This week, I've been fielding questions from applicants about the right way to turn down offers from law schools. This post is for the "Awesome Problems to Have" files, because it assumes, of course, that you've already received an offer from a school you really want to attend. Congratulations! I love this time of year, because this is when you start seeing the pay-off for all your hard work, planning, and patience. (Sometimes dumb luck helps too, but less than one would think.)  Here are some common questions related to turning down offers:

1. Do I have to turn down the offer before the stated deposit deadline?

Only if you've been accepted somewhere else through a binding early decision program (in which case, you have to withdraw/decline everywhere else pronto; more on that below). LSAC imposes rules on law schools designed to give you enough time to field different admissions and financial aid offers and weigh them properly. Here's the official language from LSAC:

There's no language there about declining offers, but it's implicit that you would be declining an offer just by failing to accept before the April 1 deadline. The polite thing to do, though, is to affirmatively decline if you are not accepting. So under the rules, you have until April 1 to accept or decline an offer, unless you applied under one of those specific scenarios above.

2. Is there any upside to turning down a school before the deadline?

For you, no. There's no downside to waiting until the deadline to accept (or decline) an offer, with the usual caveat about early decision obligations.

However, if you are 100% certain that you will be declining an offer from School X, you'll be doing your fellow applicants a favor by letting School X know sooner rather than later. Otherwise, School X will have to wait until April 1 to learn that you have freed up your slot and that it is now available to be offered to another applicant. Even if you don't think you owe that courtesy to School X, you can still be a "good citizen" to your fellow applicants, because the waiting game is tough.

3. Are you rushing into things by making a decision before the deadline?

Maybe. Say you're planning to turn down School X because you've received a coveted offer from School Y. Do you already have your financial aid offers from School X and School Y? If that's still up in the air, turn down School X only if you have already decided that you would turn down School X with a full ride in favor of School Y at full price.

If you don't have all the financing information yet, wait. If you do have the information, you might still need some time to decide where the tipping point is: At what point does School X become more attractive than School Y if the price is right? That will depend on different factors for different people, including your career goals and expected income projections. An immediate tuition discount could be a valuable thing, for example, for someone who knows she wants to go into public interest law. The possibility of future loan forgiveness is not nearly as certain as that immediate discount. I'm not saying there's a right answer here that applies to everyone, but give a lot of thought to those tipping points when you're stacking up any two schools.

Also, have you visited both schools? In some cases, you might not care, because the real-world reputation or caliber of the schools diverges enough, and it won't matter to you if School X turns out to have nicer facilities or nicer people or a better classroom culture; you might still decide School Y is a better long-term investment, and that you're willing to put up with a potentially crummier environment for three years at School Y in exchange for the longer-term benefits of that degree. But if the schools are more or less in the same orbit, you really should visit before making a final decision. You might be surprised how much you learn. There's only so much you can glean from school websites and online discussion board chatter. Would you buy a house without going to look at it? Probably not. Sometimes it makes sense to go see things for yourself.

4. I applied binding early decision and am obligated to withdraw my applications elsewhere. I'm really curious, though, about whether I'll get into Schools A, B, and C. How soon do I have to withdraw?

Withdraw within a week of receiving your ED offer. Any longer than that starts to smack of bad faith. More on Early Decision protocol here.

5. What's the protocol and etiquette for turning down or withdrawing your application from a school?

Whether you turn schools down now or wait until April 1, first check the language of that school's offer letter. Follow whatever instructions they give you. Do they want you to email them? Fill out a form and snail-mail it? Send your decision by Pony Express? Whatever they say, that's what you'll do. If they've sent you just the offer at this point with no further instructions yet about how to accept or decline, it's fine to email them at their admissions office email address. Here's a polite way to phrase your communication:

Stumped about other aspects of declining an offer? Any other factors that you're mulling over? Please share in the comments.

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey).

With the majority of schools having released their Round One decisions, many successful applicants will soon be facing the enviable – but often agonizing – decision of choosing between programs. Though we know that those of you in this position will already be juggling an overwhelming amount of information about the schools on your short lists, we wanted to offer a few pointers to consider as you identify and evaluate the most important facts and factors in making this decision.

1) Immerse yourself. If you have not yet visited campus, go to the school and see what you think of the environment. Be sure to attend classes, talk with students, tour the facilities, and so on. Even if you have already made the trip, it’s a good idea to attend the school’s events for admitted students to meet your potential classmates. After all, these are the folks whose thoughts you will be hearing in class for two years and who will making up your future network.

