Emory Law Admission Staffer Taking Questions Forum

[doinmybest]

Question:

While you've mentioned that OCI statistics are still being compiled, I wonder if I could add the following question to the list of those that might be addressed by such stats: What percentage of the class of 2011 (i.e., your current 2L class) will be working as paid summer associates at NLJ250 law firms this summer?

Answer:

At this point in the process, even the students themselves don’t know the answer to that. Spring OCI is still yet to come.

Now that the academic year is essentially over, surely summer 2010 employment statistics for your 2L (rising 3L) class are available. Could you share those with us? Thank you.

I agree. I think that sort of information could be a very valuable resource for applicants who are still trying to make a decision. Thanks for answering our questions Emory_Rob!

[dk84]

Are the majority of students in the incoming class straight from undergrad?

Do you think more offers will be made to the waitlist, andh ave there already been offers?


Thnx Em.Rob

[TheBigMediocre]

Question:

While you've mentioned that OCI statistics are still being compiled, I wonder if I could add the following question to the list of those that might be addressed by such stats: What percentage of the class of 2011 (i.e., your current 2L class) will be working as paid summer associates at NLJ250 law firms this summer?

Answer:

At this point in the process, even the students themselves don’t know the answer to that. Spring OCI is still yet to come.

Now that the academic year is essentially over, surely summer 2010 employment statistics for your 2L (rising 3L) class are available. Could you share those with us? Thank you.

Slight derailment, but when I read this the first thing that came to mind was the, "Just Show me the Carfax" commercials.

[MissLucky]

Hi Rob!

Thank you so much for taking questions. On the e-mail update to us WLers, it states:
"Additional materials: You may submit two additional documents—a continuing statement of interest AND one letter of recommendation. Both should be submitted electronically at admission@law.emory.edu. Do not send any other information."

I already sent an initial LOCI a week after I was put on the WL. Am I really not allowed to send another one in??? If I am not allowed to, what else would you advise me to do to strengthen my file and try to get in off the WL?

Many thanks!!!

[odiero]

tag

[Emory_Rob]

Question:

Where can we find pictures of the facilities? The Emory website doesn't have any type of virtual tour or snapshots of the campus.

Answer:

You know, you’re right. Which is a shame, because it’s a really nice facility (the library in particular is gorgeous) and the Emory campus is picturesque. Furthermore, the area around the law school – Druid Hills - is very nice as well. (Several films have used the area for exterior footage – the football scenes from Remember the Titans were filmed at Druid Hills High just around the corner, and Driving Miss Daisy was shot in the neighborhood directly adjacent to campus.)

As soon as I started looking into this issue, I learned that the law school is working on shooting pictures and videos of the facilities as well as university buildings that law students frequent for the website. Stay tuned. The tour should be available in the next few weeks.

Question:

Now that the deposit deadline has passed, do you have any idea how many ppl you will be accepting off the WL?
Not sure if you are still taking q's Emory Rob, but have offers been made off the waitlist?

Answer:

We really won’t have a good idea about that until after our second deposit deadline, which is June 1. We hope to be able to admit some people off the wait list, but it is dependent on how many people pay their second deposits.

Question:

Now that the academic year is essentially over, surely summer 2010 employment statistics for your 2L (rising 3L) class are available. Could you share those with us? Thank you.

Answer:

Actually, those aren’t compiled until fall. Career Services will be asking everyone where he or she *did* work, not where everyone planned to work. The actual job is what matters, not his or her plans for the summer. After all, there are a number of reasons why someone might have a change of plans even at this late date.

Question:

Are the majority of students in the incoming class straight from undergrad?

Answer:

Again, it’s hard to say at this point exactly what the incoming class will look like. For what it’s worth, right now 38 percent of the people who paid deposits are coming straight from undergrad. I’m not sure exactly how that compares to previous years, and of course that number could look very different by the time Orientation starts in August.

Question:

I already sent an initial LOCI a week after I was put on the WL. Am I really not allowed to send another one in??? If I am not allowed to, what else would you advise me to do to strengthen my file and try to get in off the WL?

Answer:

We know that the wait list is full of uncertainty. Right now, please be patient. At this point, we know (or should know) everything about you that is going to make a difference. We have a personal statement, several recommendations, an additional letter – with all those opportunities, I should hope you haven’t left out something that is important enough that it’s going to make a difference.

