Categories: Advice, Law School Personal Statement, Personal Statement Tips
Tags: law school personal statement, personal statement help
6 Comments »
The following is an excerpt from The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert, page 92:
5 Words & Phrases that Make Me Cringe in Personal Statements:
1. “Personally”- It’s a personal statement. Of course everything you say is your own personal opinion. If it’s not, you’re doing something wrong.
2. “In conclusion….” Blech! Just conclude, don’t announce that you’re concluding.
3. “I believe…” It doesn’t matter what you believe about your ability to succeed in law school or what you believe is important in your application. The fact that you believe it is immaterial. Just state the facts so that the reader independently concludes that he or she believes whatever you’re trying to prove.
4. “Unique…”Very few things in this world are “unique,” especially the use of the word “unique.”
5.”Firsthand experience….” What is a secondhand experience and why would anyone write about it?
Categories: Advice, Law School Admission Deadlines, Law School Personal Statement, Law School Resume Tips, Letters of Rec, LSAT, LSAT; Rolling Admissions
20 Comments »
If you just took today’s LSAT, congratulations on being done. For the next 24 hours make no major decisions and avoid reading any forums or talking to anyone who also took today’s test. You have 6 days to decide whether to cancel your LSAT score and there are no bonus points for rushing to cancel today. Take a deep breath and relax. I always talk to a lot of people who panic on LSAT day, only to feel just fine about their performance the next day. That rarely happens in reverse. However, definitely cancel your LSAT score if any of these things happened to you.
When you wake up tomorrow, decide to be productive. Here are 3 easy things to do this week to move your application process forward:
1. Get out your resume and resolve to polish it up. See this US News post I wrote last year and listen to Chapter 6 of the audio version of The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert.
2. Make sure your LORs are in process – being sent to LSAC or already there.
3. Work on your personal statement. Here are some helpful posts about law school personal statement writing and this one about concluding your personal statement.
Lastly, if you end up being disappointed by your score, is it OK to take the December LSAT and apply in early January? YES. Absolutely. It’s ok.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend and, as always, I’m happy to answer your questions.
Categories: Advice, LSAT, LSAT Prep, Uncategorized
Tags: Last minute LSAT tips, October LSAT
1 Comment »
Ten Days Until the LSAT: Everything You Need to Know
I feel like I’m giving a lot of LSAT advice right now, being asked:
- Am I ready?
- What do I do for the next 10 days?
- How do I calm down?
- Is December too late?
- Should I withdraw?
- How will I know whether to cancel my score?
I know the advice I always give in response to these questions. For example, just this week a client asked me:
“I’m still having trouble finishing on time, any tips on that? I read somewhere that on the day of the exam, the adrenaline rush takes over and people usually finish earlier than their prep tests?” I responded, “Just do the best you can on each question, knowing you might be sacrificing other questions for timing. Check through each section quickly and see which ones you think will be hardest to answer. But practice this strategy so you don’t get freaked out on test day.”
I always like to know what advice other people would give since I’m the Law School Expert, not the LSAT expert : ) So I consulted someone who I consider to be an LSAT expert, my friend Noah Teitelbaum of Manhattan LSAT. And after his great advice, below, I’ve included tips from some of my Facebook friends who responded to a call for last minute LSAT advice. Also, if you haven’t heard it before, you MUST spend 45 minutes in the next few days listening to my Blog Talk Radio show/podcast on last minute LSAT tips, featuring Noah on the panel of experts.
Without further ado, here is Noah:
It’s about 10 days until the October LSAT – 240 hours, 14,400 minutes, or 864,000 seconds – but let’s not spend our time counting! If you’re freaking out, here are some ideas to help keep you chugging along smoothly into a great LSAT score:
Now:
1. Focus on the main event. Right about now we see on our LSAT forums lots of questions about unimportant topics and students freaking out about the hardest LSAT questions in written history. Rare question and game types are rare! If you find them tough, that’s not a big deal. What is important is that you are able to get the easy and common ones correct without wasting too much time, leaving you enough time for the rare question or game. And, games are generally more consistent today than in days of yore, so don’t freak out if you think CD game or the Zephyr airlines game is hard – they were! Focus on capitalizing on your strengths, not trying to do an emergency patch-up of a minor weakness.
2. Clean up your act. Time to switch to O’Doul’s for the next 10 days, and start exercising (exercise has been linked to neural growth). And, create a schedule for yourself. Most people should be doing just 2-3 more practice LSATs in the last 10 days, though there are some strange people who do better doing an LSAT every day until test day. Think about what generally makes you stay on the top of your mental game, write out a schedule, and execute. For most people, this means a steady diet of 2 section practice sets, deep review, replay of tough questions, and a full, 5-section practice LSAT sprinkled in here or there.
3. Go mental. Before an Olympic diver takes a dive, she imagines the whole process, from start to finish. That way, the dive is simply an execution of a plan, not something that’s being invented at that moment. Same thing for you. Consider how you’ll take this test – what you’ll do when you face a tough question, what you’ll do if the proctor screws up. Practice envisioning this before each practice test. Then, do the same thing on test day morning.