2) Consider your immediate priorities. Think about the location, size, teaching method, etc. Are you looking for a close-knit, “we’re all in this together” sort of experience, or would you prefer to attend classes and then disappear into a large city with a few classmates or old friends? Do you need the benefits of a large university to pursue coursework in a specific field? Do you crave lengthy discussions with faculty? Do you have family or a significant other who might need to consider your location? Are you strong in qualitative areas but looking to refine your skills in quantitative subjects? Is there a teaching method that might better address your weaknesses or best suit your learning style? Reflecting on the relative importance of each of these questions might help you to organize your thoughts about and the information on each program.

3) Look farther forward. In addition to the experience you would have as a student, try to get a sense for the school’s track record in your target field. For example, if you hope to become a strategy consultant after school, take a look at each program’s placement statistics with the firms that are of interest to you. Talk to the career management office and find out which firms came to campus and how many offers were made. You might also try to contact alumni who work in your target field and see what they have to say about their alma mater’s strength in that area. A final option is to approach the HR departments of the firm you are likely to target and ask for their opinion of the programs on your list. This is also a nice excuse to build rapport with a potential future employer.

4) Think big. Beyond the job you hope to secure immediately after school, consider the program’s regional and global brand. For example, if you are looking for work in London, you might investigate whether the school in question has an active alumni club in that city. Meanwhile, if you dream of working in Los Angeles but are debating between two programs on the East Coast, it might be important to determine which has the greater West Coast presence.

These are just a few general tips to get you thinking about how to make your b-school decision. It goes without saying that this is a once in a lifetime decision, so it certainly makes sense to do your homework and fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of each of your options. Rankings are a good starting point for a school search, but should not be the deciding factor.  Reading in-depth, independent reports on each program can be helpful, so be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guides for their extensive cross-school comparisons on placement, class composition, campus life and more.  Another thing to remember that the shoe is finally on the other foot, and that the schools are now the ones marketing themselves to you. Be sure to take advantage of their offers to answer any questions you may have.

About Clear Admit:

Ivey Consulting has partnered with Clear Admit to provide comprehensive admissions information and consulting services to business school applicants.  We’re excited to feature their regular guest postings here on the Ivey Files. Learn more about them here.

For 11^th graders (and some precocious 10^th graders), the testing season is here.  Whether you're taking the SAT or the ACT, it is time for Alison’s Top 3 Tips about standardized tests and college admissions.

Tip #1:  Be strategic about which tests you take.

Your strategy should be shaped by two things: what tests are required by the colleges to which you will be applying and which test suits you best.

What Tests Are Required

Start with what is required by the colleges to which you will be applying.  You’ll discover that there is quite a bit of variety and that the testing landscape is changing a lot, so it pays to take the time to do the research. Right now, these are the basic configurations for testing requirements:

• No tests required.
• SAT Reasoning OR ACT with writing required.
• SAT Reasoning and SAT Subject Tests OR ACT with writing required.
• SAT or ACT with writing required AND SAT Subject Tests recommended.
• SAT or ACT with writing required AND SAT Subject Tests required.
• SAT OR ACT with writing OR 3 SAT Subject Tests OR 3 AP Tests.

Faced with this variety of requirements, many students get the advice or decide for themselves that they’ll just take them all and cover their bases.  I think that is foolish – you get no advantage in the admissions process and you spend valuable time, energy, and resources taking unnecessary tests.  Instead, be strategic and focus your efforts.  For most of you, this will mean taking either the SAT Reasoning or ACT with writing test.  If you are applying to the most selective colleges, you’ll probably have to add 2 SAT Subject Tests. 

I do have two special caveats for international students (students who are not U.S. citizens, whose primary language is not English, and who have been educated outside the U.S.).  First, you should make sure you understand the testing requirements for international students – they are often different and include a test to demonstrate proficiency in English such as the TOEFL.  Second, you should take the TOEFL even if it is not required.  Many admissions offices consider your other scores in light of your TOEFL and therefore it will be helpful to you. 

Which Tests Suit You Best

SAT Reasoning or ACT with writing? 

The statistics gathered by the colleges suggest that for most of you, it doesn’t much matter.  You are going to score about the same in comparison to the national pool and that is why the colleges themselves will take either. However, a significant minority of you will do better on one or the other.  There are lots of theories for how to predict which test will “suit you.”  But no prediction is as valid as simply testing yourself.  Carve out some time to take one of each test, either at a test prep center, at your school counseling office, or in the privacy of your own home.  Do it old school and use paper and pencil just like you do on the real tests.  If you score decidedly better on one or the other, then go with that test. 

But what if you do equally well on both?  Then it gets a bit more complicated, because I think you need to consider whether you will be taking SAT Subject Tests. 

