Wisdom from Wisconsin

Wisconsin sent me some information via the postal service. I was flipping through the book and noticed that they have a nice section where they talk about how they evaluate certain factors in an application. A couple of them are particularly relevant to my situation.

To quote from the material:

Graduate Study

Although the mere experience of graduate study does not, in our judgment, significantly increase the quality of law school performance, strong recent graduate work plus a strong LSAT may overcome weaker college grades. Also, an interesting background of graduate study may be a favorable factor in itself.

Time interval between college graduation and application to law school

We have some evidence that applicants at least a year out of college, especially those with strong recent LSAT scores, will have a better academic record in law school than their numerical credentials suggest. The post-college experience, whether in work or volunteer activity, may be a favorable factor as well.

I find the phrasing of the graduate school comments very interesting. They stress that simply going to graduate school doesn't seem to result in superior performance in law school, but that experience can mitigate a low undergrad GPA. This comment is consistent with what I have heard from two admissions reps. The time interval also raises a couple of interesting points. It supports my previous comments about how the LSAT determines whether you'll be looked at seriously and this other stuff is just the material that they use to differentiate one 168 from another 168.

This comment is also consistent with something my brother told me. He's an older law student and he claims that his law school friends, other older students, are doing better in their studies than the younger crowd. That makes sense to me. For one, if you're going to law school after working for a couple of years, you really want to be there. Working a regular job also makes it easier to treat school like a job (at least that was my experience in grad school). I'm glad to see that at least one school recognizes that a couple years of real life will make a difference in how somebody does in law school.

The Wisconsin view book discuss some other factors, quality of undergraduate institution, college grading and course selection patterns are just a couple of topics that are discussed. They provide some interesting insight into the thinking of at least one law school on these soft factors. If nothing else, it's solid information about factors that mean far more to the nontraditional applicant than those fresh from their undergraduate studies.