On test day:
4. Keep it real. There’s something magically disastrous that happens on test day for many people. Let’s say two people are both getting 160-164 on their practice LSATs. When Mr. Proctor says begin, Mr. 164 now is possessed with the idea that he might be able to get a 180. This is a problem. The truth is that Mr. and Ms. 164 will NOT GET A 180. Ms. 164 does a better job of controlling her passions: she aims for a 164, knowing she can get about 18 questions wrong. When she comes across a ridiculously tough question, she makes an educated guess and moves on, saving time for other questions that are tough, but doable with a bit more time. Mr. 164 instead spends 2.5 minutes on the first impossible question he faces, still gets it wrong, and is now trying to catch up. In short, go in there and know how many you want to get wrong, and get them wrong.
5. Admit it, it is hard. Unless you’re scoring well-below the national median, chances are that if you think a question is hard, most everyone else in the nation does too. There are always some geeks out there who won’t, but if we stick to thinking about the mortal population, let’s keep a cool head. It’s a tough question, lots of people will get it wrong, the question is whether you’ll get it wrong and waste a lot of time on it. Notice that this is the same advice as #1?
6. Warm-up with a warm-up, not section 1. Your brain is a muscle, and it probably isn’t used to working on Saturday morning, so bring a tough game that you’ve mastered, maybe an LR question or RC passage, read it outside the LSAT center as you sip your usual morning beverage (don’t over caffeinate!) and then crumble it up as you walk in and toss it triumphantly. Better that than using the first section as your warm-up…
7. Even if you’re going to cancel, take the test like you won’t. Keep on trucking through that LSAT. It’s always good to get the practice, and perhaps that section you bombed was an experimental one. . . And what if everyone in the nation thought that the third RC passage was completely baffling – maybe your feeble performance was better than most people’s. Give yourself the time to think things through after the LSAT – you have several days to cancel.
After test day:
8. Remember your application. Ann knows a lot more about this topic, but is everything else ready to roll? Better to focus on that then hitting refresh on Gmail, waiting for your score report.
9. Geek out. We’ll review this LSAT on Wed. October 26th – so if you’d like to use the LSAT as an opportunity to learn something for the December LSAT. Join us <http://www.manhattanlsat.com/EventShow.cfm?EID=3&eventID=634> .
THANKS SO MUCH, Noah!!!! I always love to share your tips with my readers. Below is advice from some of my Facebook friends, who have been where you are and are now very LSAT-wise:
Cat Don’t drink 9 million cups of coffee – it will only wind you up. know that there will be someone doing something annoying in your test – practice so it doesn’t phase you. breathe – in about a year you likely wont remember your score anyway.
Nick A great way to train for taking a test in a slightly noisy environment (there is always SOME sort of mumbling, fidgeting, etc. going on) when you are at home is to do practice tests with talk radio quietly on in the background. You learn/get used to tuning out background sounds.
Eva I actually completely agree with the coffee comment. If you’re the type of person who gets excessively nervous, I would actually not drink coffee at all. It makes your heart rate go up and that makes you feel more nervous than you already are. Also remember that a bad LSAT score is not the end of the world – it’s just a test.
Rebecca Play upbeat music that you like to sing along with on the way to the test. If you’re singing then you aren’t obsessing about the test or winding yourself up.
Jeff 1) take two days off of studying before the test. you don’t want to burn yourself out. 2) only study for maybe 4 or 5 hours a day MAX. after that you’ll start to lose focus… which leads to you feeling like you don’t get it… which leads to a decline in attitude… which leads to a worse score. 3) the day before the test be SURE not to sleep in. you need to be sure that you’ll be able to fall asleep the night before the test (that was my mistake the first time…) 4) read the newspaper the morning before the test to a) take your mind off the test and b) get your brain into reading mode.
Eli Remember this important thing: It’s not even close to as bad as the CA bar exam. Just keep telling yourself “hey, I can do this, at least it’s not something crazy like the bar” and then when you actually get to that time, you are allowed to freak out… just a bit.
Categories: Advice, Application Timeline, Law School Admission Deadlines, LSAT, LSAT; Rolling Admissions
19 Comments »
It’s September. What on earth should you be doing? Obviously, if you aren’t taking the LSAT in the future and you are keeping a past score, now is the time to get your Letters of Rec, personal statement, resume, addenda, applications, optional essays underway. If you haven’t started, what are you waiting for?
If you are taking the October LSAT,the next four weeks are all about that – put everything else to the side except perhaps requesting transcripts and letters of rec. Also, read this post about my top 3 LSAT tips to know if you’re going to be ready to take the test and this Countdown to the October LSAT post. If you’re not happy with your LSAT practice performance, read this post about Not Hitting Your Goal LSAT score.
If you are heading to a LSAC Forum or recruiting event at a law school, here’s a post with tips about what to ask the law school representatives when you see them. The most important thing is to keep their contact info so you haven’t someone to follow up with throughout the application cycle.
If you’re considering taking the December LSAT, that’s perfectly ok. Just read this post first so you undertand admission cycle timing. Just start working on your application materials now so you can really concentrate on the LSAT for most of October and November.