If you do not have to take the Subject Tests, then simply pick the one that most people at your school take, because you’ll be in sync with everyone else, have more resources for test prep, and it will be all around easier.  

If you can substitute the ACT with Writing for both the SAT Reasoning and Subject Tests, then go with the ACT.  You’ll definitely take fewer tests and, if need be, you’ll get more chances to retake the test and boost your score. 

If you do need the SAT Subject Tests, then it probably makes sense to go with the SAT because you’ll get in the SAT groove and you can leverage your test prep most effectively.   (For the record, this is new advice from me.  I used to say that if you do equally well on both, choose the SAT.  But because the testing requirements for colleges have changed a lot in the last three years and because at the same time, the ACT has caught up with the SAT in terms of its recognition and acceptance by admissions officers, I no longer have a decided bias in favor of the SAT.)

Tip #2:  Schedule your tests with your life in mind and schedule your life with your tests in mind.

Now that you know which tests you are going to take, get the test dates from the web, sit down with your calendar, and map out when you are going to take the tests.  Some things to keep in mind as you go through this exercise:

• Be aware that if you want early decision options, you need to have ALL of your testing complete before November 1 – any test date after October 1 is probably out.
• Some test dates may not be available in certain locations.  For example, there is no February ACT in New York and no May SAT outside the U.S.
• Some SAT Subject Tests are available only on particular test dates.
• Exploit opportunities to study once and test twice – finishing an AP class and studying for an AP exam in May?  Take the SAT Subject Test in May or June while the material is still fresh.
• Don’t overschedule yourself.  No big events scheduled right before a test – you need at least a week of “open time” to put yourself in a position to do your best on the test.  What does that mean?  Hard choices.  For example, if you are a soccer star, your team expects to be in the state finals, and the finals game is scheduled the week before the SAT, then you can’t do them both.  Either bow out of the state finals or rethink your testing plan.  Sorry.  That’s the reality.

Tip #3:  Put yourself into the “Peak Performance Zone.” 

You want to go into the test confident and able to perform at your best, so do what it takes to put yourself into the “Peak Performance Zone.”  Peak performance does not happen by accident.  It is the result of intentional action on your part. 

• Prepare.  Acquire the knowledge and skills you need for the test you are taking.  You can do that in any number of ways and all of them work if you actually invest yourself in the activity. 
• Practice.  You can’t take too many practice tests.  Familiarity breeds success.
• Sleep.  At a recent conference, a testing expert reported that a teen needs at least 4 good nights of sleep before a test in order to score his/her best.  Got that?  4 good nights!  So when do you have to start going to bed by 10 pm?  The Tuesday before the test!!!!!!  No late nights – even if it is dedicated to test preparation.  Get your sleep.

Questions, thoughts, tips of your own you’d like to share?  Post and continue the conversation!

Alison Cooper Chisolm heads the college admissions consulting practice at Ivey Consulting. She came to private consulting after working in admissions for more than 10 years at three selective universities (most recently at Dartmouth College). Follow Alison on Twitter (@IveyCollege)

With a slew of schools releasing the last of their R1 notifications in the coming weeks, we know that many of our readers will be asking about the background checks conducted by leading programs. Here are some quick facts to help explain the process:

1) What are background checks? Background checks involve the verification of information that a candidate has provided in his or her MBA applications. Although the process varies from school to school, it usually includes checking that an applicant attended the undergraduate (or graduate) school(s) that he or she claims to have attended, received the grades indicated and earned the GMAT score reported. It also involves the verification of the candidate’s employment history, job titles, starting and ending dates and salary/bonus information. Finally, some background checks involve contacting recommenders to verify their support and confirming applicant involvement in community activities. 

2) Do all schools conduct background checks? When do they do this? How do they have time? Many of the leading MBA programs like to verify the information that has been provided by applicants. This is typically done only for those applicants who are admitted, since there is no sense in expending resources to verify information for applicants who do not make the cut. Most background checks occur in the spring – after decisions for most rounds have been released and students begin sending in their deposits. In many cases, the schools outsource this function to a professional risk consulting firm like Kroll.

3) Why bother with background checks? Don’t the schools trust me? The purpose of background checking is to protect all stakeholders of the MBA program (students, faculty, staff, alumni) from those who would falsify their backgrounds to gain an unfair advantage in the admissions process. Some schools opt to investigate the backgrounds of a relatively small sample of randomly selected admits, hoping that the mere possibility of a check will give applicants incentive to be as honest as possible. In a way, this measure therefore serves to increase the adcom’s trust in its applicants.

