Common Questions Law School Admissions Officers Get Asked
By Alice Foley, Director of Pre-Law Programming
If you’ve been keeping up with us for a while, you know that I have talked a lot about my time working in the admissions office for law schools. In my most recent role, I was the Assistant Director for Enrollment Management at my alma mater, West Virginia University College of Law. Before that, I worked for the University of Kentucky Law School.
Given my experience, I thought one of the fun things to do today would be to talk through some of the things I saw a lot and the questions I got asked all the time. Hopefully this answers some of your questions and gives you some idea what it’s like on the other side of admissions.
The Basic Questions
Why should I go to your law school?
This one is a huge pet peeve of mine, and I honestly think I heard it more than any other question that I’m going to talk about today. It’s a great question, but an admissions officer is not the person to answer it.
My answer was always: “Tell me a little bit about what you want to do with your law school career and with your legal education.” Once I have that information, I can tell you what is important to you that matches up with what my law school offers.
We believe in the law schools that we work for, almost always. I loved the schools that I worked for, and I could tell you a ton of really amazing things that happened for our students. But if I don’t know what’s bringing you to law school and I don’t know what’s important to you, I cannot tell you about the things that are relevant to you.
Do I have a two-minute-ish spiel that I can give you about the sort of general basics of my school? Sure. Does my soul die a little bit every time I have to do that? Because you won't tell me anything about yourself. Tell me about you.
Keep this in mind the next time you talk to an admissions officer at a Law School Fair (like ours with 25+ law schools in July)!
What are my chances?
This question sometimes also comes in the form of: How much money will I get?
I saw this question more often before a student had applied to my law school, so at the point in the conversation where this occurs, I have very little or no information about you as an applicant. I have no idea what your chances are or if the information that you’re telling me is accurate.
After you’ve sent me an application and I can see all of your application materials, I could usually give you a pretty good idea. However, there are no guarantees. I’m not the person who is making those decisions by myself. We worked in a committee at both of the schools that I worked for. However, I can tell you what I think will happen and a chance of what your scholarships might look like.
Most of the time, if you call somebody up in an admissions office and ask them what your chances are or what type of scholarship you're going to get, you're gonna get an “it depends.”
If you're going to ask this question, do it after you've sent your application in or preface it and say, hypothetically, this is the type of applicant profile I'm gonna present.
Do you rank the waitlist?
At the schools that I worked at, the answer is no. But that doesn’t mean that I could give you a straight answer on what your chances are.
Even for schools that do rank their waitlist, it’s usually very difficult to say that you will probably be pulled off, especially early in the admissions cycle when those initial decisions go out. At that point, we don’t even know if we’re going to pull from the waitlist yet.
As someone who was a late admit, I understand how frustrating it is to be sitting in May without a decision. Admissions officers work as quickly as they can to work through the waitlist if they’re going to admit, and they work on denying the students that they don’t think they’ll be able to admit.
Over-enrollment is just as scary a thing on the admissions side as under-enrollment. If I say that I’m welcoming you into my class, especially with scholarship money, I need to be certain that I have a place for you.
Most schools try to give updates when they can. Chances are that when you call, you will get an “it depends.”
You can read more of our advice on what to do if you’re on the waitlist here!
What’s your median GPA and LSAT?
This is something that I saw most often while at a Law School Fair or LSAC Forum with a lovely table spread of information that had the answer to this question already, typically in very bold letters right in front of your face.
Excellent question. I will tell you what they are. My soul will die a little.
If you don’t see it, then definitely ask. But if you’re scanning through a website, most admissions officers make that information very easy to find. Do a smidge of research before you call or ask, please.
Can I have an application fee waiver?
The answer to that is going to change school to school. At the two schools that I worked for, fee waivers were very easy to give out.
If the school has a form, please fill out the form. Do your research first. Don’t just send the email and ask every school.
Please do prepare for them to say no, as well. Sometimes not every school is as free with them as my schools were. But the worst that happens is you get a sorry and you have to pay the fee.
Why haven’t I heard anything yet?
This is the last funnier one that I want to go through, and then I have some more serious questions coming up. I used to giggle a lot when I had to answer this one.
The first possible reason is that your application is incomplete for some reason and you have either not responded to or fixed the problem.
The next reason that you may not be hearing from us is that it's all sitting there in your junk or your spam folder. Over the course of my entire time working in law school admissions, communications that come from law schools tend to end up in the spam or junk folders, particularly if you’re using an Outlook-based mail. Check your spam or junk, and then make sure that you add whatever email address that comes from to your safe senders list so things stop going to junk.
It could also be that I don’t have anything to update you on because you applied yesterday.
If were listening to this podcast episode right now, you would hear the snark, but I’m going to be very serious here for a second. Every admissions officer that I know who answers these questions will continue to answer with smiles on our faces because we do this work to help. But I want you all to remember that you are going to be applying to a professional school to become an attorney.
You are expected to look things up. You are expected to problem-solve from the get-go. Please do that for us.
The Serious Questions
I didn’t get in. What am I supposed to do now?
That’s a tough thing, particularly for those of you reading this who have not handled that level of rejection at this point. School has come easy, oftentimes you are go-getters. It’s not a feeling that you have very often, so it hurts and that’s okay.
You can almost always talk to somebody in the admissions office about where you go from there. While these were certainly not my favorite calls to take, I did always feel like I was helping when I had the chance to talk with students that had been denied from our law school.
I always pulled up their application and took a look over it. If I saw a particular place that could be strengthened, I would tell them. Not every school and every admissions officer will be that forthcoming, so don’t expect that every time, but don’t hesitate if you are truly confused.
I’ve got this big concerning or problematic thing that happened in my past. Will this affect my chances?
You can fill in this blank with whatever applies. A criminal conviction, a bad semester, a lawsuit you’re in the middle of right now — something that doesn’t have to do with the components (ish) of your application.
When students would call me and ask, my first question is always, “If you feel comfortable, could you share the details with me?” I as an admissions officer am never going to drag that information out of you. When you go through the character and fitness questions on your application, it’s kind of like the honor system. You will have to affirm that the information you provided is accurate to the best of your knowledge, so don’t lie, but I don’t feel like I am entitled to this information.
You can find more on character and fitness questions if you are justice-impacted here and mental health here.
If you have called me up saying that you are concerned about it, though, the assumption is that you are willing to give me some kind of information. You can change names, you don’t have to tell me your name if you call, I don’t know to know your LSAC number for this conversation to happen.
Most of the dumb things that students do when they are young include alcohol. If you have one of those and it only happened once, I promise the likelihood of your decision being changed because of that is so small. Do not panic if you made one bad decision once and you have grown and learned.
Something is affecting my ability to move through the application process. Do I have to give up?
This is related to when things coincide unexpectedly with some deadline, like application or deposit deadlines. If something comes up in your life that you had not planned on that is affecting your ability to move through the application process — a sick family member, final exams, whatever it is — please tell me.
In nearly every case, you do not have to give up on your applications. At my schools, we were very lucky to be pretty flexible, particularly with seat deposit deadlines. If we needed to wiggle a bit to make sure that you had a chance to get a paycheck to come in, we could usually work with you. Not every school is able to do that, but you can’t find out if you don’t ask.
How do I get more money?
Scholarship negotiation was not a thing when I applied to law school. If I’m being very honest, I think it’s a good conversation to have and I’m glad that it is much, much more widespread now.
My answer throughout my entire career as a law school admissions officer was, “I’ll be happy to connect you to somebody else in my office.” However, I’m not going to leave you hanging with just that.
If you are starting to approach the scholarship negotiation or reevaluation process, make sure you have a real reason for asking. You’re not just asking to ask. Make sure that you’re coming in with a good reason and you’re coming in with good information.
You can learn more about best practices for scholarship negotiation here.
I covered a lot, kind of spanning the whole range of the admissions process. If you have additional questions, feel free to reach out at hello@smontgomeryconsulting.com and we’ll help where we can!