Reapply for HYSC? Advice Appreciated Forum

[yeff]

Just don't come to NYU.

Go to Chicago. It is a fantastic school.

[lucille]

Sounds like your cycle went as expected: in where you met the median LSAT and out where you didn't. Also, your numbers were good enough for S, but apparently not your softs, so Y/S are unlikely next year. So I would retake and reapply only for a good shot at Harvard, for which you would need a 174-175. Otherwise, suck it up and go to Chicago/NYU.

i'm in a similar position ... kind of. i'm thinking about joining a campaign this fall and am waitlisted at YLS and HLS and in at CLS. i'm debating between the following options:

1.) defer for a year at CLS, work the campaign
2.) deposit at CLS, retake the LSAT in June, and then, if my score improves dramatically from my ~171 i can retract my deposit and reapply to YLS, HLS, and CLS in the fall. if it does not improve, defer.
2a.) if i get into YLS/HLS over the summer, take it.

my thought is that if i'm waitlisted at YLS with a GPA <25%, they kind of like me, and a ~5 point jump on the LSAT might put me over the top and likely would at HLS. of course, there's the chance that i don't get into either, and that i'd then piss off CLS and be totally screwed...

as for my motivation, i would actually like to do the campaign, especially since law school will prevent me from working for one in 2012. but more importantly, after law school i'd like to clerk, do PI, then maybe academia or policy work. columbia's a great school, but YLS and HLS are both stronger in my areas of interest. and, unfortunately, i didn't like chicago.

what do people think? thanks for the advice!

[$1.99]

i like the deposit strategy if you have a couple hundred bucks to hedge your risk, keeping CLS to see if you can improve in June is a good idea.

[CordeliusX]

columbia's a great school, but YLS and HLS are both stronger in my areas of interest. and, unfortunately, i didn't like chicago.

what do people think? thanks for the advice!

You hate SLS or something?

[lucille]

columbia's a great school, but YLS and HLS are both stronger in my areas of interest. and, unfortunately, i didn't like chicago.

what do people think? thanks for the advice!

You hate SLS or something?

no, but i got rejected there, so it seems as though they were less into me/my softs than YLS/HLS

[lucille]

i like the deposit strategy if you have a couple hundred bucks to hedge your risk, keeping CLS to see if you can improve in June is a good idea.

i'm happy to drop a few hundred bucks to hedge my risk, but is there any potential downside here that i'm not considering? and is it possible that an increased score could help my WL odds at YLS/HLS this summer?

[$1.99]

i called HLS and YLS up about an increased June score helping out with waitlists and they both said that it would be useless since they only consider LSATs up to December of last year.

however, i think its somewhat of a policy ploy and that it would help since they can still report your higher LSAT score to the US news rankings for the upcoming year.

even if it didn't help, you could consider reapplying with the higher score too since you seem to be really close to the holy grail of yale

[Hammurabi]

85

[lucille]

85

?

[Hammurabi]

85

?

don't blow yourself up thinking about it.

[eachdaythewiser]

His 85th post. Whatever. I wasted a post myself just solving that puzzle for everyone else.

[Sakura3210]

You know $1.99, I'm right in the same place as you. Everything you've written resonates - this being the last educational institution, me wanting to make it count, etc. There's also the fact that I scored at roughly the same as my diagnostic on the LSAT (my study methods apparently sucked), and that I was WL'ed at H and Colombia, which makes me feel that if my score was just a little higher, I would have been in.

Honestly, the only things stopping me are that a) I'm not crazy about taking another year off, and b) I don't know how I'd raise my score (i.e. I can't figure out what study method would up my base score).

[Hammurabi]

His 85th post. Whatever. I wasted a post myself just solving that puzzle for everyone else.

nope. 85 is dynamite.

[englawyer]

deposit at nyu or chicago, retake in june. if you get a 176+ reapply otherwise just start

[motiontodismiss]

Short of getting a 180 on the LSAT, I don't think an extra year's going to do much for your chances.

[$1.99]

why would it be that much harder to get in as a reapplicant?

[motiontodismiss]

why would it be that much harder to get in as a reapplicant?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

Law school admissions is only going to get more competitive. I don't see how you'll do that much better short of seeing a 5+ point improvement on the LSAT.

It's not that much harder-it's questionable if it's even harder at all, but you've gotten into some really good schools and I don't think waiting another year to apply to HYSC, which you're not guaranteed to get into (and you might even lose your place at the schools you got into this year), is worth it.

This is, of course, assuming you didn't apply in March and didn't write your essay in crayon.

[DoubleChecks]

why would it be that much harder to get in as a reapplicant?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

Law school admissions is only going to get more competitive. I don't see how you'll do that much better short of seeing a 5+ point improvement on the LSAT.

It's not that much harder-it's questionable if it's even harder at all, but you've gotten into some really good schools and I don't think waiting another year to apply to HYSC, which you're not guaranteed to get into (and you might even lose your place at the schools you got into this year), is worth it.

This is, of course, assuming you didn't apply in March and didn't write your essay in crayon.

though i believe admissions are actually more random than that, i can believe JR starting a new trend of sorts, i.e. expect similar results next cycle as you did this cycle

of course, TS seemed to admit differently than JR, so last yr's accepted students already seem diff from this yr's accepted students

[DoubleChecks]

I am leaning more towards NYU since i got a better feel for that school.

The idea is I withdraw everywhere now and retake in June and reapply in the next cycle if I can't get off the waitlists.

What is so bad about wanting to gain prestige? Am I the only one?

People who condemn prestige-whoring tend to be hypocrites. What the hell is wrong with prestige?

Nothing. I think it's $1.99's tone that some ppl have problems with. It can rub a lot of ppl the wrong way.

oh and to get back on topic:

I think you need a 176+, maybe a 177+, for HLS, and even then it isn't a guarantee (but probably 75-90%). If you break median (174+), you'll at least have a shot, but you are probably waitlisted. I think Yale and Stanford are out, especially if you don't do something remarkable in the intervening year; you are re-applying, so the bar will be slightly raised, and these schools have already ruled, in a sense, on your softs.

JR/Harvard, as has been noted, is taking retakes under consideration this year in a pretty strong way. I am pretty sure they don't strictly average, but they do take retakes into account. If you go look at LSN, see a high number waitlist/reject, you can almost guarantee it is a retake. You'll also need to re-apply to NYU and Chicago, and don't assume you'll get in after re-applying to get in somewhere else.

So I agree with the above poster that the most likely scenario--pulling off a 176 isn't easy, even with extra practice, and it still isn't a guarantee for HLS--is Columbia. With an NYU acceptance, taking a year to get into Columbia seems like the wrong move, and will be a waste of future earnings. If for some reason you think you are very likely to get a 176+ (e.g. a 5 test average under strict conditions without falling below 176), I'd retake, but without already testing in that range on a consistent basis, I think re-applying is a fool's bet.

TCR