Top Law Schools

As the title says, how much can good/great softs help outperform your numbers?

Putting aside URM's, im curious if anyone has stories of people getting into schools they didnt think they had a shot at. If so, please list numbers, softs, and schools accepted to so we can all marvel.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 7&t=101596

But it would be nice to have a similar thread for this cycle... or we can just update the old one

Strong writing can definitely tip the balance in your favor. A friend of mine last cycle had an almost perfect cycle complete with a ton of scholarship money. LSP has him at Consider for most of the schools he got into, and yet he got in with full rides to some.

subtle wrote:Strong writing can definitely tip the balance in your favor. A friend of mine last cycle had an almost perfect cycle complete with a ton of scholarship money. LSP has him at Consider for most of the schools he got into, and yet he got in with full rides to some.

Awesome! Do you have his numbers/URM?/which school he decided on?

rtotari wrote:

subtle wrote:Strong writing can definitely tip the balance in your favor. A friend of mine last cycle had an almost perfect cycle complete with a ton of scholarship money. LSP has him at Consider for most of the schools he got into, and yet he got in with full rides to some.

Awesome! Do you have his numbers/URM?/which school he decided on?

Yes, but I´m not sure he wants to be outed. You can PM me if you´d like. Also, no, if anything he was an ORM.

Soft play very little in the process. Some (e.g. veteran, significant prior WE) play better at certain schools.

subtle wrote:Strong writing can definitely tip the balance in your favor. A friend of mine last cycle had an almost perfect cycle complete with a ton of scholarship money. LSP has him at Consider for most of the schools he got into, and yet he got in with full rides to some.

Great writing is really a requirement not a plus. If anything, I'd say his good writing just allowed him to sell himself well. The actual quality of writing isn't getting you anything...other than hurting you if it's bad.

blowhard wrote:

subtle wrote:Strong writing can definitely tip the balance in your favor. A friend of mine last cycle had an almost perfect cycle complete with a ton of scholarship money. LSP has him at Consider for most of the schools he got into, and yet he got in with full rides to some.

Great writing is really a requirement not a plus. If anything, I'd say his good writing just allowed him to sell himself well. The actual quality of writing isn't getting you anything...other than hurting you if it's bad.

I don't agree with this. It suggests that adcomms group PS and addenda into two piles "great" and "less than great." That doesn't jibe with how they've represented the process or the prevailing sentiment on TLS.

If you're suggesting that a majority of the people who enter law school are "great writers," I would urge you to take a look at the personal statement revision forum.

Gandalf205 wrote:

blowhard wrote:

subtle wrote:Strong writing can definitely tip the balance in your favor. A friend of mine last cycle had an almost perfect cycle complete with a ton of scholarship money. LSP has him at Consider for most of the schools he got into, and yet he got in with full rides to some.

Great writing is really a requirement not a plus. If anything, I'd say his good writing just allowed him to sell himself well. The actual quality of writing isn't getting you anything...other than hurting you if it's bad.

I don't agree with this. It suggests that adcomms group PS and addenda into two piles "great" and "less than great." That doesn't jibe with how they've represented the process or the prevailing sentiment on TLS.

If you're suggesting that a majority of the people who enter law school are "great writers," I would urge you to take a look at the personal statement revision forum.

Several Adcomms have said that actually bad writing goes against you (probably an auto ding). To the extend they are holistic, your writing ability presents an impression of you. And actually, that is the prevailing sentiment on TLS...it can hurt you but doesn't necessarily help you beyond being able to sell yourself.

It can happen, but keep your feet on the ground. A successful cycle of outperforming your numbers might mean that you get into one or two schools where you're LSAT is, at most, two points below median. For most applicants, their writing is probably more likely to hurt than help, but if you manage a solid personal statement and have top notch softs it would be silly to say that it won't mitigate for numbers. It usually just won't mitigate a much as people would like to think that it would (or should for that matter). Very, very few people write or internship their way into law school.

PM me if you are looking for some first hand advice. I had a cycle where I got into a couple of schools that I just had no business getting into, and my numbers were not impressive to the TLS community.

BEAST_mode wrote:It can happen, but keep your feet on the ground. A successful cycle of outperforming your numbers might mean that you get into one or two schools where you're LSAT is, at most, two points below median.

This. I outperformed...I got into one or two schools where my LSAT (high 160s) was 2 points below median (consider on LSP). I ended up with $10K at a school where I was actually 1 pt below the median (but above 75th for GPA). And I had great softs: Masters, 10 years in the military (highly decorated w/ several promotions, multiple combat deployments, hand-selected for a few special jobs advising high-level government officials overseas), strong public service background, etc.)

I have to agree that bad writing will definitely help you, but I think that what most schools look for is competent writing. Strong writing, I think, is a plus, if only for the reason already mentioned: it allows you to sell yourself better.

I think it explains my cycle. I understand that most of my T14 acceptances were due to having numbers comparable to other URMs, but I still see more than a few URMs with my numbers who were waitlisted or rejected at the same schools on LSN. I have a feeling that the difference between me and them had something to do with my writing.

blowhard wrote:Soft play very little in the process. Some (e.g. veteran, significant prior WE) play better at certain schools.

Normally this is true, but when your numbers are at the margins, who you are as a person becomes a lot more critical.

If you are, say, between a school's 50th and 75th percentiles, strong softs can bump you up against everyone else in that range. But they cannot (almost ever) bump you up against candidates who are above that school's 75th GPA/LSAT percentiles.

vulpixie wrote:If you are, say, between a school's 50th and 75th percentiles, strong softs can bump you up against everyone else in that range. But they cannot (almost ever) bump you up against candidates who are above that school's 75th GPA/LSAT percentiles.

Stop talking out your butt this makes no sense.