Second, if a school offers some unique advantage to you - if, for example, it has a unique specialized program or is in an ideal location - then to you the cost of applying is well offset by the reward if you are admitted.
In either case, you will need to do your damnedest on the subjective parts of the applications, and you will also need to pray for a break. If the school has a bad year and gets fewer qualified applicants, and consequently has to become less selective, or if you turn out to be the only applicant from, say, rural Nebraska, you could get lucky.
But you must never, never put all your eggs in any basket marked "long shot." It's one thing to pray for a break, but it's something else entirely to plan your life around the expectation of getting one.
There's a third time when you should apply to a wish school-or, better, several wish schools-and that's when you have no alternative. If you're like the person in the third example, the student with a 3.0 average and an LSAT score at the 40th percentile, you won't have any insurance schools. You won't find any schools at which the odds are in your favor. If you want to go to law school, you'll have to try to bring home a long shot.
Before you give up entirely, though, there's one more thing you should know about grids. Sometimes they make schools look more selective than they actually are. We know that this happens but we're not sure how often.
Remember, the information on the grids is supplied to the Official Guide by the law schools themselves. Because a law school's main asset is its reputation, and it will attract better students by seeming to already have better students, law schools have an incentive to make their student bodies look more elite than they actually are. They can't actually lie about student qualifications. But they can present the data in ways that favor them the most.
Calculating Your Odds without Grids
The grids are extremely valuable. Still, many law schools don't publish them. How do you calculate your odds of admission to one of these schools?
Most schools provide at least partial information, either in the Official Guide or in their catalogs. Some, while not describing last year's applicant pool, identify ranges of scores within which you can rate your chances as good, competitive, or poor. Look for a graphic, or a statement like this:
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For less well-regarded schools that don't publish grids, your prelaw adviser may know how alumni of your college have done and may also have off-the-record information about how given schools make their decisions. If you visit the law school, you can ask the admissions representative to rate your chances as excellent, good, or poor. But if you are discouraged from applying, you should conclude that your chances are poor.
If your GPA and test scores diverge, you'll find it helpful to know whether the law schools you are considering emphasize grades more heavily than the LSAT, or vice versa. You can deduce this information from the admission formula that a law school uses. Law Services will send you a list of formulas when it sends you your LSDAS report.
Whatever bits and pieces of information you can collect for such a school, you're unlikely to be able to calculate your odds of admission as precisely as you can for a school that publishes a grid. It's best to allow a margin of error. Don't use such a school as insurance. Lengthen your application list instead.
Average Applicants
If you're an average applicant, your numbers are good enough for you to get accepted somewhere, but not really competitive for a school in Group I or Group II. So it's important to choose enough of the right schools to maximize your chances of getting in somewhere, and to optimize your chances of winding up at the highest possible level of reputation al quality.
You should pick two insurance schools, two or three schools at which you are competitive, and, if you have some good reason for wanting to attend, one or more wish schools. Your list will contain at least four schools, and optimally five to seven. The schools will be distributed across at least three levels of selectivity.
If you're a nervous type, you can apply to more insurance schools. But since these schools are all, by definition, schools at which your odds of acceptance are good, you're simply increasing the likelihood that you'll get accepted to more than one school within the same quality range.
You can also apply to more schools at which you are competitive. Consider doing so if you
- had trouble calculating the odds of admission at some of your schools
- don't have an edge at any of them;
- can't decide which of them is your first choice; or
- aren't applying to any wish schools.
Top schools pick and choose from among top candidates and rely heavily both on subjective factors you can control-like the quality of your essays-and factors you can't control-like your demographic profile and the location of your home of record. Therefore, even for candidates with top numbers, acceptance is always chancy.
The best recommendation is that if you have the numbers for a top school, you should apply to several top schools-five or more, if you have the time to fill out the forms. You must still apply to two insurance schools; for you, these will probably be very good schools carefully chosen from the Group III schools on your preferred list. Your application list will have at least seven schools on it. All of Group I plus some of Group II plus two insurance schools adds up to perhaps 15 law schools.
Marginal Applicants
If you are a marginal applicant with numbers distinctly below average, you may be able to go to law school if you persevere, but you may not be able to attend a school on your preferred list. You won't have any insurance schools; at best, you are poorly competitive.
To maximize the possibility that you will find an admissions committee willing to give you a chance, you should apply to many schools from among those in Groups IV and V that promise in their catalogs to look at the "complete individual" rather than relying on "mere numbers." Investigate schools in unpopular regions. Expect to apply to at least 15 schools. Applying to more won't hurt.
