PLEASE DELETE Forum

[GEMJRERCHS]

PLEASE DELETE

[fanmingrui]

This will not hurt you.

[esse est percipi]

No, being a Republican will not hurt your chances. But *thinking* that this could hurt your chances of getting into law school because of some sort of weird belief that Republicans are discriminated against *will* hurt your chances (if this kind of attitude were to somehow show up in any part of your application).

[Stinson]

They will not care because:

1. Republicanism is not an LSAT score nor GPA
2. See #1.

I promise, no one's out to persecute you, and you needn't worry about being "covered."

If you are more broadly concerned about how you are likely to find the environment at a top law school, again you really needn't worry. All the top schools have robust federalist-society type organizations. They will not be the largest organizations on campus, but most are very active and tend to bag very high profile speakers (Alito, etc.) because high-profile conservatives in law likewise subscribe to the theory that conservative law students are persecuted and bullied in law school and thus go out of their way to be encouraging.

As for professors, they are indeed liberal as a bunch but I've had both liberal and conservative professors and they are quite similar. The majority do not bring their politics in the classroom, and the majority teach law the same way it has been taught for some 100 years or so, for better or worse.

[hephaestus]

This will not hurt you.

[Lavitz]

This will not hurt you.

Also see:

t's important to us as an institution to have a variety of viewpoints represented in order to foster robust and challenging classroom discussion -- to this end, we're very interested in having ideological diversity in each class. Law students, and by extension law schools, are on the whole liberal-leaning, so it's up to admissions officers like me to make sure we identify and attract those students who might be more right-of-center. Now, it's harder to surgically target these students, since political affiliations aren't something that LSAC asks you to check on your profile. A few years ago we tried a desperate, shotgun approach and sent invitations to apply to highly-qualified students from the Red States.

[xRON MEXiCOx]

I swear this same thread pops up every week. Why do shitcons have such a persecution complex? OMG LIBRUL ACADEMIA!

[kay2016]

I'm a Republican.

I was in College Republicans (campus and statewide, leadership). Did Republican campaigns. Volunteered for and worked for Republican candidates... Included it all..

I got into law school with $$$.. If your GPA and LSAT are good, you will too...

If not, retake, because that's the problem, not your ideology!


Good luck!

[ThinkNegative]

Kinda get the feeling it would be a mildly positive soft if your application is otherwise on point.

[John_rizzy_rawls]

Kinda get the feeling it would be a mildly positive soft if your application is otherwise on point.

No, it doesn't matter at all one way or the other.

[Stinson]

I swear this same thread pops up every week. Why do shitcons have such a persecution complex? OMG LIBRUL ACADEMIA!

Search function has LIBRUL BIAS!

[ThinkNegative]

Kinda get the feeling it would be a mildly positive soft if your application is otherwise on point.

No, it doesn't matter at all one way or the other.

To clarify: it won't hurt, and to the extent that it makes you distinctive or interesting, could be a positive soft at a school that values ideological diversity and/or has luxury of making choices toward that end.

HTH.

[20141023]

.

[John_rizzy_rawls]

Kinda get the feeling it would be a mildly positive soft if your application is otherwise on point.

No, it doesn't matter at all one way or the other.

To clarify: it won't hurt, and to the extent that it makes you distinctive or interesting, could be a positive soft at a school that values ideological diversity and/or has luxury of making choices toward that end.

HTH.

To clarify for the OP: there is a 0% chance that your registered party will have any shred of an impact as to whether a law school decides to admit you or not. It would not even be the 1000th tie-breaker and to insinuate any differently is flat out incorrect.

Now if you're a GOP activist and have specific work experience with the party that sets you apart from other candidates, well then now those are softs that could have maybe the most minimal but relevant impact. But the fact that you punched a hole for Romney is not at all, whatsoever, a diversifying factor that would make a law school contemplate admitting you because you happen to vote for the party that half the country votes for.

I hope that helps as well.

[iamgeorgebush]

Just don't write a diversity statement about your opposition to affirmative action and you should be fine.

I did watch some ABA/Kaplan event a while back where the admissions deans of a few schools discussed which of several applicants they'd admit off the waitlist, and one of them was a Republican who went to UG at Stanford. He had slightly better numbers than the other applicants, College Republicans/Capitol Hill internship/rec from a Senator (but obv a celebrity rec, didn't know the student well)/other ok softs, but he came off as pretty arrogant and the thrust of his diversity statement was that diversity didn't matter. The candidate was not admitted off the waitlist (someone with slightly worse numbers but a pretty compelling application otherwise was).