I hope everyone has a great Labor Day Weekend!
Categories: Advice, Application Timeline, Hiring a Law School Admission Consultant, Law School Admission Deadlines
4 Comments »
Law school applications will be released on September 1st. That date should motivate you to create a timeline to follow throughout the application cycle. Some key points:
1. You don’t have to apply the minute applications are available. That’s not what it means to take advantage of rolling admissions. Law school admission officers spend most of September traveling to recruiting events, they aren’t moving through applications quite yet.
2. I consider anything submitted before Thanksgiving to be taking advantage of rolling admissions.
3. Early Decision and Early Notification Deadlines are usually around 11/1 and 11/15, so that goes to show you that law schools consider applications submitted in October to be early in the profess.
4. If you are sticking with an LSAT score you already have, aim to apply to law school by early to mid-October. That gives you 6-7 weeks to really concentrate on your application materials and make sure they are the best they can be.
5. If you are taking the October LSAT, aim to submit applications in the first two weeks of November. Work on things a bit now, but give the LSAT priority until October 1. Then spend October solidifying your materials. Just make sure your transcripts and LORs are underway in September in case any hiccups arise.
6. If you cancel the October LSAT or don’t feel ready for it, December is a perfectly fine option. I repeat, the December LSAT is NOT the end of the world. Just spend time now getting your application materials together so that you can submit applications in early January. (No one is reviewing them over winter break, so no reason to rush to submit them by the end of the year).
7. When to hire a law school admission consultant? If you already have your LSAT score, now is the time to look for the right law school admission coach for you. If you know you are applying to law school for Fall 2012 no matter what your upcoming LSAT score is, then start comparing consultants now and make your decision since the best admission consultants can only take on so many clients per cycle. If you are not sure you will be applying because you’re waiting to see your LSAT score, then it’s fine to wait until then to hire a consultant but just be ready to really get a lot of work done in month after getting your LSAT score. Read this for more about hiring a law school admission consultant and what a law school admission consultant can (and can’t) do.
8. Check out the great price for unlimited consulting on my website – available only until September 15th!
Categories: Advice, Practicing Law
Tags: books to read before law school, lawyer book list, pre-law reading list
2 Comments »
So, it’s been pointed out to me that there are a few pre-law reading lists coming up on blogs right now. Here are the highlights:
http://blog.clearadmit.com/law/2011/07/guest-post-from-anna-ivey-pre-law-summer-reading/
http://legalcareers.about.com/od/educationandtraining/a/prelawreading.htm
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2008/07/developing-an-i.html
AWomaninLawSchool summer reading list:
http://awomaninlawschool.blogspot.com/2008/05/pre-law-school-reading-list.html
I looked at them, and for the most part I think the suggestions are (1) repetitive of what your law schools are going to tell you to read (unnecessarily), (2) pretentious, (3) not grounded in the reality of what you’re getting yourself into by going to law school and becoming an attorney. Maybe I’m just deep into the book I’m writing (to be released this fall) to help you decide upon and act upon your legal career, and maybe reading “Getting to Maybe” (and being the author’s research assistant in law school) just scarred me for life, but I’d rather you spend your summer reading books that will motivate you to hustle, get you to start thinking about how business works, how people hire, to start networking with attorneys and colleagues immediately, and to start exploring different areas of law.
The 6Ps of the BIG 3 for Job Seeking JDs by Amanda Ellis (@aellislegal)- a guide with concrete tips for social networking and other ways of building connections, specifically for lawyers (which is who you have to start thinking like – a lawyer)
Fuel the Spark: 5 Guiding Values for Success in Law School & Beyond by Kevin Houchin (@kevinhouchin)- a quick little book about how law school can help you develop as a person if you approach it the right way
Make it Your Own Law Firm by Spencer Marc Aronfeld (@aronfeld) – this will get you thinking about yourself as an entrepreneur and will help you see through to the purpose of law school when you are mired in the Socratic Method
24 Hours with 24 Lawyers by Jasper Kim (@jasperkim) – if you don’t know what lawyers really do or what their lives are really like, this is a great place to start
Categories: Advice, Career
Tags: law jobs
3 Comments »
Please listen in to my Blog Talk Radio Show tomorrow (it’s FREE like always!). I’m going to be talking with Spencer Aronfeld, author of “Make It Your Own Law Firm,” a guide for law students on what they need to do to be self-sufficient as lawyers (and self-employed!) when they get out. Don’t miss it. Spencer is very enthusiastic and entertaining (no pressure, Spencer) so it’s bound to be an energetic and informative show. Here’s my review of his book.
Here’s the info: Tomorrow (Thursday) at Noon EST/9 a.m. PST. You can chat questions live during the show. You’ll also be able to listen later on your computer through Blog Talk Radio or by downloading the show from my iTunes page (Go to Podcasts, then Ann Levine Blog Talk Radio Feed – all 17 of my previous shows are there and absolutely FREE!).
Ann K. Levine, Esq., former director of law school admissions for two ABA approved law schools, is a law school admission consultant and owner of Law School Expert,
