Thursday, October 29, 2009

UVA complete, Alabama Decision

My application cycle concluded today when I emailed my in-state forms to UVa. I got an email back about an hour later telling me that I was approved for in-state tuition. (The staff at UVa is really on the ball. After submitting my application last night, I got an email early this morning letting me know my application had been received. The email also had a link to another status checker.) Barring any surprise fee waivers from a top 20 school (I received number 30 today, from Pitt), I am finished with my law school applications.

In a strange symmetry, I got a call from Page at the University of Alabama. She was calling to welcome me to Alabama law. My admission letter and Admitted Student Packet should be arriving in a couple of weeks.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Waiting Games

I requested fee waivers from Vanderbilt and Emory. These, with UVA, will be my major reach schools. I will have to wait and see what they have to say about my polite request for a fee waiver.

Waiting to hear about a fee waiver will be nothing compared to waiting to hear about admissions decisions. I was mentally prepared to not hear anything until mid-November, until I came across this thread on Alabama admissions at TLS. Knowing that I might hear something soon has shaken my mental preparations. Having two status checkers (GMU and Minnesota) have also made me a little more obsessive about my status. I let myself check those once a day. My residence status has gone from out-of-state to in-state at GMU. Other than that, neither one of them has changed. I can be patient, but it would be nice to have one decision. Just to get the ball rolling.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Law Schools want to see direction?

I have applied to most of the schools on my list (see my LSN profile for the details), but I have not pulled the trigger on UVA and Vanderbilt. There are two reasons for this. One, my aforementioned reluctance to pay the Vandy application fee. I have sent them an email seeing if they will give me a fee waiver. I have also been thinking over my decision to forego mentioning why I am applying to law school in my personal statement. I think I need to say something about it in my application, and an interview with Ann Levine (author of my law school admissions guidebook) has reinforced that thinking.

She was interviewed by some students at Fordham, and she mentioned that law schools are looking for direction in applicants. While I am clearly not the unemployed undergrad with nothing better to do with 3 years and $150,000 that she was talking about, I still think I need to tell law schools why I'm leaving my well paying job with good prospects to pursue a JD. I have added a paragraph to my main PS that gets at my key motivations for law school. If I reread it an don't like it, I'll just submit my original, but if I think it helps my case, I'll go forward with it in my application.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

A Personal Decision

I have decided to ditch a personal statement that describes my motivation for going to law school. I have been working on it for months, and I have not been happy with anything that I have written. Every draft has a major flaw that I just can't find a way to fix. Looking at what I have going on at work and with the family in the next few weeks, I don't have time to rework my latest statement into something that I would feel comfortable submitting with my applications. I would rather have my applications in early than delay submission until the middle of November.

My wife read the statement that I submitted to Richmond, George Mason, and Alabama. She thought it was good. That's high praise from her. I would rather use a statement that is good than something that is merely adequate. Science Ph.D.s go for patent law enough that admission committees will likely assume that's why I'm applying. I'm fine with that. Michelle over at ask.com read my statement, and she thought I should address my law school motivations to make the statement really solid. I thought I needed to address my motivations as well. That is why I've been working so hard to get a statement that conveyed my reasons for pursuing law school. Unfortunately, those statements were usually more about the pharmaceutical industry than me.

The point of this blog is to see how soft factors like the personal statement impact law school admissions decisions. We'll see how I do with a statement that does not directly discuss my motivations for law school.

Friday, October 16, 2009

W&L Personal Statement Advice

Washington and Lee has a nice blog entry on writing a personal statement. It's nice to hear what the people reading the applications are looking for in the personal statement. It makes me feel good about my one decent statement (I'll post it after all of my decisions are in). Good luck to everybody with their personal statements. They're tough to write.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Diversity Statement?

I originally intended to write a diversity statement. I'm 33, married, two kids, advanced degree in a technical subject, career experience with some meaningful responsibility, publications in high impact journals. I am definitely not the traditional law school applicant. When it came time to write the statement, I realized that most of what makes me unique is easy to see in other parts of my application. Why make the admissions committee read another essay that is basically a restatement of my resume? The only thing that was not addressed in elsewhere in my file was my family information. I think that's relevant to law school admissions. I just added a personal section to my resume and mentioned that I'm married and have 2 kids (I would never include it in my professional resume). The phrasing of requests for diversity statements gives me the impression that they want things that cannot be directly addressed in the application form. All of my diversity is right there for them to see.

I'm on the fence about a paragraph or two expressing my interest in UVa and Vanderbilt (my reach schools). There is not a request for insight into why I am applying to UVa or Vandy, but the conventional wisdom seems to be to include one anyway, assuming you can say something that will add to the application. I would not send something that was general and vague just to say that I had sent the essay. I would want there to be a solid connection between something the school offers and some element of my legal interests or something related to my background. Wash U has a center focused on using empirical techniques to study legal questions. That connects directly to my research experience. I added a statement to that affect where they ask for why I am interested in Wash U in the application. I might write a Why UVa essay, but there is a good chance that I will not. When I'm not sure about my application strategy, I refer to my Law School Admissions reference. The tone of her optional essay chapter sounds like you should give the school what they want and leave it at that. I might look at it again to help me make my decision.