Looking at the adcoms' facial expressions and tones' of voice (particularly one officer's tone of voice when he said "College Republicans") I do feel like his membership in College Republicans might have hurt him a little bit...but only because of all the other things in his application, all of which cried "entitled, privileged douchebag." If the applicant hadn't written such a terrible diversity statement, I don't think they would've cared at all. And honestly, they probably wouldn't have admitted that student even if he had been in College Democrats instead of College Republicans.

And yes yes, adcoms don't always behave in private how they claim they do in public, but I doubt they'd somehow admit that student in private but not in public.

[rendlelaw]

Yeah, yeah, I agree with all above posters.

I will say, however, that there was one of these online admissions seminars a couple months ago where a dean at a highly ranked school took issue with someone's application because the personal statement was all about helping people in need and the resume was full of conservative, trickle-down economics kind of institutions. The dean saw this as a discrepency. Any conservative worth their salt would say instead that it represented someone who believed in charity, just not government-mandatedm taxpayer-funded charity. It's really a fairly common political position, and I was surprised to see it cited as a red flag.

[Cicero76]

I hate to break it to you, but I've known several Republicans who didn't get into Yale Law School.

If you want to avoid the same fate as them, you might want to consider writing an addendum explicitly stating that you are okay with blacks, gays, Hispanics, Asians, and liberals. You also might want to mention that although you're usually against any form of contraception, you're cool with coitus interruptus because it is strictly behavioral and you can say it in Latin, which makes you feel like a lawyer.

+1. The only Republican I know in all of my YLS class has a MA in Classics, so he wrote his entire PS about how amazing Hannibal (black) was, how being gay is okay because Spartans did it, and how Roman birth control was such an important innovation. He also wrote the entire thing in Latin, although he included an attached translation for any plebe professors who couldn't read his app.

Seriously why does this thread keep popping up.

[iamgeorgebush]

Yeah, yeah, I agree with all above posters.

I will say, however, that there was one of these online admissions seminars a couple months ago where a dean at a highly ranked school took issue with someone's application because the personal statement was all about helping people in need and the resume was full of conservative, trickle-down economics kind of institutions. The dean saw this as a discrepency. Any conservative worth their salt would say instead that it represented someone who believed in charity, just not government-mandatedm taxpayer-funded charity. It's really a fairly common political position, and I was surprised to see it cited as a red flag.

Ahh I think this is the one I was talking about. In his PS he talked about how he loved to help people, then the rest of his application screamed "[great grandpa's] booootstrapppps!"

[Cicero76]

Yeah, yeah, I agree with all above posters.

I will say, however, that there was one of these online admissions seminars a couple months ago where a dean at a highly ranked school took issue with someone's application because the personal statement was all about helping people in need and the resume was full of conservative, trickle-down economics kind of institutions. The dean saw this as a discrepency. Any conservative worth their salt would say instead that it represented someone who believed in charity, just not government-mandatedm taxpayer-funded charity. It's really a fairly common political position, and I was surprised to see it cited as a red flag.

The position you describe is a common political position, yeah, but that app seems like hte opposite. A conservative would write a resume about the importance of trickle-down or his experience at those institutions, and quietly have his resume listing several charity activities or whatever. Not write a PS about wanting to help people and have no charity work on his resume.

I have a friend who is a Republican lobbyist and says the most outrageously offensive things on Facebook, then spends every Saturday at a charity he founded to tutor inner city elementary schoolchildren that he funds himself. It used to seem incongruous to me, but apparently it's not. That's the opposite, however, of proclaiming how much you want to help people and then having a resume full of nothing but macro things that arguably hurt people.

[Lobster]

My pre-law advisor (former attorney) told me that being a Republican will lead to a rejection when you're considered alongside a liberal canidate of equal merit.

[kay2016]

Also wanted to add..

*IF* a school rejects you because you're a Republican, and you care enough about your party to include it in your app... do you really want to go there?


But, as I said before.. this won't be a problem, just don't sound ignorant in your PS or on your resume.

[teampeeta]

Unless you do something irrefutably objectionable that indicates that you wouldn't be a good citizen of a law school community that has a diverse student body, such as writing an essay on why homosexuality is an abomination and the LGBT community is responsible for the imminent end of days, I can't imagine why your political beliefs would hurt you. There are plenty of Republicans at top law schools.

In fact, as others have said, your Republican background might be a slight boost for you. Most of the T14 (students and faculty) is left-leaning and schools always need new members of the Federalist Society. I would just steer clear of highlighting more controversial aspects of the GOP platform in your application that some interpret as discriminatory.

[bjsesq]

My pre-law advisor (former attorney) told me that being a Republican will lead to a rejection when you're considered alongside a liberal canidate of equal merit.

Well, that settles that.

[90LawSchool]

Will it kill you from going to law school? No

Will it harm you if you have lots of work experience/volunteer hours for conservative candidates? It can. But your numbers should be able to overcome any such bias if your numbers are good enough.

[DaftAndDirect]

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