4) What about very minor discrepancies? It’s natural for admitted applicants to get anxious at this point in the process, wondering whether their offer of admission might be rescinded if, for instance, the “start date” for an old job is one week earlier than the start date that HR reports during the background check. The good news is that most schools report any discrepancies back to the applicant and give them a chance to explain a plausible mistake. Having said that, it of course makes sense to do your best to verify all of your information before applying to school, so that you can be certain that the data you report is accurate. Should any potential issues come to mind after submitting, you might consider preemptively contacting the adcom if the error is serious enough.

5) Won’t the background checking process alert my employer to the fact that I am applying to b-school? Since the process typically takes place long after you’ve been admitted, this ideally won’t be an issue, as most applicants give their employers ample notice and take some time off before school. Having said that, the schools still try to conduct the checks in a discrete fashion, consulting with your HR department to verify your dates of employment and salary – but not necessarily revealing that you are heading to business school.

6) How can I ensure a smooth background check? While the obvious answer is to be honest in your applications, it’s also important that you don’t fudge anything out of laziness (a common occurrence). Dig up those old W-2 forms or check with former employers in order to present the committee with the most accurate information you can.

Good luck to everyone anxiously awaiting word from their R1 schools and, of course, those targeting R2 as well!

About Clear Admit:

Ivey Consulting has partnered with Clear Admit to provide comprehensive admissions information and consulting services to business school applicants.  We’re excited to feature their regular guest postings here on the Ivey Files. Learn more about them here.

I am an avid reader of your blog and had a quick question--is it better to apply now, in January, or to wait for next cycle to do my applications?  Also, if I have a poor cycle this time, how does it look if I reapply to the same schools with a new LSAT score next fall?

Good luck with your applications. Get those submitted as soon as possible, because time is of the essence now (as lawyers like to say).

I have a couple of reactions to your message, and I'll try to frame them in ways that are applicable to other applicants and especially people who are still in college making all kinds of decisions about how to allocate their time.

1. LSAT: Saying you're in the "25-75 [percentile] band" with your LSAT isn't actually saying very much. If your score is around the top quartile, good for you, because that score would then be an attractive one for a given school. If it's around the bottom quartile, your score is not going to be considered competitive, unless you have other important factors tipping in your favor (underrepresented minority status, important and close alumni connections, something really eye-popping in your background, etc.) Applicants need to be thinking about their LSAT scores with some precision when they are assessing their competitiveness.

In your case, a quick look at that school's admissions profile in the LSAC database suggests that your 167 score is just below the midpoint of their published LSAT quartiles (LSAC does not publish medians). That's good, but not great, and you should have numbers that are great for a given school if you want to be competitive this late in the season and so close to deadlines. Of course I hope that School X falls in love with all sorts of other things in your application, but in the interests of managing your expectations, your score is not going to be a plus for you at that school (and I mention that only because you seem to be putting it in the list of pluses in your message).

2. GPA: For law school admissions purposes, most if not all of the emphasis is going to be on your undergraduate transcript and performance (vs. graduate school). Your dream school doesn't publish GPA quartiles on the LSAC site, but your GPA strikes me as low for that school.

If we plug in your LSAT score and your undergraduate GPA (we'll take the slightly higher LSAC GPA calculation) into LSAC's GPA/LSAT calculator, the odds coming back for School X based on last year's admissions data are less than 15%. Will an addendum about your GPA move that needle much? For most people with those odds, it wouldn't, but I understand the desire to do what you can to move it. You are right to be thinking about how best to present your undergraduate performance, which, combined with your LSAT score, is going to matter most in the admissions process.

As you already know, a transcript in and of itself conveys woefully little. It doesn't indicate whether the individual classes you took were fluffy or challenging (although sometimes course titles strongly point in one direction or another), whether your individual professors were tough or easy graders, what the average grades were for your individual classes or even your whole graduating class, etc.

Your transcript should, though, already be flagging some of the things you're worried about conveying to admissions officers. It should, for example, list the credits you were taking each semester, so if your class load was high, admissions officers will see that. Similarly, if you earned a dual degree, your transcript should indicate that, too. I would not recommend submitting an addendum in order to convey information that is readily available on your transcript (and/or on your Academic Summary Report). Addendum essays should be reserved for important information that admissions officers can't readily find elsewhere in your application.

3. Jobs/Activities: What a transcript and your ASR won't convey are your commitments outside the classroom, and admissions officers won't know about those unless you tell them somewhere in your application.

Check your application forms carefully. Many application forms expressly require you to list your activities and jobs while in college, and many also require you to list the time commitment involved (either on the form itself or on an attached resume). If they ask for that information, give them the pertinent information there and leave it at that.

