Whether or not you get into a good law school can make or break your potential career as a lawyer. Fortunately, there are many things you can do to make sure that you will get into a good school.
While good grades and a good score on the LSAT are very important, these things do not make you stand apart as an applicant. Most schools agree that the number one thing that can make you stand apart in your application is your personal essay.
In this essay, you have the opportunity to say anything about yourself, that is true, that will make the school say you are the one they want to have study at their school. As there are hundreds of applicants, it is very important that the reader does not fall asleep while reading your essay.
You need to give him or her a reason to be interested in your because your experience or factors other than grades and scores. Some of the things that can make you stand apart include a graduate degree, significant work and leadership experience, and even professionalism in another area.
One of the things that many schools look for in today's society is diversity. You do not have to be diverse in race to pass this qualification, but you do need to show what you have had a diverse array of experiences and life challenges in your essay.
Your essay should portray who you are and what you can uniquely contribute to the classroom. Of course, developed writing skills and few grammar usage mistakes are also important.
In general, you must have a decent LSAT score and academic record as well as a well honed and outstanding personal statement in order to be eligible for consideration for entrance into a school. In addition, most law schools tend to like to see significant work or internship experience.
If this is missing, they like to see that the student spent at least year in graduate school or a year pursuing some kind or research or other productive activity. The deadlines and dates of when you should hear back about your application are all different depending on which school you applied to.
You should make sure that you look up this information before you begin your application to make sure that you can meet the deadline and that all of your paperwork will arrive on time. It is also a good idea to look up the statistics concerning the school and that you find out what the strengths and weaknesses of a school are before you apply.
These things will help you know whether or not you really want to apply to that school. As you decide on which schools you want to apply to, you should make sure you have realistic expectations.
You know which schools are the best and you know how good your grades and your LSAT score are. It can be quite disappointing to set your hopes too high, apply to a whole bunch of really good schools whose applications are quite expensive, and get rejected from all of them.
Apply for some good schools, a few schools you know you can get into, and a few that are between your level and the elite schools. This will give you a good mix to choose from when you find out whether or not you are accepted into a school.
In addition, make sure that you are applying to a school for the right reasons. Some people apply to a certain school because that is what their parents expect of them, but that school does not offer the specialty that the student wants to specialize in.
There are many other similar scenarios in which a student applies to a school that is not appropriate for him or her. In addition, law school is hard so you will want to make sure that you want to be a lawyer and that you have the motivation to study as hard as you are going to need to when you go.
This is critical to do or you could spend a lot of time and money before you realize that you do not want to do it because it is not worth it. Going to law school is going to take sacrifice and you need to be willing to sacrifice what is required if you want to be a lawyer.
It can also help to have a goal in mind. You will want to decide specifically on what kind of a lawyer you want to be.