Law School Fairs - Useful? Forum

[achewood]

My local college is hosting a law school fair tomorrow with about 20 schools, only about three schools (UC Irvine, UC Hastings, UC Davis) that I'm interested in.

Are these fairs useful at all towards possible admission? I have all the information I need via LSN, TLS and I'm pretty sure the attending admissions committees will meet plenty of people without any lasting memory. Other than possibly asking for a fee waiver, is there any reason to attend?

[SarahKerrigan]

They are only there to give you info about their school. Pretty much all of the info you will learn could be found online. You will notice a lot of the TTTT schools will be there talking like used car salesmen. When i went to one, i found it kind of annoying because there were a lot of freshmen/people who didn't much about the law school process and kind of made the lines long. they would ask questions like "so i need to take the lsat errr uhh?" and some people were asking the admissions people how to study for the lsat, which i found kind of weird.

[CanadianWolf]

Ask for application fee waivers.

[Seneca]

Ask for application fee waivers.

You can probably solicit fee waivers via email. If not, go - unless a couple hundred bucks isn't worth it to you.

[Kess]

Ask for application fee waivers.

You can probably solicit fee waivers via email. If not, go - unless a couple hundred bucks isn't worth it to you.

Is there any benefit on doing it in person rather than by email?

Also, my college is doing an event with just reps from T1/T2 NYC schools. Since it's such a small event, do you think that will factor in at all into your admissions decisions?

[Seneca]

In my experience you can solicit fee waivers via email as effectively as you can at law fairs. If it's at your school, though, and it's convenient to go, why not? Ditto the NYC schools event. More than likely, it will not impact your admissions cycle, but it's on campus, and will probably only help you (if anything). Some apps have a field that asks who you spoke to - admissions rep, student, alum, etc - while looking into that particular school, and it can't hurt to have something concrete to say, at the very least.

[Rawlberto]

I went, learned nothing I didn't know and go no fee waivers. Came home, wrote out generic e-mail solicitation and have only paid for two applications this cycle. So from personal experience, worthless.

[mattviphky]

not as useful as visiting the school itself

[un-vordox]

I went to the one at ASU this year. I'm 5 years removed from college and drove to the school to see what the event was like. I talked to one of the admissions staff of a school that is my top choice, and she told me to email her a letter of intent to attend, and that she would put it with my app. I'm not saying this means a law school fair is an important event, but I think it helped in this situation. My numbers are borderline and it at least made me feel more comfortable after they did not hesitate upon hearing my stats.

[Strange]

There's one in my area this weekend and a couple of my schools are attending. Can't hurt to try to get waivers

[murray18]

Quick question, somewhat related to this question. There's a law school fair at my undergrad this week, and frankly I don't need any info or anything... mostly just waiting at this point, but a few fee waivers would be nice. Is this an event where you would need to dress professionally or anything (I've been to a few career fairs, and theres more 2 day old suits there than I'd care to talk about), or would it be appropriate to go in the same clothes I would wear to class? Definitely not going to wear a suit for 10 hours just so I can brown nose for some fee waivers haha.

[Strange]

Quick question, somewhat related to this question. There's a law school fair at my undergrad this week, and frankly I don't need any info or anything... mostly just waiting at this point, but a few fee waivers would be nice. Is this an event where you would need to dress professionally or anything (I've been to a few career fairs, and theres more 2 day old suits there than I'd care to talk about), or would it be appropriate to go in the same clothes I would wear to class? Definitely not going to wear a suit for 10 hours just so I can brown nose for some fee waivers haha.

Business casual is probably fine. People who dress up to these things are probably new to the process and are overthinking it.

[hobojarpen]

For me it was useless, but only because I already submitted my applications and had nothing to do other than pick up free pens and viewbooks on my way to lunch. It was also interesting to see the differing personalities of all the reps. For example, the Cornell and Berkeley reps were extremely awkward and slightly rude, which really took me by surprise. On the other end, the Vanderbilt rep couldn't have been nicer. Not that these impressions will lead me to one school over another, but just an interesting observation I had. There was one embarrassing moment when I approached Penn STATE thinking it was UPenn. By the time I realized it, I was a minute deep into conversation with the Penn State rep, and so I had to give her a fake name/email address before getting outta there.

[hookem7]

In my experience, it was largely worthless and can echo the sentiments of annoying freshmen making it hard to actually talk to people. However, the one rep that I really like was the guy from Bama. I have a lot of family there and we got to talk a while since that's not a popular destination for the average UT student. He told me to make sure and include in my application my ties to the state since they weigh that heavily, esp. in regards to scholarships because they want to give them to students who are genuinely interested so that was helpful. The Vandy guy was really chill and we had a solid 10 minute discussion of Texas vs. Tennessee style BBQ. Most of the T14 reps seemed annoyed by the clueless people and I couldn't really blame them having overheard some of the conversations.

All in all, I got a few viewbooks/fee waivers that I could have gotten simply through emailing the admissions office, so I wouldn't stress missing your school's fair if you have class/work, but it wasn't a complete waste of time.

[1212]

I agree with hookem7 (which is hard for me to admit considering i am an Aggie). They aren't a complete waste of time. In fact, I posted this in the Stanford thread earlier, but when the Dean called me to tell me I was accepted she said she remembered talking to me from the DC LSAC forum in June. This means that she was able to put a face with my application when she read it and I would say that may have had a positive effect on my admissions decision (I am not an auto-admit by any means). Also, I was able to get a few fee waivers which was very helpful

Probably most useful for those about to start their app cycle.