One piece of advice that I would give you is to FOLLOW DIRECTIONS. Don’t send us stuff we don’t ask for. Don’t send us more than one thing if we ask for one thing. If we ask for you to submit something via email, don’t send it to us in hard copy (then someone has to take the time to scan it and attach it manually to your file). In short, don’t be a high-maintenance applicant. It’s not that we don’t appreciate your enthusiasm and eagerness (which you hopefully expressed in your personal statement and LOCI), but making yourself a nuisance isn’t going to help. Use good judgment so that we can feel like you’re going to be a law student and a future Emory Law alumnus who will use good judgment and be a valuable addition to our community.

[NonTradHealthLaw]

Thanks for answering the previous questions, EmoryRob. I have a few more when you look at this thread again.

1. Is the school able to provide application fee waivers to alumni who have been in the work force for some time? If so, how does one make the request?

2. Does the committee accept applications with a notation of LSAT retake pending (October) or should one wait until the scores are released?

Thanks in advance!

[saraK]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for making this thread and I'm hoping you're still checking it for questions I'm planning to apply for the fall 2011 class and I'm at a 165 on my LSAT right now. I'm have a serious debate about whether to retake or not and I'm wondering if I end up going one point to a 166 if that is going to have a serious impact on my application? Do you know what the median is for the fall 2010 class? Thanks again!

[cigrainger]

Hi Rob, thank you for answering questions!

I have a bit of a unique situation and I'd love to hear your take on it as an Admissions staffer.

I am from the US, lived in the US my whole life, and will be coming back to the US for law school and to pursue a career, but I did my undergraduate degree abroad. I'm happy to say I did very well on that degree (in the UK -- First Class Honours), but the grades don't convert to a GPA. That's no problem, of course, because LSAC provides a transcript report, admissions officers are familiar with it, etc. What is a problem is that I took a few dual enrollment courses in high school that LSAC is counting as my GPA. Not just towards a GPA that consists of my degree grades, but as my entire GPA -- a few classes from high school. And it's very very low.

Looking at an application like that, if there was an addendum explaining this, would the fact that my LSAC GPA is so low offset being otherwise qualified? I'm not asking whether you would admit a student like me or not, but rather how you would see this situation -- would the LSAC GPA be given weight here even though it consists entirely of a handful of high school dual enrollment grades?

Thanks for your time!

[Grizz]

Rob hasn't answered questions in months.

[TheBigMediocre]

Rob hasn't answered questions in months.

But you can summon him if you say his name in a mirror three times.

[cigrainger]

Rob hasn't answered questions in months.

But you can summon him if you say his name in a mirror three times.

While spinning around?

[Emory_Rob]

Ok folks - it's been a while, but if you've got more questions, I've got more answers.

[CanadianWolf]

Would you comment on Emory's view of several years of work experience for applicants at or slightly below your medians ? Thanks !

[jwaters]

Why do you send out so few fee waivers?

[rli66]

What type of "numbers" (I know they aren't everything), do you think are competitive for serious money (I mean more than half to near full tuition)?

Thanks

[ihp12]

Thanks for being available to answer questions.

I did not check that I wanted to be considered for the Woodruff fellowship on my application, as the corresponding website was not available at the time. However, I do wish to be considered, and have had a recommender submit a letter on my behalf online. Do I need to do anything else to be considered for the fellowship?

[JLR]

Does an endorsement or recommendation from a faculty member at Emory Law who heads up a significant clinic factor into an applicant's chance of admission?

[neeko]

Tag

[Emory_Rob]

Would you comment on Emory's view of several years of work experience for applicants at or slightly below your medians ? Thanks !

Since we really do put a lot of effort into evaluating a candidate’s entire application, it’s only natural that people with a few more years under their belts are attractive candidates for us. Our first priority, of course, is to make sure everyone we accept is a student who will have the chance to be successful both here at the Law School and as an Emory Law alumnus. But after that, we really do strive to build a class with interesting, diverse people. After all, we’re going be seeing them around the halls for the next three years, so we want them to be people that are going to enrich everyone’s experience.

Why do you send out so few fee waivers?

How many do you need? I would think more than one would not be of much use to you. (Just kidding.)

