As prospective law school students, your LSAT score is one key piece to a larger admissions puzzle that you must put together.  I’m sure you’ve heard many times by now how important your LSAT score and undergraduate GPA are to your acceptance in to law school – but there still remains a bit of mystery surrounding certain aspects of the overall application.  Just what are admissions officers looking for in a prospective JD student?

This week, Manhattan LSAT is pleased to be teaming up with AdmissionsConsultants.com – an admissions consulting firm with admissions counseling experience that spans decades – to bring you an exclusive interview with Sara Zearfoss, Dean of Admissions at the University of Michigan Law School.

Here is an excerpt from their exclusive interview:

What do you consider the most important part of the application process?

The personal statement, far and away. There’s a strong perception among applicants that the make-or-break factors are LSAT and UGPA – but while those are unquestionably important indicators of academic ability, it is certainly true that many people with strong metrics are not admitted, and also true that people whose metrics are well below our medians do get admitted. What never happens, however, is that someone who writes a terrible personal statement gets admitted.

To read the full interview, please click HERE.

Diddy said it was all about the Benjamins...

It turns out that going to law school does not guarantee you’ll get rich. Are you surprised? Are you putting down your pencil and throwing out your LSAT prep book? The New York Times published an article stating what anyone who has done their research knows: people come out of law school with lots and lots of debt, and the job market is far worse than what it was during better economic times. What was most disturbing was the reminder that law schools fib on their stats about how well their grads do. It’s all about the rankings – and we repeat our “yuck!”

We have an interesting window into the legal job world because of our audition process: We generally see the resumes of some former lawyers in our inbox, but a year ago we started seeing a small surge of resumes from recent law school grads. Sometimes that’s great – they finished law school and realized law is not for them, or want to practice government law or something that allows them to teach at night. Those are the candidates we love to see, people with a passion and perhaps a bit of outside-the-box thinking. But, we also saw folks who had been banking on their summer associate job, previously the doorway to a post-grad job, leading to just a line on a resume. These were not the candidates we wanted to see.

But, at least in NYC, the legal economic tide is turning. Read more

A recent article in the National Law Journal raises some critical issues about the effects of US News & World Report’s annual rankings.  What I found most disturbing are some of the tricks that law schools play to increase their rankings (accepting students as part-timers, hiring graduates so those grads are not unemployed), and the ranking’s effect on how law schools spend their money is disheartening.  According to a GAO study, tuition at law schools has risen because of the need to hire top faculty amidst an increasingly competitive market.

If you’re on the fence about where to set your sites, one thought to consider when you’re facing the rankings game is whether you’d like to be in the top 10% of the 20th school on the list, or in the bottom 10% of the school ranked number 8.   Your ranking within your class can make a difference in terms of your experience at school and how potential employers view you.

The first year of law school has been built up to near-legend.  Journals, grades, awards, and job prospects often are determined in your first year, leaving you not a whole lot of time to get settled.  Here are Manhattan LSAT’s  5 Things to Remember from those who have been through the halls of legal academia and lived to write about it:

1.     More is not better.  On your way to class your first week, you will almost certainly see your fellow students carrying around many books aside from your shared case law textbooks.  Law outlines from Emanuel’s, Gilbert’s, and other study aid companies will abound, and you will think to yourself, “Hmm, I wonder if that outline is better than what I’m studying from?  Maybe I should pick that up at the book store.”  Before you know it, you’ll find yourself in a study supplement arms race, and your room will be filled with a stack of outlines in addition to your textbook and your notes.  Do not succumb to this temptation!  You’ll likely find that your notes are the best resource.  Outlines and tests from your professor’s past classes, which your school’s law library will generally have on file, are also very useful.  At most, pick up one commercial outline you like for each subject (they’re all the same anyway).  A big stack of outlines will only distract you and wind up gathering dust in the homestretch. Read more