In that instance, again I would advise you not to submit an addendum, because you'd be giving them redundant information.

The good news is that if they didn't care about that information, they wouldn't ask for it, so they do in fact want to know what your obligations were while you were in school. That information gives them a more nuanced way to interpret your academic performance, and to assess your engagement with the school, community, and world around you. The latter matters because in constructing a 1L class, admissions officers are putting together a community, and your prior activities give them some sense of how engaged you would be with your new community.

For those reasons, you should not be leaving out your role in the College Democrats or the gay/straight alliance, particularly since you had leadership roles.Those are perfectly legitimate student activities, and you're selling yourself short if you don't include them in your application.

4. Overcommitment in college: Were you overcommitted? It sounds as if you were, as you readily acknowledge. You seem to write that off, though, as if it were a defense rather than a liability.

Overcommitting yourself won't necessarily mitigate your GPA, unless there were circumstances you couldn't control. For example, some people find themselves with competing pressures on their time because one of their parents was dying of cancer, or because they had to work many hours to support themselves, or maybe they became a new parent. Throwing yourself into totally voluntary extracurriculars at the expense of your grades? That's not as easy a case to make for discounting the weight of your GPA.

When I was an admissions officer, parents loved to give me an earful about this very issue (they were, in hindsight, the earliest helicopter parents). "But she did so many wonderful activities! She's so well-rounded! DON'T YOU CARE ABOUT ACTIVITIES?"

Well yes, activities are great, but we live in a world of priorities and trade-offs. In general, for the purposes of law school admissions, voluntary (vs. life-threw-me-a-curve-ball) outside time commitments are not more important than academic performance, and that kind of overcommitment also suggests an inability to manage one's time or priorities. Or perhaps activities were the intended priority, which is always the student's call to make, but don't expect admissions officers to share your priorities. LSAT + GPA in combination are typically going to matter more than your activities, as wonderful and as enriching as they may be.

My advice to current college students: Activities are great as long as you can manage your academic obligations. If and when they come into conflict, protect your transcript. You are applying to graduate school -- an academic program -- and admissions officers are going to care a lot about how seriously you took your academics. They're likely to think to themselves: "Is he also planning to hit the legal job market with only so-so law school grades and a resume full of lovely activities? Good luck with that." In the salad days of old, when you could get a great job out of a top law school just for fogging up a mirror, you could get away with so-so law school grades. That's not a good impression to make, though, in this market.

The good news is that you do have that graduate degree, and you were able to demonstrate different priorities and/or manage your time better in your graduate program. Showing matters much, much more than telling, so let your graduate transcript do the showing.

I can appreciate the instinct that many applicants have to try to write their way around underperforming GPAs in an addendum, but it would indeed probably sound whiny to submit one in this instance. Show off your activities and employment in your resume, and let those time commitments and accomplishments and work experiences -- as well as your better and more recent academic performance -- speak for themselves.

Of course, if you are admitted to School X, please come tell me I was wrong, and I will gladly eat my hat and cheer. I would love for you to defy the odds. Either way, please let us know what happens.

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey).

 While the past few weeks have seen a number of admits and rejections handed down to round one MBA applicants, the fate of many remains uncertain. There is no reason for waitlisted candidates to lose hope, as the top programs admit a fair number of individuals from the waitlist in round two and thereafter, but we know that cautious optimism does not make the wait for an answer any easier. To help those in this situation make sure that they’re doing all they can, we wanted to share a few waitlist tips:

1. Know – and follow – the rules. Schools vary in their stances when it comes to interaction with those on the waitlist; some shun communication from applicants and even go so far as to discourage on-the-record campus visits, whereas others welcome correspondence and assign waitlisted candidates to an admissions office liaison. We know that the natural impulse is to reach out to the adcom and update them on that recent promotion or the final grade from that accounting class you took to bolster your academic profile. At first blush, it might seem that there’s no harm in sending a short letter or making a call, but no matter how exciting the information you wish to communicate, ignoring the adcom’s instructions is ultimately going to reflect badly on you. Though such a policy may seem frustrating or unfair, it’s important to respect and abide by the preferences of each school. 

2. Communicate if you can. For those programs that do permit or encourage contact from waitlisters, it’s absolutely a good idea to send an update. In addition to the obvious news items mentioned above, it’s beneficial to read over your essays and reflect on whether there is some piece of your background or interests that you haven’t gotten across yet. Taking the time to write about your relevant recent experiences, positive developments in your candidacy and ways that you’ve enhanced your understanding of the program is a nice sign of your interest in the program, and is a good strategy for telegraphing your commitment to attending. It is, of course, also in your interest to make sure that the adcom has the most up to date information so that they can make an informed decision the next time your file comes up for evaluation.