I don’t know that we give out fewer fee waivers than other schools. (I really don’t know; we track a lot of things but that’s not one of them.) Our main purpose in giving out fee waivers is to encourage people to apply that might not have considered Emory before. Based on what we know about candidates, we target people who we think could be good candidates for all sorts of reasons. We never use fee waivers just to increase our applicant numbers or something like that. So, it’s not that we withhold fee waivers from people, it’s that we give them out to people who we think (a) may not be considering us and (b) probably should consider us for one reason or another.

I did not check that I wanted to be considered for the Woodruff fellowship on my application, as the corresponding website was not available at the time. However, I do wish to be considered, and have had a recommender submit a letter on my behalf online. Do I need to do anything else to be considered for the fellowship?

We considered everyone who had a recommendation letter submitted on their behalf.

Does an endorsement or recommendation from a faculty member at Emory Law who heads up a significant clinic factor into an applicant's chance of admission?

If that person knows you really well and is familiar enough with you and your work to give you a good recommendation. And by “good” I don’t mean as in “yes, this student is good” versus “hey, this student is not so good.” (Unsurprisingly, virtually every recommendation letter says that the person in question would be a good candidate to come to our school.) The difference between the average recommendation and an outstanding recommendation is that the outstanding recommendation clearly knows the person very well and communicates that this person is truly top flight, even by the high standards of law school applicants. In short, *what* the recommendation says is far more important than *who* it is that says it.

On a different subject: to give you guys some updated information, we are preparing to send out our first batch of acceptances in the next week or so. This will represent about a third of the total acceptances we expect to issue. If you start hearing about other people getting acceptances and your mailbox stays stubbornly empty, that has NO SIGNIFICANCE. There will probably be people who applied after you did that hear something before you do. Files go into the review process in the order in which they were received; however, numerous people review your file, so it may not exit the review process in order. We’re going as fast as we can, but in the long run it’s more important that we get the decision right than getting it right now.

Just to repeat, roughly twice as many people who are accepted will NOT be in the first batch.

Also, I understand there have been some questions about why we are waiting longer than we have in the past to start issuing acceptances. There are a few reasons. First of all, we take much pride in reviewing each and every file thoroughly. Contrary to popular belief, we do not simply admit or reject a file solely based on an applicant’s LSAT and GPA. Reading these files takes time. Second, we know that financial aid is one of the major factors influencing decisions, and we only have a limited scholarship pool to distribute merit based aid Thus, we want to review as many files as possible to ensure that we can award scholarships to as many eligible applicants as possible before the pool of merit aid is depleted. We have a strong preference to deliver scholarship and admission decisions in one mailing as our research has shown that many of our applicants will not fully investigate Emory Law until they receive scholarship information.

Also, I saw some questions about the estimated cost of living. It will NOT cost you that much to live here, unless you really plan on living large or have some other unusual situation. As you may or may not know, lenders will allow you to borrow up to the estimated cost of attendance. Emory University calculates a range of cost of living every year. To maximize incoming students’ loan eligibility, a higher end in the range is used. We strongly recommend that once a student is admitted, he/she begin investigating cost of living for what fits into their lifestyle (size of apartment, roommates, food situation (eat-out, cook, etc.), necessity of car or comfortable with public transportation, etc.) What you will find is that for most people, Atlanta is remarkably inexpensive compared to almost anywhere else that you’d want to live.

[fish tacos]

Tag. Sorry to bump the thread for no reason.

[SrLaw]

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[ach24]

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[Omerta]

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[Emory_Rob]

I’m a bit surprised there haven’t been any more questions posted here, though I just visited the other Emory thread and see that a lot of people have been wondering about some things.

We are doing our acceptance notification a bit differently this year than last year – last year we issued them in a slow and steady stream over the course of a couple of months, which was pretty inefficient. This year we’re doing them in big batches which will allow us to improve the process in a few ways, some of which you will see and some of which you won’t. I can tell you that about 400 notifications left my part of the process about a week ago, and not quite another 200 today. I wish I had a better idea of how long it will take them to get from my desk to your mailbox, but since it’s the first time we’re doing it this way I don’t really know. Dean Rosenzweig had the first batch on his desk at the first part of this week, so I hope they’ll be arriving any time now.

Just to clear up one other thing, you will be getting your acceptance letters via snail mail, but other important communications will be sent via email.