The Ivey Files

So the news is starting to dribble in....you've probably heard from a few schools by now, but not all. And for some reason, it is always your first choice that seems to be last! What do you do while you're waiting to hear?

1. Distract yourself. Take your mind off THE FUTURE by throwing yourself wholeheartedly into the present. Do whatever engages you and takes your mind to a different place. Play, play, play. Listen to music, draw, play games, read trash fiction, throw a theme party. You get the idea.
2. Get physical. You can get out of your head if you get into your body. Walk, run, skate, ski, swim, dance, row; it doesn't matter - just do something that shifts you out of your mind and into your body.
3. Establish a ritual for "checking" the news and follow it. Check only once a day at the same time. Obsessive checking is obsessive. Obsessive is not good.
4. Tell everyone who cares about the news what the protocol is going to be once you know. How will you inform your parents, your extended family, your friends what the news is? I often suggest that you tell everyone that, aside from your parents and sibs, you aren't going to share any news until you've heard from all the schools and have an idea which schools are still in the running. You aren't obligated to give everyone the blow by blow - take control of the situation. It is YOUR LIFE after all.
5. Decide BEFORE YOU KNOW what you are going to do if the news is good? If the news is bad? If the news is more waiting? Then share that with your tribe too. As I suggested last week, they are waiting for guidance from you. If you don't guide them, then they will just do what they think is right. It might be perfect or it might be horrendous, but don't blame them if you haven't told them what you want.

One important thing to remember: where you go to college is important, no doubt about it, but it IS NOT DETERMINATIVE. Don't assume you're golden now that you're into Yale; don't assume you're doomed that Williams turned you down. Life goes on and you have lots of it left to lead, so temper your excitement or your disappointment with that reality.

Comments or Questions?

Want to vent your anxiety about waiting or shout to the rooftops in glee or lament?  Post it all here!  

Alison Cooper Chisolm writes the series 52 Weeks to College. She has worked in admissions at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and most recently Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Alison works with college applicants and their families as they navigate the college admissions process. Read more about Alison here. 

I received this great question today from an Ivey Files reader:

I know you've addressed this in your book and in the blog, but I had another question regarding the multiple lsat addendum. I took the test twice and experienced a 7 point jump the second time. I have no fancy explanation...the score increase was simply the result of altering my test preparation (I actually scaled back the amount of studying and took a slower, more methodical approach....much more effective for my brain). I am more than content to let the higher score speak for itself, as you suggest, but the language put out by some schools I'd like to apply to makes me think twice about it. For example:

Penn : "If there is a significant difference between an applicant's highest and lowest LSAT score (more than 4 or 5 points) the applicant should address this discrepancy in an addendum to his or her application.”

Michigan : "If you have a significant disparity between scores (six or more points), it would be very helpful to address any explanation for the difference in an optional essay or addendum.”

Virginia: "We encourage applicants with a significant difference in LSAT scores to include with their application any information that may be relevant to the interpretation of test results."

The language suggests they expect you to give them some explanation for two significantly different test scores. Does this mean that I should just write something short and simple that attempts to explain what I believe accounted for my score increase? If I ignore these statements and refuse to submit an explanation, will admissions be more inclined to take my average score?

You are asking all the right questions. I would argue that you don't actually know why your score jumped seven points, because if you look at your LSAT reports for the two test, you'll probably see a pretty wide score band in each for score accuracy. So yes, maybe your score jumped seven points because you studied better/harder/smarter (fill in the blank), but when you're within the margin of error (as reflected by the score bands), or even if you've moved outside the score band, you don't actually know what's behind the difference.

What's a score band? If you look at your LSAT report, LSAC tells admissions officers to view your "real" score as falling within a range of scores. Most LSAT reports that I've seen show a band that's plus or minus 3 of your scaled score, so that's a band of 7 scaled points. Pretty huge, right? Your "real" score is anywhere in that band, and even then the score band captures the "real" score only 68% of the time.*  That leaves a whopping 32% of the time when the score band -- which is already pretty big -- doesn't even include someone's "actual proficiency." (For statistics junkies out there: am I missing something? Am I being unduly harsh? Please post if you have an opinion.)

