chances of an acceptance this late in admission cycle?

[Legallyanxious]

hi all, 

So, we are in the second round of admission offers of course and my email inbox is dry. Is it a bad sign to not be accepted yet? Or is it good I have yet to receive a rejection?

(please be kind 🙂 )

[scooter]

Rejections don't usually come until the very end of the cycle, so you can't really infer anything from the fact that you haven't been rejected yet.

There are still plenty of acceptances left to be handed out. 

That said, with an LSAT score of 149, I would temper your expectations and begin working toward next year's cycle. Don't lose out on like 4 months of LSAT studying, etc. because you are holding out hope for this cycle. I would operate on the assumption that you're going to be reapplying next year and spend your time accordingly. Unfortunately your chances for this cycle are quite low.

[Legallyanxious]

Just now, scooter said:

Rejections don't usually come until the very end of the cycle, so you can't really infer anything from the fact that you haven't been rejected yet.

There are still plenty of acceptances left to be handed out. 

That said, with an LSAT score of 149, I would temper your expectations and begin working toward next year's cycle. Don't lose out on like 4 months of LSAT studying, etc. because you are holding out hope for this cycle. I would operate on the assumption that you're going to be reapplying next year and spend your time accordingly. Unfortunately your chances for this cycle are quite low.

Thank you for the objective response! I definitely have been coming to terms with the fact that I will reapply next admissions cycle and am kind of just wanting closure at this point. I found that all my attempts at the LSAT have been a bit lazy, I thrive on the games section but need to seriously reassess logical reasoning so I am working on my faults and have boosted my score to 155. So let's hope for the best during the June test :)) 

[FellowTraveler]

I get that anxiety is a positive feedback loop, but people need to calm down. Otherwise next year we're going to have people freaking out that they haven't heard by the December holidays.

We are in February. We are not "late in the cycle".

Outside of UofT, no Canadian school that I am aware of does "rounds" of admissions, so we're not on the 2nd round of anything. A lot of offers have a deadline of April 1st, which means schools are waiting to hear back from a lot of people before they can even think to send out more acceptance letters. Until then, offers will continue to trickle in.

As choices are finalized, there's usually a spike in early April. If you haven't heard by then, you are officially permitted to feel bad. (Offers can come after this point, and it does vary by school. But if you want a "bright line" of when the end of the cycle begins, it's ~April.)

Edit: I do feel for your stress. But feeding these narratives just perpetuates those notions for future applicants who see this on a public forum.

Edited February 25 by FellowTraveler

[FellowTraveler]

2 hours ago, scooter said:

Rejections don't usually come until the very end of the cycle, so you can't really infer anything from the fact that you haven't been rejected yet.

There are still plenty of acceptances left to be handed out. 

That said, with an LSAT score of 149, I would temper your expectations and begin working toward next year's cycle. Don't lose out on like 4 months of LSAT studying, etc. because you are holding out hope for this cycle. I would operate on the assumption that you're going to be reapplying next year and spend your time accordingly. Unfortunately your chances for this cycle are quite low.

To build on this: your chances are not significantly lower than they were at any time this cycle. If, according to your other posts, your stats are 149 LSAT + 3.45 CGPA, then you were never going to be among the first admits to any school, barring a couple Nobel Prizes or a reference from the secret real pope. I agree that your chances are on the low end (although different schools will put weight on your B/LN), and if you're admitted it's going to come around April or from the waitlist at most places. So working up your anxiety now is just harming yourself.

Sincerely, the best thing you can do for yourself right now is to log out and not look at anything application related for a month and a half. Spend time doing things you enjoy, with people you love. Work on your LSAT, as scooter said. I think so many applicants shoot themselves in the foot by holding to a shred of hope for months longer than they should, such that by the time they want to apply again they've lost valuable time they could have spent improving their candidacy for next time. (Hint: I know this from experience. Encouragement: a large portion of your class were not successful in their first cycle of applications!) So, you're already on the right track.

But clicking refresh on your apps or seeing other people post about their As? That's just torturing yourself for no payoff. And I know this isn't the message you mean to send, but: anxiety spreads. I apologize if I came off aggressive in my first post, but one of the reasons you are freaking out about how "late" we are in the cycle, and talking about "rounds", is because previous anxious applicants keep mentally shifting the goalposts and inventing irrelevant steps to the process. (The Queue is real, though.) "Everyone's saying April but now it's late March so that's basically April anyway!" Now think of next year's applicant who comes across this post and thinks "wait, is February considered late? Did I miss something about rounds?" and before you know it we're getting posts about how applying to OLSAS in October is too late to be competitive (which has legitimately already happened).

