Minnesota Decision

It is possible to get accepted at Minnesota with a personal statement that is less than two pages (granted, it's short by a few lines) that does not address a specific reason for applying to Minnesota. I got the call that I had been accepted a few days before Christmas. My package arrived in the mail today with a scholarship offer of $18,000 a year. I thought that Minnesota was the most likely after UVA to reject my application. Now I've been accepted and offered a pretty nice scholarship. There is an applicant on LSN that has numbers very similar to mine (and a few schools that overlap, It will be interesting to see how his cycle compares to mine as he is still in undergrad). He was given a scholarship for $12,000 a year. I guess my career experience and PhD bought me an extra $6,000.

Only IU-Bloomington and Washington University are pending. Once rejections start going out I'll be able to see how much of a boost my PhD gave me in my cycle.

Invitation

With acceptance calls/emails/mailings going out at a good clip, a number of applicants know where they might be going to school next year. I've detailed my cycle in this blog, but I am just one applicant. If any of you would like to share your results, please feel free to add them to the comments. Thanks.

GMU Decision

Following on the heels of my promotion and UVA waiting list (that's what they call it), I got a phone call from GMU while I was driving back to work after getting lunch this afternoon. I have been accepted. GMU is a very good match for me. The PhD patent lawyer that I talked to raved about GMU's IP program. I'm in-state so tuition will be reasonable, and I get the feeling that there are a good number of non-traditional students (I'll have to look into that assertion to be sure). Of the four VA schools that I have applied to, I definitely know the least about Mason. To be fair, I live in Richmond, went to W&M as an undergrad, and thought hard about how to optimize my application for UVA. My familiarity with GMU will definitely increase in the next few months though. I have been waiting on this acceptance to start getting a better idea of the job market for patent attorneys. I am hoping that I can take advantage of my new accepted student status to get some access to recent grads or current students to get a better feel for the market.

UVA Waitlist

I got an email from UVA today telling me that they cannot offer me a spot in the class of 2013 at this time. They have put me on the waiting list. I consider that a small victory. Based on my numbers, I should have been an auto-reject (other applicant with similar numbers have been rejected outright, see the LSN graph here). Some combination of the factors that I discussed previously at least got me a serious look.

I don't know how hard I will push it, but I think I could do a few things to get myself in position for an offer from the waitlist. I could let them know about my promotion. I could take the LSAT again, but that will not happen. I have no desire to start preparing for the LSAT again, but a couple more points on the test in February might merit an admission offer. I would rather spend my time pursuing something with a little more upside. I have been planning on taking the patent bar. Passing the patent bar would show that I am serious about law and demonstrate that I have some aptitude for legal studies. It would be one more thing to separate me from the mass of people on the waitlist while giving me a few more opportunities for summer positions during law school. I'm going to enjoy the holidays, pick a study plan, and get going on patent bar prep in the New Year. I will likely visit the school. I know a 2L in the law school. Maybe he has some helpful insider information.

Promotion

I have achieved one of my personal career goals by getting a promotion to Sr. R&D Scientist. This is the first time in my career that I have been promoted. I left my first job after a year and a half and left that second job for graduate school after two years. I just finished my third year in my current position. Getting this promotion was my major short term career objective. My long term career objectives have evolved with law school in mind. Now I'm wondering if I should use my short term achievement to further my long term goals. Do I tell schools where I am still pending about my promotion?

I knew that I had been put in for a promotion while I was finishing up my applications, and I thought about how it would be nice to mention a promotion in my resume. Schools are looking at my file. I recently went complete at Indiana, and my Minnesota status checker recently showed my In Review date switching to December 11. Every school tells you to let them know if anything in your file changes. I always thought that this was mostly about addresses and things like that, but maybe this kind of information counts. My instincts tell me to just let things be, but a part of me thinks that it might help me at a UVA. Maybe I'll start a thread at TLS. I haven't done that yet.

Uncertain

Having concluded my three part attempt to convince myself that my PhD will be more than three letters on my resume in my post-research life, I was hoping to have something new to write about on the admissions front this evening. People who occupy my region of the LSN graphs have been getting accepted at Minnesota and WashU at a pretty good clip in the last few days. I make a conscious effort to avoid reading anything into the order of admissions decisions, but knowing that I could hear something soon makes my heart speed up just a little bit every time I check my email (which if frequent) or get a call on my cell phone (which is rare). All of this uncertainty is trying my nerves.

I'm still not certain making the move to law school is the 100% right move for me. You would think that I am fully on board with the idea of leaving my job and attending law school, I have gone to the trouble of taking the LSAT and writing a personal statement (the difficulties of which I have chronicled in this blog) after all, but I am still conflicted on the wisdom of this decision. I know I can succeed in law school and as a lawyer, but it is the best move for me right now?

I've discussed my motivation for law school, but my thinking has continued to evolve in the months since I wrote that post. Now that I have been accepted by the two schools that I wanted the most, Richmond and W&M, I have been working through the reality of attending law school. My last few posts hint at my fears. The job market for lawyers is really in the toilet. There seems to be a consensus that IP lawyers are more marketable than the average lawyer, but that is not enough to allay all of my fears. Good grades will help me get a job, but there is no guarantee that I will be at the top of my class. While I think I would be a very good law student (and lawyer, of course), who knows what will happen once I'm actually in school.

The next few weeks should be telling. Acceptances, stuff at work, things should be coming to a crescendo quickly.

Law School Exam Answers

The WSJ Law Blog asked a few law professors to complete the statement, "A good law exam answer is..." The result of their survey can be found here.

While the post is interesting by itself, reading about what a law professor looks for while grading an exam has reinforced my feeling that PhD training is an asset in law school. Working through a legal problem sounds like it requires many of the same skills needed to determine which interpretation of some data is the most correct or whether or not the conclusions made in a particular paper are valid. Challenging research problems require you to look at things from every angle in the same manner Tim Wu suggests that different perspectives of a problem impact the legal analysis. There is also no single correct answer in research. We won't have to worry about that undergrad mindset that Paul Secunda mentions either.

Intellectual Curiosity and (Law School) Success

A little while back, Seth Godwin put up this post

"Thirsty

I've noticed that people who read a lot of blogs and a lot of books also tend to be intellectually curious, thirsty for knowledge, quicker to adopt new ideas and more likely to do important work.

I wonder which comes first, the curiosity or the success?"

An article about innovative CEO's in this month Harvard Business Review gives some insight into Seth's question. The five discovery skills mentioned in the free portion of the article clearly suggest that innovative executives are intellectually curious. The article also suggests that their success is a consequence of this curiosity. It's not in the free portion provided in the link, but the article goes on to discuss how learning about a variety of topics allows a person to make unexpected connections between disparate areas of knowledge. A breadth of experience may provide an insight that would not be made by somebody with a more limited perspective.

Those of use with a PhD are bringing a very different perspective to a law school classroom (and a law firm office). I think this perspective will give those of us with a little more school (and life experiences) an edge as law students and lawyers. We've already demonstrated a desire to become experts in an arcane area of study. That knowledge and experience will be a source of unique insights for me both in law school and as a practicing attorney.