3. Keep in touch. Don’t disappear after an initial note to the adcom or phone call to your waitlist manager (if applicable). If you have plans to be on or near campus, for instance, send a quick email to alert your waitlist manager (or whoever you may have interacted with on the adcom) to alert them to this fact.  In many cases you’ll find that the adcom offers to have you stop by for a friendly chat about your candidacy – something that can go a long way towards helping your case.  Beyond a visit, sending a brief update every few weeks or so is another way to reaffirm your interest in the school and keep you fresh in the minds of the adcom – something that could work to your advantage in a discussion of which candidates to admit from the waitlist.  In all cases, it is important to remember that there is a fine line between persistence and pestering, so please use good judgment!

4. Have a contingency plan. While it’s important to do be consistent and enthusiastic when waitlisted and communicating with staff at your target program, it’s also wise to have a backup plan. With the round two deadlines for several top programs about 1-2 weeks away, there’s still time to put together a solid application to another school. Even if you’re waitlisted at the school of your dreams and intend to reapply if not admitted, it’s also never too early to start thinking about the coming year and what steps you might take to enhance your candidacy before next fall.

For valuable guidance about being on the waitlist, check out the Clear Admit Waitlist Guide.  This guide will teach you to understand the ground rules of a program’s waitlist policy, formulate a plan to address weaknesses in your candidacy, craft effective communications to the admissions committee and explore every opportunity to boost your chances of acceptance.  This 26-page PDF file, which includes school-specific waitlist policies and sample communication materials, is available for immediate download.

Best of luck to those of you playing the waiting game, and feel free to contact us at assessment@clearadmit.com to learn about our application feedback and waitlist counseling services. Hang in there!

About Clear Admit:

Ivey Consulting has partnered with Clear Admit to provide comprehensive admissions information and consulting services to business school applicants.  We’re excited to feature their regular guest postings here on the Ivey Files. Learn more about them here.

If you are in 11^th grade, you’ve probably just started getting serious about the college admissions process.  (And if you haven’t, that opening line is a clue to you that you should!)  One of the most important things to do over the course of the next 6 months is figure out which colleges are going to be “on your list.”  By that I mean, where are you going to apply to college?  I encourage students to develop a list of 25-30 possibles and then do research on them to whittle it down to 10-15.

The single best way to research a college is to visit it on a weekday, while school is in regular session.  And I’m delighted that so many of you are planning college visits over the coming months.  But there are two major hazards of college visits that I want you to avoid – one is “the parent trap” and the other is “just do the tour trap.”

The Parent Trap

Most students travel with their parents on college visits.  It can be a great time together and I’m all for your family being involved and supportive.  But, college visits are tricky because you and your parents are in the "launching years" transition.  You must step up and assume leadership in this process and your parents must step back and become the encouragers/supporters rather than directors.  

This transition is hard for everyone, but the college visit is a good place to practice your new roles.  As the leader, you set the ground rules.  I suggest you set these two ground rules: 

Rule #1:  Your parents do not ask questions in information sessions with admissions officers, nor do they assault admissions officers before or after to get their questions answered.  You are the applicant.  You ask ANY AND ALL questions of admissions officers.

Rule #2:  You and your parents should go on different campus tours; if only one tour is available, then you go on it and your parents should wander on their own.  On the tour, your parents may ask questions, since you aren’t there.

Now I expect that both you and your parents will balk a bit at these ground rules.  But, I'm telling you that they work and are for everyone's good.  They put you in the leadership role and your parents in a supporting/encouraging role.  Yes, the rules sound a bit draconian, but, in my experience, simple rules are easier to follow than "nuanced" behavioral guidelines.  

The Just Do the Tour Trap

Much to my dismay, I’ve discovered that for many of you, a college visit consists of attending an information session and doing the tour, or worse still just doing “a drive-by” while on a family vacation.  That means a sizable percentage of you manage to visit a college without learning anything that you didn’t already know or that you couldn’t find out through other cheaper and easier ways (directories, web sites, google earth, gossip).  

The Scavenger Hunt

So, I’ve devised a “college visit scavenger hunt” to give you guidance on how to get the most from your college visit. 

Warning:  completing the scavenger hunt will require you to use some initiative and go “off tour.”  But come on, you are considering committing the next four years of your life to this place, not to mention having its name appear on every resume in your future, so muster a little enthusiasm and courage and just do it.