If you genuinely want to go to law school, you will go to law school. There are people entering law school in their 50s and 60s and doing just fine for themselves. I know it doesn't feel that way right now, because I'm guessing you've been on the academic conveyor belt all your life and the idea of not immediately moving on to the Next Step is terrifying. But you're going to be ok.

Edited February 25 by FellowTraveler

[Legallyanxious]

1 hour ago, FellowTraveler said:

To build on this: your chances are not significantly lower than they were at any time this cycle. If, according to your other posts, your stats are 149 LSAT + 3.45 CGPA, then you were never going to be among the first admits to any school, barring a couple Nobel Prizes or a reference from the secret real pope. I agree that your chances are on the low end (although different schools will put weight on your B/LN), and if you're admitted it's going to come around April or from the waitlist at most places. So working up your anxiety now is just harming yourself.

Sincerely, the best thing you can do for yourself right now is to log out and not look at anything application related for a month and a half. Spend time doing things you enjoy, with people you love. Work on your LSAT, as scooter said. I think so many applicants shoot themselves in the foot by holding to a shred of hope for months longer than they should, such that by the time they want to apply again they've lost valuable time they could have spent improving their candidacy for next time. (Hint: I know this from experience. Encouragement: a large portion of your class were not successful in their first cycle of applications!) So, you're already on the right track.

But clicking refresh on your apps or seeing other people post about their As? That's just torturing yourself for no payoff. And I know this isn't the message you mean to send, but: anxiety spreads. I apologize if I came off aggressive in my first post, but one of the reasons you are freaking out about how "late" we are in the cycle, and talking about "rounds", is because previous anxious applicants keep mentally shifting the goalposts and inventing irrelevant steps to the process. (The Queue is real, though.) "Everyone's saying April but now it's late March so that's basically April anyway!" Now think of next year's applicant who comes across this post and thinks "wait, is February considered late? Did I miss something about rounds?" and before you know it we're getting posts about how applying to OLSAS in October is too late to be competitive (which has legitimately already happened).

If you genuinely want to go to law school, you will go to law school. There are people entering law school in their 50s and 60s and doing just fine for themselves. I know it doesn't feel that way right now, because I'm guessing you've been on the academic conveyor belt all your life and the idea of not immediately moving on to the Next Step is terrifying. But you're going to be ok.

thank you so much, this is really what I needed to hear. I had no idea that most acceptances are sent after April, so I really truly thank you for clarifying this misconception. It is difficult to filter through real information on this forum from the false. I look forwards to the end of this year in case I do need to reapply because my semester gpa should be a 4.33 which will hopefully bump my cgpa. My b3 and l2 are quite high. And definitely have been focusing on my weaknesses with the LSAT which has bumped my score a few points already! Again, I really appreciate this reassurance that (eventually) everything will be ok.

[scooter]

8 minutes ago, Legallyanxious said:

I had no idea that most acceptances are sent after April

This isn't what the person you are replying to said. Most offers of admission (in Ontario anyway) are sent before April, with an April 1 deadline to accept or decline. Then schools send out more offers depending on how many remaining spots they have after the April 1 deadline has passed.

 

[FellowTraveler]

33 minutes ago, Legallyanxious said:

thank you so much, this is really what I needed to hear. I had no idea that most acceptances are sent after April, so I really truly thank you for clarifying this misconception. It is difficult to filter through real information on this forum from the false. I look forwards to the end of this year in case I do need to reapply because my semester gpa should be a 4.33 which will hopefully bump my cgpa. My b3 and l2 are quite high. And definitely have been focusing on my weaknesses with the LSAT which has bumped my score a few points already! Again, I really appreciate this reassurance that (eventually) everything will be ok.

Just to clarify: most acceptances are going to be sent before April. We're in the thick of it. If a sports analogy helps, we're in the second period of a hockey game. There's everything to play for: yeah, you'd love to be up a goal, but there's still a lot of time left on the clock.

Edit: given my hatred of this "rounds" idea, maybe periods is not the best analogy to be using! What I meant was: the people who've received As up until this point were among the most competitive candidates. Now, we're in the process of sorting through the bulk of applications. I have no idea where you fit into that picture, but I think we can safely assume you're at the tail end somewhere. (It bears repeating: I know absolutely nothing about many schools' average stats.)

