Personal Phone Calls from deans/faculty? Forum

[oh lawd]

I've gotten two calls from schools I applied to letting me know I was accepted. One of them was from a professor who runs the trial advocacy programs and the other was from the dean himself. They are both top 40 schools, one is top 30, and both of them accepted me less than two weeks after I applied. Neither of them have actually sent me the acceptance e-mail yet though...

Should I be excited? Is this unusual? Should I expect a large scholarship? Could this be a result of me being a little bit overqualified for these schools (171, 3.52; my LSAT is significantly higher than their 75%)?

Obviously I'm waiting for some bigger schools to hear back from, but does anybody know why I would be getting personal calls congratulating me but no e-mails?

[bob311]

I've gotten two calls from schools I applied to letting me know I was accepted. One of them was from a professor who runs the trial advocacy programs and the other was from the dean himself. They are both top 40 schools, one is top 30, and both of them accepted me less than two weeks after I applied. Neither of them have actually sent me the acceptance e-mail yet though...

Should I be excited? Is this unusual? Should I expect a large scholarship? Could this be a result of me being a little bit overqualified for these schools (171, 3.52; my LSAT is significantly higher than their 75%)?

Obviously I'm waiting for some bigger schools to hear back from, but does anybody know why I would be getting personal calls congratulating me but no e-mails?

Not completely unusual. The Dean of Michigan is does this, as does other deans in the top 50 (I can think of at least 3 off the top of my head that called last year). It is a great feeling however. But it doesn't necessarily equate into a large scholarship. It is also just a general recruiting tool.

[oh lawd]

I've gotten two calls from schools I applied to letting me know I was accepted. One of them was from a professor who runs the trial advocacy programs and the other was from the dean himself. They are both top 40 schools, one is top 30, and both of them accepted me less than two weeks after I applied. Neither of them have actually sent me the acceptance e-mail yet though...

Should I be excited? Is this unusual? Should I expect a large scholarship? Could this be a result of me being a little bit overqualified for these schools (171, 3.52; my LSAT is significantly higher than their 75%)?

Obviously I'm waiting for some bigger schools to hear back from, but does anybody know why I would be getting personal calls congratulating me but no e-mails?

Not completely unusual. The Dean of Michigan is does this, as does other deans in the top 50 (I can think of at least 3 off the top of my head that called last year). It is a great feeling however. But it doesn't necessarily equate into a large scholarship. It is also just a general recruiting tool.

I'm not surprised/ this is kind of what I figured. Does the quick turn around mean anything? 11 days was surprisingly fast from application to acceptance based on what I had read

[TLSModBot]

It's a recruiting tool. With a 3.52 and 171, lower down school are desperately hoping you're stupid enough to be flattered by this. Every person like that they snag helps their numbers that much more.

If you're looking for Biglaw, then politely listen, thank them for the call, and then put them out of your mind forever unless it's a T14 dean coming with money in hand.

[RareExports]

My experience was that every school did this, regardless of how "qualified" I was for that school based on my numbers. Not only is this not unusual, I think this is the norm.

[SPerez]

Others are right, schools are hoping students will appreciate that someone who is extremely busy took the time to make a personal connection with you. It's super time-consuming, though, so I wouldn't say it's the norm, at least for THE dean (as opposed to admissions dean) to be doing the calling. (Also, let's be honest, not all schools have a dean that has the social skills to interact with applicants over the phone.) We also know that basically the only time we know students are "listening" to us is in the acceptance communication, whether that be email, letter, or call. So it's a chance to at least work in a short pitch when a student might otherwise ignore subsequent attempts because they're waiting on their 1st choice school.

I've done it some years with some folks, it just depends on if I have time and my mood. The generational shift in talking on the phone means no one answers their phones anymore. I'll end up leaving 10 messages for every 1 person I actually get through to. And odds are that person is caught off guard by the call, doesn't have any questions or want to talk at all. I've had people straight up cut me off and hang up on me.

Still, it's nice to talk to someone that gets excited about the call and has questions. I often also end up informing someone of programs or other things we offer that they didn't know about (because they thought they already knew everything because they read the internet) but were exactly things they were looking for in a law school.

Don't get caught up trying to read into it, or getting through review quickly or anything else for that matter. Not every thing that happens "means" something.

Dean Perez
Texas Tech Law