The Rules for the Scavenger Hunt: 

• Not only is advance research allowed, it is expected.  Using each college’s web site, plot where the items will take you on the campus map, so you know basically where you are going.  (You may also discover that certain “offices” I mention don’t exist and the particular activity is handled differently at that college, so no reason to wander around looking for it!)
• Divide into teams of 2-3 if you are traveling with more than 1 friend or schoolmate OR if you are traveling with your parents. If you are traveling with your parents, you must divide up – they are their own team and can go on the scavenger hunt too, but they can’t go with you.
• Start with any item; I’ve noted how much time you have to complete each item. Determine how many you can complete in the time you have for your visit.  If you have broken into teams, you can either all do the same items or divide and conquer the entire list.   But you must adhere to the time limits – it gives you practice meeting college deadlines.
• Pick at least 3 items that you will do at EVERY school you visit so that you have a basis for comparison.
• Document your completion of each item with notes or photos.  For most of you, you’ll do that with your cell phone; for those still pleading with parents that a cell phone is a necessity, you’ll have to resort to old-fashioned paper and pen.
• Break no laws.  It is not necessary to break any laws, and it is a BAD way to start the college admissions process.

The Hunt:  Off the Tour Things to Do on A College Visit

• Visit a class (50 minutes) OR stand outside a class and unobtrusively eavesdrop on the class for a few minutes (5 minutes).  Note that you should get there a few minutes early and ask the professor’s permission to sit in on the class.
•  Visit the college bookstore and “go shopping for textbooks” – find a course that you might take and look at what the required reading is. (15 minutes)
• Locate the building that is “home” for your potential major (it will be where the department has offices). Wander the halls and see if you can find a professor in his/her office who is having “office hours” (times when they are available to talk with students) or is just available for a few minutes of conversation. (15 minutes)
• Hang out in front of a freshman residence hall and ask a student going in to let you see his/her room, the common areas, a bathroom, and the laundry.   (It is usually best to ask a student of your sex, so you see a room that you might be assigned.) (20 minutes)
• Eat a meal in the dining hall.  (30 minutes)
• Engage a student in conversation and ask about school traditions and big “all-school” events.  (15 minutes)
• Walk through the library and see if you can figure out where you would study for finals. (15 minutes)
• Find out where intramural sports are played and go watch some and talk with students about opportunities for participation in intramurals. (20 minutes)
• Go to the student center and check out the clubs and activities on-campus.  Identify a few that would interest you.  See if you can find a student who does one of them (maybe in an office for the club) and talk with him/her about it. (15 minutes)  
•  Visit the career center and see what you learn about what opportunities you’ll have when you graduate and see what services the career center provides. (15 minutes)
• Find out where students get mail and packages and engage a few students in conversation about what they like best about the college. (15 minutes)
• Notice how students transport themselves on-campus – on foot, by bike, by scooter, by skateboard.  Stop someone and ask if you “need x” to get around here. OR Find out how students get to favorite off-campus locales and take yourself off campus and back.  (15 - 45 minutes)
• Pick up the school newspaper and read it.  (Look for the “student produced” newspaper, not the “college produced” newspaper.) (15 minutes)
• Take time to read the posters or watch the “announcements” scroll on the University close circuit TV system.  Find at least one thing you’d make the time to do over the next 2 weeks if you were still there. (15 minutes)
• Visit the gym or rec center, note the hours, see what the fitness facilities are like and decide when you would work out or what intramural/club sport you’d play. (15 minutes) 
• FOR BUDDING RESEARCHERS/ACADEMICS:  Find a faculty member or student in your area of interest and ask about research opportunities.  (15 minutes)
• FOR THOSE WHO WANT INTERNSHIPS OR STUDY ABROAD:  Visit the office that coordinates internships for students or study abroad and find at least 3 internships or 2 study abroad opportunities that interest you. (30 minutes)
• FOR POTENTIAL VARSITY ATHLETES:  Find the coach for your sport and talk with him/her.  Bring a tape or something else that documents your abilities.  (30 minutes)
• FOR SPARE TIME ACTORS, ARTISTS, MUSICIANS:  Find a on-campus theater that has student productions, a studio space available to students, or a practice room available to students and see what is available to you as a non-major. (15 minutes)
• FOR THE TRUE BLUE VOLUNTEER:  Visit the office that coordinates student community service or the office of a particular student organization and talk with someone who has been involved in the last year.  (15 minutes)

If you avoid the two hazards I've described and do a REAL college visit, I guarantee that you’ll learn things about the colleges that you couldn’t possibly find out any other way AND you’ll have a lot more fun along the way.  So go forth and visit…and post your stories for our vicarious enjoyment!