So, if I were giving you advice back when you were applying, I'd guess that if you were to get an A this cycle, it probably wasn't coming before late March or April. I don't know if you applied to Dal, but for example their last batch of As come through an interview process that happens in June. So there is variance! But I would have been extremely surprised to hear that you got an acceptance at this point in the cycle (again, just basing this on hard stats, and ignoring the more holistic processes like Osgoode).

Edited February 25 by FellowTraveler

[Yogurt Baron]

2 hours ago, Legallyanxious said:

thank you so much, this is really what I needed to hear. I had no idea that most acceptances are sent after April

This is meant kindly, and I'm going to say what I have to say and then bow out, rather than risk a flame war.

I like to be encouraging, and I do wish you the best, which is why I stayed out of your first thread, but this is the second thread of yours I've seen where you respond to something with, "Thank you, I'm really glad you said [something you've completely misunderstood]." I don't want to make you feel bad, but this could be presenting problems for you.

The LSAT's not just a lottery where you fill out bubbles and are assigned a random number and then if your random number is high enough, you get to go to law school. It measures important skills that you need, and if you're getting a low score, it might not be because you have to figure out how to game the test---it might be because you need to work on your skills.

If you're doing badly on the reading comprehension section of the LSAT, that's a logistical problem in that it's a barrier to admissibility, but it could mean any of a million things - text anxiety, dyslexia, violent diarrhea in the middle of the test, who knows. On the other hand, if you're consistently not able to comprehend things you read, that's something that's actually going to get in your way and is something you're going to want help with. Does that look like a disability accommodation? Does that look like using strategies (again, tons of them out there) to better wrap your brain around what you've read before you respond to something you've misunderstood? I don't know. I hope the best for you. But this place would be doing you a disservice if somebody didn't flag that, hey, this is a thing that is happening.

[Legallyanxious]

15 hours ago, Yogurt Baron said:

This is meant kindly, and I'm going to say what I have to say and then bow out, rather than risk a flame war.

I like to be encouraging, and I do wish you the best, which is why I stayed out of your first thread, but this is the second thread of yours I've seen where you respond to something with, "Thank you, I'm really glad you said [something you've completely misunderstood]." I don't want to make you feel bad, but this could be presenting problems for you.

The LSAT's not just a lottery where you fill out bubbles and are assigned a random number and then if your random number is high enough, you get to go to law school. It measures important skills that you need, and if you're getting a low score, it might not be because you have to figure out how to game the test---it might be because you need to work on your skills.

If you're doing badly on the reading comprehension section of the LSAT, that's a logistical problem in that it's a barrier to admissibility, but it could mean any of a million things - text anxiety, dyslexia, violent diarrhea in the middle of the test, who knows. On the other hand, if you're consistently not able to comprehend things you read, that's something that's actually going to get in your way and is something you're going to want help with. Does that look like a disability accommodation? Does that look like using strategies (again, tons of them out there) to better wrap your brain around what you've read before you respond to something you've misunderstood? I don't know. I hope the best for you. But this place would be doing you a disservice if somebody didn't flag that, hey, this is a thing that is happening.

fair enough, I did misunderstand the previous response and it is my fault that I didn't read it more thoughtfully. I was 1.) searching for any hope even though I am at peace with no acceptance this year and 2.) I was about to meet with a neuroscientist in Sweden who I am doing research with. I have been an honours student since I was 18, my CGPA is so low because I began my post-secondary career in sciences (which did not suit my skillset and resulted in an abominable GPA in my first year). However, after considerable reflection I know where to begin with my weaknesses in the LSAT and eventually I will be admitted to law school in Canada. Thanks for the message but respectfully I was just rushing out the door and was hoping for any positivity.

[MyWifesBoyfriend]

30 minutes ago, Legallyanxious said:

Thanks for the message but respectfully I was just rushing out the door and was hoping for any positivity.

There is no forthcoming hidden advice or deus ex machina. Every one of your posts thus far have been some variation of the question Can I get into law school with a low (140s) LSAT?

The resounding answer is: Incredibly unlikely, bordering no chance. You'll need to honestly re-evaluate how you read before taking another crack at the test. I'd also re-state my opinion that since you're on take 2 or 3, you should wait until you're reliably PT'ing in the 160s before re-taking the test, since there is a limit to how many LSATs you can take. 

Edited February 26 by MyWifesBoyfriend