Bad Glacier

For the past few days, I’ve been reading through old posts by some of my favorite law student blawgs. It’s interesting to read their thoughts on starting law school and to see the differences in style and content over the year(s). Today, I ran across this post by Heidi at Letters of Marque talking about Michigan’s high yield in Fall ‘03 and the reasons they were able to attract so many students. Heidi says:

The secret to Michigan’s success is simple. They sent decisions before everyone else. This allowed a community to form and nucleate. People felt like they were part of the “Michigan” community before they had time to project being part of any other community. The community grew. And it’s a lot harder to leave a community than it is to pick a law school. For that matter, it’s a lot easier to join a community than it is to pick a law school. Michigan’s high yield was a result of community building.

So let’s put the blame (or the credit) squarely where it belongs–on the efficiency and friendliness of the Michigan Admissions Office.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Michigan sent my first acceptance, and like I said earlier, their frequent mailings keep refreshing the idea of UM Law in my head. Similarly, the personalized admission letter and the admitted students web page made me feel special. Sure, lots of people got complimented on their personal statement*, but I highly doubt Ms. Zearfoss would straight-up lie on something like this, especially when there’s something as easy as my odd (for law school) major to write about. I hadn’t been very happy with my personal statement, so the compliment was nice to hear (along with the acceptance, of course. The compliment wouldn’t be worth much without that.).

So Michigan goes with the “send early, send often, stay visible, make students feel good and think of themselves as X Law School students” strategy. I have to say that it’s working pretty well. I would have no problem going to UM Law.

I doubt Harvard has any problems attracting students (except the ones that get into Yale, maybe), but it looks like they’re adopting a piece of this strategy too. Apparently they’re making people sign up for Harvard Law e-mail addresses to apply for financial aid. I can’t imagine a financial aid process that would require a HLS e-mail address, but it’s a good way to get people to think of themselves as Hahhhvaaahhd students. And it’s a lot cheaper than a tee shirt (which I hear Stanford sends out).

Another option is the “tall, dark, mysterious stranger” strategy. Send out little information, make decisions late. Make admitted students feel lucky instead of special. No school completely fits here, but this pretty much fits with the stereotype of Yale. They have their own way of doing things—a special, 250-word essay (but you can still send in your personal statement, if you wish, as an “extra” essay) and their “professors-rate-applications” system of admitting students which (supposedly) leads to late decisions—and if that doesn’t match up with other schools’ schedules, tough. For me, Virginia has put themselves in this category by not sending me a view book or application information even after I visited in the early fall. Columbia, with the death of their Dean of Admissions (link), they’re probably here now whether they like it or not.

I suppose there’s also the “dollar bill, y’all” option, but I haven’t yet dealt with the financial aid stuff, so I don’t really have anything to say here, except that Yale’s “No merit aid, ever! None! EVER!” shtick appears to remove them from this category.

*Really though, how many things can you be complimented on? “We really enjoyed your LSAT score and GPA!” “Your name is just the right length! We love ‘Brickner’s!” The things that distinguish you are your essays, your major, and you extracurriculars/work experience. So it’s not surprising that people were complimented on these things.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2005 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Applying to Law School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.