Law School Rejection That Was Well Planned

It’s that time of the year again when college and grad school applicants are beginning to get anxious.  Law schools, with their rolling admissions, tend to decide the fate of the applicants several weeks earlier than others.

I am happy to report that the two friends I know were applying to law schools were admitted to very fine institutions:  Michelle is headed to Duke and Ian possibly to Washington, if not elsewhere.  A heartfelt congratulations to both!  It’s well deserved.

Since they were accepted to somewhere, I can now share my frightening story of being accepted to nowhere without horrifying them.

The story would garner sympathy, if not for my consistsent track record of low acceptance rate into educational institutions dating back to elementary school, which suggests that I don’t get accepted because I don’t apply to schools that’s accepting of applicants of my caliber.

For law school, though, I managed to outdo even myself, a consequence of complacency, indifference and self-overevaluation.

The most laughable part about my law school application process is how carefully I planned it all out.

I decided to apply to seven schools, all in the East Coast, mostly in New England. (I digress, but the reason I consistently apply to New England schools is for completely shallow reasons: I root for the home football team).   There were 4 schools in the “Reach” category, as in if the admissions officer has a hangover the day he/she reviews my application, I have a shot.  I shall not name those institutions.  There was one school in the “Low Reach” category, Columbia, that I had a reasonable expectations of being accepted.  Then there was Boston College Law School, the school comfortably “In My Range.”  Rutgers University School of Law – Newark was my “Safety School,” where I could get in even if I had a hangover the day I applied.

The only part of the plan that went as expected was that I was rejected from the “Reach” schools.

The important lesson you should learn from my mistakes–I obviously never did since my track record continued when I applied for a transfer a year later–is that planning is meaningless without commitment.  Knowing that the LSAT was crucial to law school admissions, I proceeded to ignore the test, refuse to sacrifice my routine to study for it, and did as mediocrely as one would expect of a person who did not prepare.  Then I applied to six of the seven schools, Rutgers excepted, because in my mind, the choice was between Columbia and Boston College.

What followed was a series of unfortunate, although hardly unforeseeable, events.  I received my first notice from Boston College Law School, who kindly enclosed a post card so I can choose to be placed on their waiting list.  The only silver lining was that I was offered a spot on their “priority” wait list.  I was screwed because if I couldn’t get into BC Law–wait list didn’t count–I wasn’t getting into anywhere I had applied.

And I didn’t.

The de facto rejection from Boston College was followed by notices from the four schools and Columbia, who also placed me on the waiting list.  It’s nice to know that I got the ranges of the schools correct.  It would have been even better if I had known my own range.

After the BC Law debacle, I scrambled to submit my application to Rutgers, where I eventually ended up (and in fairness to the school, it deserved a better treatment than I gave it; the institution provides a fine education).

Even that didn’t go without a snag, though.

You know how I said Rutgers would accept me even if I were hungover on the day I submitted my application?

It turns out that that was incorrect: I forgot to attach my personal statement to the application.