So diversity statement, definitely no. Maybe (but probably not) on the Why X essays.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Personal Statement Tip

I just finished up what I think is a very solid first draft for my latest personal statement. I started it on Friday afternoon. I had a good chunk of it written in 4 hours of fairly consistent effort. I spent 45 minutes or so on it last night, and just wrapped it up while watching football on TV and the computer. This is much different than the hours of effort I needed to put in to generate my previous PS drafts. My tip is this, if you need to work and rework a statement to make it work, just drop it and start over. I finally found a hook that allowed me to express three themes that I have been trying to work into my previous statements. Hunt for an approach to your topic until you find one that lends itself to the themes you want to develop. This statement basically wrote itself. I feel like I can write again.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Application 1 has been submitted

My first application has been submitted. I bit on Alabama's offer of $20 for iTunes if I submitted an application. I got the email on Thursday and had my application in that night. The fine print on the email said that supplies were limited so I wanted to be sure to get my materials in ASAP. I haven't heard anything back from them, but it looks like everything has made its way through LSAC. Hopefully I'll hear something in the next day or two. Alabama is an attractive option. The tuition is reasonable and they place well in the southeast (I kind of which I had mentioned that somewhere in my application).

lawschoolpredictor.com has me as a consider with 55% of previous classes have my numbers or below at Alabama. The algorithm that determines the prediction has been tweaked to handle some more special cases. See the site for more details. I noticed that my first Admit prediction has moved up to UC Davis from Florida. Other than that, I didn't notice any changes in my prediction profile.

Conversation with a PhD Patent Attorney

I had a very interesting conversation with a practicing patent attorney who has a chemistry PhD. I had a few questions for him. My first was which law schools are good for patent law. I know what US News says about this, but I was curious what an insider (who has been involved in recruiting) has to say about it. He was very high on GMU (which I found surprising) and GW (which isn't too surprising). He rated GW as the best school for patent law. I thought that was an interesting wrinkle. Everybody is so high on Cal for patents. This guy is on the east coast. It's easy to forget how regional law is when looking at national rankings. If you're on the east coast and are interesting in patent law, why go all the way to Cal (if you can get in) when you can stay close to the Atlantic and go to GW or GMU?

I also asked him about the market for patent attorneys. It is no secret that law students are having a hard time finding jobs (read more about the legal job market here), but can that generalization be extended to those who have suffered through a graduate program? The way he put, if 3 or 4 of 10 people in a class have a position at graduation, it will be more like 8 or 9 of 10 people with a technical background will have an offer. That technical background is important. My take away is that there is definitely an advantage to have a PhD when it comes to finding a job. This guy was able to get a summer associate position as a 1L with a big firm in DC because he had a technical degree. Granted this was when the economy was better, but I think it illustrates that having something rare, like a technical PhD, does make it easier to separate yourself from the crowd and find a job.

From my very limited experience with studying law (mostly from conversations with my brother about his classes), it sounds like there are parallels between preparing a research paper and legal writing. In science you use other papers to build your case for a particular interpretation of some data. The law also uses citations, but previously decided cases are used as the research material. I asked if my impression of this relationship was valid. There are overlaps in this type of skill. The real advantage to the graduate degree is training in analytical thinking. Firms like that you have that background in thinking hard about a problem and finding a solution.

It was a very enlightening conversation. It was very refreshing to get an inside view of the industry rather than relying on the Internet, especially from somebody with a similar background. I'm trying to get as much information as I can to make sure that this is the right move for my career. This conversation makes me very comfortable with the decision.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

The Song Remains the Same

I ran over to VCU to get my fee waiver from U of R during my lunch break this afternoon. While I was waiting for some people to leave the table, I talked to one of the other reps about her law school. I gave her my story, PhD, mediocre undergrad grades, and career experience. She gave me the same feedback that I've gotten from other sources. She reassured me that my grades are not bad. They look at how my grades stack up against the rest of my class (I'm average) and they also know that laboratory science GPA's are typically a little lower than those of people who majored in the humanities. She pointed out that science majors tend to spend more time in the classroom (absolutely, especially with the labs). The distance between now and then makes my grades less meaningful in their evaluation of my application. This puts much more emphasis on my LSAT score. When I told her my score was a 168, she let me know that I will have some very nice options for law school. As I was filling out an information card, she told that, based on her experience, her colleagues in admissions like applicants like and I should be ambitious with my applications.

With that, I picked up my U of R fee waiver and left. I really wanted to talk to the UNC rep, but there was a crowd at the table the entire time I was in the room. I also asked the William and Mary rep a question about their application. They ask for an employment history in the application. I asked if it would be ok to just refer to my attached resume. Yes, that is an acceptable (and preferred) way to submit my employment history. I stopped by on my way to the U of R table from my conversation with the other rep about my situation.