Given what LSAC itself is saying about the accuracy of its own scores and score bands, can most applicants say something meaningful or even accurate about a movement in scores? I would say no. You are not omniscient. Sometimes you have a good day, sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes it's just the margin of error. You'll never really know. And you're not the one writing the test questions, or grading the exam, or calibrating it against other exam administrations and other test-taker pools, or determining what the statistically appropriate score band is for a given test or a given score. LSAC employs an army of statisticians for that, and the score bands are the best they can do, with an accuracy rate that leaves a lot of room for error. And somehow you're supposed to know more about your scores than they do? Go figure. But over the years, more schools have added language to that effect, asking about score differences as small as four points. So I advise the following:

If a school expressly asks or encourages you to comment on an X-point score difference, you should say something about it, even if realistically you can't be expected to justify or explain the score difference.

If they ask and you stay silent, I don't think they are necessarily going to average your scores, since they have to report the high score to the ABA, and that creates powerful incentives for the school to focus on the high score. However, staying silent after they expressly ask about it would suggest to them that you're not following instructions, and that's not a good outcome, even if the instructions themselves are silly. You should say something, anything, even if it's just: I studied differently/had a better day. In your case, tell them about your different approach to the test.

What if an applicant has to explain a decline in scores? That's a tougher situation, obviously, since most people do better with each successive test. (LSAC says: "Data show that scores for repeat test takers often rise slightly.") The things that can go wrong on a test day are wide and varied, and in a perfect universe, if you were having a bad test day, you should have canceled the score. But if you haven't canceled the score, explain what happened, and try not to give an impression that will undermine anyone's confidence in you as a future law student and lawyer. For example, it doesn't reflect well on an applicant to say that he panics in high-stakes testing situations. (How is he going to survive the much longer, more grueling bar exam? Or even law school exams? Or oral argument in front of a judge?)

I'd love for readers to post their own thoughts. Why do you think your score went up or down? How are you answering application questions about score differences?

_________________

* Here's what LSAC says on page 24 of its Information Book for 2009-10: "Score bands for the LSAT are designed to include your actual proficiency level approximately 68 percent of the time."

Ah the agony. Waiting for the decision from the admissions office. It makes everyone edgy - not just you, but also your parents. A lot of applicants I know find managing their parents' anxiety more difficult than managing their own anxiety. So we'll start there. How do you manage your parents' anxiety?

Well, first you accept that you can't manage anyone else's feelings. Can't be done. If your parents are anxious, they are anxious. That's that.

So why a blog about how to manage your parents' anxiety? Because you can do three things that will help you with your parents (and actually help them, since they are mostly anxious because they are worried about you!).

1. Remind yourself that you are not responsible for your parents' feelings. They are. It is part of growing up that you start to understand this distinction. Even if your parents' feelings are about you, you are not responsible. This distinction is a bit tricky, but it's real. So release any anxiety you have because you are making your parents anxious. You aren't anxiety-inducing. Life is.
   
2. Even though you can't do anything about their feelings, you can do something about their behavior in response to those feelings. You can help your parents direct their behavior in ways that support you instead of compound your own anxiety and edginess. In a calm moment, tell them that you really appreciate that they are so concerned about your happiness and well-being AND that the best way for them to show their support of you is to [fill in the blank]. Here are some ideas for filling in the blank: not talk about college admissions at all, but instead talk about all the other things going on in life; instead of looking at you with the "concerned eyes," give you a hug and tell you how much they love you. You get the idea. BE SPECIFIC. And it doesn't hurt to praise them when they do what you've asked. That alone will startle them so much that they will probably leave you alone for a good 24 hours.
   
3. Manage your own feelings and behavior in response to them. You're anxious. You're edgy. That's okay. It is to be expected. But how do you act when you are anxious and edgy? If you snap at everyone, or let loose with some winning sarcasm, or fail to exhibit common courtesies, that's not okay. Worse still is if you medicate those feelings with alcohol, smoking, or drugs. That's not just not okay - that's a death spiral. It's time to grow up and respond constructively to these feelings. Do things that calm you down - work out, listen to music, have some fun with friends.

And the decision is coming. It won't be much longer that you have to be a mature grown-up while feeling like you are about to jump out of your skin. I promise.

Comments or Questions?

Want to vent your anxiety or ask for guidance on how to talk to your parents?  Post your issue, no matter how big or small. We'll respond!

