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hey dudes,

so can you all please give me a general description on how important and necessary soft factors are. i known that it's primarily about the numbers and that soft factors do help for sure, but to what extent, how much are they looked at, etc.?

i know that it's a general question and one that is bound to get a variety of answers, but i appreciate your guys help!!!

Soft factors are weighed differently by different schools, and for the most part they'll be used to push you over the top. Yale, for instance, wants to see several compelling soft factors in order to formulate their class. Other schools, you can probably get by on your numbers.

Softs can really only hurt you if you have a striking lack of them. Sure, there are quite a few places that will take somebody with good numbers right off the bat, but if you're still in undergrad with no work experience and zero softs whatsoever, some adcomms will raise some red flags - it's hard to gauge whether you're going to make it as an attorney if you don't get out whatsoever.

Overall: unless you're competing for the upper echelon of schools, don't worry about them too much. Absolutely have things to put down, but unless you win a Nobel prize, it's not going to play in too much.