Yearly Archives: 2012

How can you write essays that grab the attention of law school admissions committees?   Mary Adkins, Manhattan LSAT instructor and senior consultant with JD admissions consulting firm, jdMission, will use this simple but often perplexing question as the starting point to a workshop for prospective law school applicants. Attendees will walk through a series of exercises that challenge them to uncover their personal and nuanced stories, craft compelling opening statements, develop meaningful goal statements, connect their goals to…

    The Who, What and Why of Effective Recommendations Monday, 10/15   8pm EDT Get the recommendations you need! Candidates have more control over this key application component than they realize. The Admit Advantage law director will discuss what law schools want to see and how you can help your recommenders get it right. Don’t miss this opportunity put your application over the top. Detailed Q&A to follow. Registration link: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/297287774

That’s the question a Law School Podcaster listener recently posed on our blog.  We turned, of course, to the Manhattan LSAT prep team for the helpful response that follows. Our listener asks: I took the June LSAT and had been doing independent study for it the 2-3 months leading up to the test date. I was averaging 155 on my practice tests but a large part of the problem was my living situation. The Monday before the test I had a series…

As we head towards the October LSAT, here’s a helpful tip from Mary Adkins at Manhattan LSAT: Confession: last week in class, I nearly strangled a student. I leaned forward, pretended to put my hands around his neck, and then trembled in a strange way.* Moments before, we’d had this conversation: Homer Simpson does not have the LSAT score to teach for Manhattan LSAT Mary: Why not (E), Sam? Sam: I felt like it was already stated in the argument. Mary: But it’s…

    Case Closed: Building an Exceptional Law Brand is a free webinar that discusses a unique way to conceptualize law school applications and offers participants the opportunity for a live Q&A. Monday, 10/1     8pm EDT Before you get caught in the details, learn to craft a personal brand that will help structure your entire application. The Admit Advantage law director will help you create a brand that emphasizes your unique strengths and appeals to admissions committees.…

Not everyone in law school today plans to head to Big Law or to work in private practice.  While that may still be the more traditional path for the majority, law students today have a diverse range of career goals. Law schools like to tell students they can do anything with a law degree, but can they? With the high cost of law school tuition and a tight job market, it’s important to think early about the type of…

The Top 15 Things Every Law School Applicant Should Know is a series that will teach you the ins and outs of successful law school applications. Stay tuned for the remaining elements. This week we’ll discuss the not so optional “optional” essay.   Almost every law school will ask for a personal statement as part of your admissions application. These personal statements are an integral part of your application, but what about the optional essays? Should you write these or not?…

A personal statement is really no more than telling a story—one that illuminates the “you” a law school would be lucky to have in its student body. In this series, “Telling Your Story,” jdMission Senior Consultant Mary Adkins will discuss how elements of storytelling can—and should—be applied to your personal statement.   About a year ago, my sister called and asked what I was doing. “I’m brainstorming ideas for my book,” I told her. “With who?” she asked. I…

The Top 15 Things Every Law School Applicant Should Know is a series that will teach you the ins and outs of successful law school applications. Stay tuned for the remaining elements. This week we’ll discuss the importance of Micro-editing. You know when you see a typo in a professional publication and think, “How did someone not catch that?” Well, we do too, and so do admissions officers. Everyone who puts pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, needs a micro editor. Over reliance…

If English is your second language, and you plan to take the LSAT, you face some unique challenges.  As an ESL student we recently interviewed explains, “you just think in a different language, and now you have to take this standardized test in English. And it is a challenge because you don’t know all the vocabulary, you don’t know all the words, you don’t know, maybe, every grammatical little detail of structure, or how meaning changes. And that plays a very…