Alison Cooper Chisolm writes the series 52 Weeks to College. She has worked in admissions at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and most recently Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Alison works with college applicants and their families as they navigate the college admissions process. Read more about Alison here. 

Two great new postings from Steve Schwartz at LSAT Blog, one on the shift in test dates this coming season (and why that matters), and the June vs. October debate. Well worth reading.

• LSAT Test Dates in 2010 and 2011 | Change From Previous Years

• Deciding to Take June vs October LSAT | Pros and Cons

 

Is there a type of essay that annoys admissions officers so much that they'll stop in the middle of reading an application to vent? Yep. Here's what just hit my inbox:

I doubt you'd let your clients do this anyway, but the most annoying kind of essay I see is the "Why I'm so perfect/how I've ticked all the boxes. Can I recite my resume for you?" essay. 

It takes the form of: "Since early childhood, I have been an over-achieving perfectionist. Not content simply to excel at everything I have done, like be the president of the school paper and work for my state senator while maintaining a 4.0 GPA, I wanted to share my wonderfulness with the less fortunate. So I also have an extensive background in public service. I recognize that there are certain skills that one needs to excel as a lawyer, so I have acquired those, as well, by doing A, B, and C. Now I am primed to enter law school.  Admission to [---] Law School will be the culmination of my decade of effort - nay, the laurel wreath crowning my wonderfulness."

By the way, that final sentence is only a slight adaptation of the one I actually just read.

We on the admissions committee will take the B+ student with 85% percentile LSATs and an essay demonstrating personal maturity and an interesting set of life experiences over the A student with 90% LSATs and an essay like the one above every time.

For those of you who haven't submitted your applications yet, or who are applying in the coming season, take heed. Anyone with law school admissions experience will have an allergic reaction to that kind of essay, and there are tens of thousands of them floating around every year. Treat that as a template for what NOT to write.

 

Are law schools and business schools, as well as applicants, obsessed with interdisciplinary education? In my experience, yes, and I have cautioned against what Judge Easterbrook called "Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse" ("put together two fields about which you know very little and get the worst of both words"). Getting interdisciplinary education right is hard.

Now Jeff Lipshaw, a professor at Suffolk Law School and all-around smart guy, has published a paper arguing that interdisciplinarity isn't enough anyway, because someone has to make the judgment call about what goes into that intersection, and how to solve those complexities:

The relationship of pure and mixed business and legal judgment can be modeled in a Venn diagram. The question is who is capable of making judgments in the overlap. Businesspeople are not competent to assess the legal implications, and not inclined merely to trust the decision to lawyers. Lawyers, on the other hand, are usually successors to a particular method of organizing the world, and members of a closed discipline. By nature of the very concept of a judgment, it must occur privately in a single conscious mind, no matter how the judgment is ultimately communicated, shared, or adopted by others. The implication for lawyering and legal education is that some of the old canards about leaving business judgment to the business people must fall away....

Business judgment depends far more on the argument from merit, versus legal judgment, which depends far more on the argument from authority, and a particular kind of authority at that. What, then, does it means to be an expert in the overlap of the diagram? We need to define a new professional discipline: the field of metadisciplinarity. Being a metadisciplinarian takes one to a higher order skill than mere interdisciplinarity: it means being an expert in the making of interdisciplinary judgments.... 

Read more here.

For more casual readers, I asked Jeff how this all boils down, and here's what he said:

There's a skill in deciding things you don't know much about.  Unfortunately, it's not a skill taught much in law school, nor anywhere in academia where strong disciplines govern.

Your point is correct - getting the second degree doesn't help much.  You also have to jump across the divide to make good business/legal judgments, whether you have the second degree or not, just as doubling down in academic disciplines doesn't do much except co-opt you in both orthodoxies!

Those of you who work or teach in one or the other discipline, or at the intersection of both, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Please share.

It has finally come. The lull. You have nothing, I repeat, nothing to do this week that relates to college admission. Well, actually I am going to suggest one thing. I encourage you to learn the life skill of "enjoying the lull."

Some people can't do it. You know who they are - the types that always have to be busy, busy, busy; the types that can't stand to turn off their cell phones; the types that barely finish one project before another one is underway. In my experience, these types either die young (no lie, drop dead of a heart attack at the desk in the office) or aren't really very happy or both.