Alison Cooper Chisolm heads the college admissions consulting practice at Ivey Consulting.  She came to private consulting after working in admissions for more than 10 years at three selective universities (most recently at Dartmouth College).  As a result, she’s no stranger to college visits:  as an admissions officer she hosted thousands of hopeful students and over the years, she’s visited more than 150 colleges herself and she’s done every single thing on the hunt multiple times!  So no excuses for you. Follow Alison on Twitter (@IveyCollege).

We often stress that, to present oneself effectively in application essays, it’s critical to think carefully about what a given question is asking and what this might indicate about a specific school’s admissions priorities. Of course, it’s also imperative to communicate clearly and appropriately regardless of the target program or particular inquiry.

As many applicants are feverishly putting the finishing touches on their essays for programs with deadlines this week and next, we wanted to offer a few general guidelines to keep in mind during that final revision.  Time is tight, we know, but a few small changes can make a considerable difference, so today we’re going back to basics and offering a few broadly applicable tips on tone and style to keep in mind when polishing the written elements of your applications. 

1. Be Professional. While a number of schools ask fun questions and most urge applicants to be themselves rather than submitting “overly polished” materials, it’s important to remember that this is a graduate school application and you should approach your essays with a degree of formality. You do want your unique narrative voice to come through, but even professional writers know to vary their tone based on their audience. As such, you should avoid using slang and conversational speech patterns in your writing.

2. Emphasize Action. A common pitfall for many applicants is lapsing into the passive voice, constructing sentences about how some unseen force or agent acted upon something or someone else (e.g. “we were required to” or “the project was completed”) rather than putting their own thoughts and actions at the fore. By making a conscious effort to write “I/he/she did x” rather than “x was done to y” you can make your comments more informative, dynamic and, often, more concise.

3. Avoid Repetition. It’s often a good idea to give the reader a sense of an essay’s direction through an introduction and to sum up the key ideas through a conclusion, but ideally each sentence of an essay will add some new information to the document or build the reader’s understanding of what you’ve already written. Keeping this rule in mind as you revise can help trim a response down to the word limit and ensure that you are including as much relevant information about your candidacy as you can within the allotted length.

For those of you still struggling with your essays as the deadlines approach, feel free to reach out to Clear Admit by sending your resume to assessment@clearadmit.com.  Our team is ready to help with last minute application reviews.  Best of luck to everyone!

About Clear Admit:

Ivey Consulting has partnered with Clear Admit to provide comprehensive admissions information and consulting services to business school applicants.  We’re excited to feature their regular guest postings here on the Ivey Files. Learn more about them here.

I've been receiving various flavors of the following email from law school applicants since October (punctuation and all-caps faithfully rendered):

"OMG!!!! I submitted X WEEKS AGO AND I HAVEN'T HEARD ANYTHING!!!! Did they lose my application/decide to reject me/decide to ignore me????"

My reply: It's only January, and believe it or not, this is still early in the admissions cycle to be receiving decisions from schools.

And here's the more important message: Keep your wits about you. Here are a couple of tips to keep in mind while you sweat out the waiting process:

1. Do not pester schools about the status of your application. You can find out through your online LSAC account whether your application has been submitted to a school. Different schools have different processes for notifying you if some piece of the application is missing or has not been submitted properly. Two common traps: Stanford will not accept its Form C from recommenders directly (it must be submitted through LSAC if you choose to use the form), and Yale requires dean's certifications from every institution of higher education you have attended, not just the one from which you graduated. Schools are pretty good about putting these kinds of rules on their online FAQ pages, as well as their processes for letting you know about the status of your application. You are expected to know those rules and processes and follow them.

2. Make sure to check your spam folder regularly, since schools now routinely communicate with applicants via email.

3. Give schools your real (not alumni) email address. If you listed an email address on your application that is an alumni forwarding address (for example, as a Columbia alum, I have a Columbia email address that forwards to my real email address), email the schools to which you have applied to give them your real email address instead. I've heard of too many important emails going astray with alumni forwarding addresses.

4. Do not let the discussion boards turn you into a crazy person. I know that many applicants enjoy the camaraderie of law school discussion boards and use them responsibly; that's a good thing. But I've also seen other people start doing irrational things as a result of spending too much time on them. Just because so-and-so (who doesn't even identify himself) got a JB1 Harvard interview or has already heard back from Penn, don't let that freak you out. Do not shoot off any emails to schools (or make any decisions, really) at 4 o'clock on the morning. Do not withdraw your application from School X because you are certain that their silence must mean you've been rejected. If you find yourself tempted to act rashly, back away slowly from your computer, and vow to stay away from the boards for some period of time. Remember that most people have not yet heard from most schools this time of year.

Tom Petty was right... the waiting really is the hardest part. Hang tight!

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey).