re doing the best you can to be the most complete candidate you can be. That goes for the letters of recommendation. You wouldn’t want a recommender to repeat everything you’ve put in the résumé. You wouldn’t want to say in your personal statement everything a recommender has said. And sometimes applicants will give their personal statements to their reference writer, for background or whatever, and sure enough the recommender, at some point in the letter, repeats what the candidates said. I consider that a missed opportunity. You want every piece to build on the other.”
We also hear from Graham Richmond, Co-Founder and CEO of Clear Admit about how being smart about school selection can help your admissions chances and we get tips from Anna Ivey, admissions consultant and author of The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions on how to mitigate a weakness in your GPA.
There’s a lot more, so tune in to hear the full podcast!