If you are going to master enjoying the lull, you should do the following things this week (skill building for enjoying the lull):

1. Do one thing at a time. No multi-tasking. Whatever you are doing, do it only. So if you are playing Wii, do it and nothing else.
2. Play. Make time every day to do whatever you do that you do just because it is fun. No redeeming qualities, no resume building potential, no "shoulds." If you are really playing, you'll know it because you'll laugh out loud at some point for no reason.
3. Take a nap or go to bed early. Bonus sleep. It always serves you well.

That's it. Life is good all the time, but the lull is especially good!

Comments or Questions?

Post a suggestion for fun things to do during the lull.  We all like new ideas for play!

Alison Cooper Chisolm writes the series 52 Weeks to College. She has worked in admissions at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and most recently Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Alison works with college applicants and their families as they navigate the college admissions process. Read more about Alison here.

 

I'm excited to be speaking at NYU's pre-law event this coming Monday. For all you NYUers out there who are thinking of participating: please post your questions here (or shoot me an email at blog at annaivey dot com) and I'll do my best to work them in. Looking forward to meeting you all!

Some of you probably waited until the last minute to complete your CSS Financial Aid Profile on the College Board's site.  If you did, you may have found yourself caught in severe slowdowns and intermittent outages on Sunday, January 31st.  According to the College Board, the problems started at about 5.30p EST and were not resolved until midnight (in other words, right at the February 1st deadline).

If you were one of those students affected, you need to confirm with each college that your PROFILE application was processed and submitted by the deadline.  If the college received it late, explain your problem and ask that the deadline be waived.  The College Board has notified schools that there were problems, so you may find mercy.  If the college did not receive it, resubmit it along with any documentation showing that you thought it had been submitted by the deadline.

I live in the Northeast. As I write this blog, it is sunny, but freezing cold outside --- somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15 below with the wind chill. That's probably why I scheduled this week into the 52 week plan now - I want to look ahead to summer and remind myself that it will be warm again! Regardless of where you live, it would be a good idea for you to look ahead to your summer now. Why? Because thinking about it now gives you time to make the necessary supporting plans and then execute those plans. It ensures that you can have the summer you want to have.

So grab a few sheets of paper and prepare yourself to dream a little about the perfect summer after high school graduation. Answer these 10 questions and you'll have the outline of a plan for your summer and some obvious next steps for turning the dream into a reality.

1. When will your summer officially begin? Generally it is after graduation, but it may be different for you.
2. When will your summer officially end? Generally it is the day you arrive at college. Since we're dreaming now, pull out the calendar for your top pick school and see when you have to be on campus.
3. Do you want or need to work to earn money for college? Where might you work? When do you need to apply? What would your ideal schedule be?
4. Do you want to complete an internship or service project to build your skills and deepen your sense of possible career paths? What opportunities are available to you? When are the application deadlines?
5. What do you want to do for fun? Where, when, and with whom?
6. Do you want to plan some special times with your family or close friends to celebrate your graduation or to say goodbye as you leave for college?
7. When are you going to have some "down time" to just be and recover from the crazy, hectic time of senior year before starting on the new adventure called college?
8. Do you need to do some reading or complete a class before you arrive at college in the fall?
9. Does the college have a required Freshman Orientation? If so, when? Are there any optional add-on Freshman Experiences that you'd like to consider? What are they?
10. How are you going to get to college? How much time will it take?

That's it. Summer planning is almost as easy and as much fun as summer itself. Now schedule the things you need to do over the next two months for sure (e.g. apply for jobs, internships, or service projects or plan graduation celebration) and leave the rest until May 1. At that point, you can finalize the plan because you'll know where you are going to college.

As for me, I'm going to check out the recommendations on kayaks and plan a quiet water kayaking vacation for me and my husband. And of course, I'll include some stops at colleges that I've never visited so I have more information for my next class of applicants!

Comments or Questions?

Share your summer plans with us, particularly if they include some beach time!  Let others know about opportunities that are great for the last summer before college! 

Alison Cooper Chisolm writes the series 52 Weeks to College. She has worked in admissions at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and most recently Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Alison works with college applicants and their families as they navigate the college admissions process. Read more about Alison here.