When to Withdraw from Law School Waitlists
By Alice Foley, Director of Pre-Law Programming
Spring is here, and many law school applicants have received their decisions already and are making their final decisions. Some applicants, however, are stuck in limbo while they wait to make their decisions. If you are one of those students that finds yourself on a waitlist right now, this blog post is for you!
The first thing that I want to stress is that being on the waitlist does not mean that you failed. You should be proud that you got a waitlist decision. I know it’s probably not what you were hoping for on the front end, but there is something in your application that drew the admissions committee in and that they can see as a part of their law school application.
You have done a good thing. You have put in a strong law school application. Do not discount that!
Now, holding that close to yourself throughout this discussion, I want to talk about one of the main pieces of being on the waitlist - how long can you wait?
When you receive a waitlist decision, you will almost always find some type of language asking how long you are willing to stay on the waitlist. In this blog post, we’re going to discuss that timeline and make a realistic choice for you.
Would you rather listen to this blog post? Listen to our podcast episode, When to Withdraw from Law School Waitlists, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
How important is this law school to you as a future student and lawyer?
Law schools on the whole will admit students all the way up through orientation. That can feel like — and honestly is — a long time to be hanging in that limbo. It helps a lot to know the reason that you’re willing to put up with that uncertainty.
How important is it to you that you attend this law school? How important is it that you are in that city, in that program, doing those things? If it is your top school, that’s important to know., If it’s a school that’s midway down your list and you’re ‘eh’ about it, you don’t have to wait the whole time.
Another important thing to remember is money. Many law schools don’t offer larger scholarships to waitlist students. If money is a main concern for you, I suggest reaching out to the admissions officers and seeing what kind of awards you could realistically expect to receive coming off the waitlist.
You can find some of our guidance here on finding the best law school fit for you to help guide you through this question.
How comfortable are you with uncertainty?
I wasn’t kidding when I said that law schools would occasionally pull people off of the waitlist all the way up through orientation. I was never particularly happy about having to do that, because I can only imagine how stressful it is for a student to tell them they need to be there in 24 hours for orientation and need to pay their seat deposit that day. That’s a lot of information to take in and not a lot of time to process it.
If you’re comfortable with making that decision the day of, that’s awesome and you can stay throughout the entire waitlist period. However, if you are like me and most applicants I’ve dealt with in my career, that degree of uncertainty is not a thing we love.
There are some bigger factors that you need to consider going into this.
It’s a lot easier to pick up and go to another law school if you don’t have to worry about changing the place where you live. If you’re considering a law school that’s across the country from you, the idea of waiting until the day before I need to be somewhere to make a cross-country trip is my nightmare. If that’s you, don’t tell them you’re going to be on the waitlist the whole time. Be realistic.
As always, timelines like this are something you should speak to a law school admissions officer about. They will be able to give you a relative timeline — don’t expect an exact date. This process is just as fluid on the admissions side as it is on yours. At the very least, they will be able to set some expectations.
What are your other options?
Let’s say you have one school that you’re happy to attend, they gave you a scholarship, and you’re going to pay your seat deposit. And then there’s another school that waitlisted you but is all you ever wanted in your life. Even if they admitted you a day after class started, you would attend. That’s an okay place to be in.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility in most cases for you to have a school that you’re happy to attend and pay a deposit there. If your dream school admits you later on, you understand that you lost the seat deposit that you paid. Chances are it’s probably easier for you to sit on that waitlist if you know you have a seat somewhere else that you’re happy with.
My old colleagues from admissions will probably be very mad at me for saying that it’s fine to deposit somewhere else with the idea of going to another school. It’s not a great practice on a whole and it’s also going to be expensive for you. It will likely make someone else have a bit of a headache as they try to fill that spot you just vacated.
On the flip side, the spot that you just vacated can now go to someone else on their waitlist. This is why I wanted to take a moment here to let you know that if you get off that other waitlist and decide not to go to the law school you put a deposit down on, please tell them that you are not coming. You’re holding a space where there may be someone in an identical position as you wait to get off that school’s waitlist. Just let them know!
What responsibilities do you have in your life right now?
Do you have a family to move with you? Do you have a job that you’re planning to leave and need to let them know ahead of time that you’re leaving? Are you planning to sell a house? Are you planning to rent an apartment? Are you doing things that are not at all related to the logistics of attending law school, but the logistics of your life?
Friends, driving cross country in a day is difficult. Booking a flight 24 hours before you need to be in the air is expensive. Don’t do that to yourself.
If realistically you need a month to wind stuff up, regardless of where you’re going to law school, give yourself a month. Tell admissions: I’m really excited, and I really love your school. I am very likely going to be able to stay on the waitlist until this date.
That’s fine! That’s what admissions officers want to know.
Orientation is an important benchmark to remember. This isn’t always made abundantly clear in communications to admitted students, particularly late amidst, but orientation isn’t really an option. You don’t get to just opt out. So if you need time to make it to orientation and be prepared for that, use however much time you need as your benchmark to tell admissions. (If it’ll take you a week to get everything prepped for orientation, tell them you can be on the waitlist until a week before orientation, for example.)
Take a realistic look at the responsibilities that you have as you are starting to make this decision. Talk to the people in your life that you value and know you best, and have them help you through this process.
Final Thoughts
If you’re not totally sure how to make this decision, I hope you found the questions posed here helpful. And as always, lean on the people in your life that can help support you through this process.
As a reminder, these are the key pieces you should be paying attention to as you make the choice of when to withdraw from a waitlist:
How important is the school to you?
What are your alternatives?
How comfortable are you with uncertainty? How flexible can you be?
What are the other responsibilities that may require you to make the decision by a certain date, whether or not you want to?
Running through these questions and talking to admissions officers to see if they can give you a general timeline should help you make an informed decision throughout this waitlist process.