April 2009

Most people think of standardized tests as a necessary evil and really boring to think about.  Charles Williamson is not one of those people, and we're excited to bring him on board as an Ivey Files blogger.

For the past eight years, Charles hasn’t met a standardized test he didn’t like, helping hundreds of students in everything from the SAT and ACT to the SSAT to the GMAT to AP Calculus. 

A longtime student of the thought process that defines performance on standardized tests, Charles got off to a good start, receiving a perfect score on his SATs in high school. He then graduated from Brown University, earning bachelor's degrees in computer science and history.  He has long been fascinated by the intersection of education and technology, and when not writing about standardized tests and educational policy, he will be happy to speculate rampantly about how the Internet will affect the ways that we learn. 

Because all of the above makes him sound less than socially well-adjusted, I would hasten to add that he does lots of normal stuff too. If you bug him enough, he might even write about it.

Keep an eye out for his postings -- first one coming soon!

As the college admissions season starts to wrap up, I wanted to share some observations from another very interesting year:

Rock Climbing

I sat on a number of college admissions panels this past year (seminars and workshops for applicants and their parents), and one exchange in particular stood out for me.

As we were discussing school visits and the best ways to go about picking a college, one mom raised her hand and launched into a discussion about her son's grand passion for rock climbing. She recounted their various school visits in terms of this rock climbing wall and that rock climbing program, and she asked me to weigh in. How should they go about making their decision?

My response: "So you're going to select your son's college education based on a rock climbing wall?"

The room fell dead silent, and then people started laughing (including the mom who had asked the question). I hadn't meant to be sarcastic or snarky, and I don't think they took it that way. I had wanted to find a way to suggest that they might have lost some perspective and that they should take a step back and reassess what their priorities are in a college education.

Sometimes those priorities get lost in the big shuffle of the college application process, especially when schools in recent years have been seducing applicants (and their parents) with bling-bling amenities, gadgets, and facilities. That's less of a problem in this new era of shrinking endowments and budget cuts, but the overall message remains.

In any event, apparently that one-line response did the trick, and now "rock climbing" is my shorthand for asking people to reflect on their priorities in the college search process, whatever their priorities might be.

Heartbreak

I also heard an admissions officer from a very competitive liberal arts college give some great advice to a group of high school students. Paraphrasing roughly: Admissions officers are trying to assemble well-rounded classes; they're not necessarily looking for well-rounded people. If you let yourself fall in love with one dream school in the application process, you are setting yourself up for heartbreak, because you have no way of knowing if the admissions team that year is going to be intensely interested in adding a soprano or a fencer or a debater or a trombonist or a Latinist to the mix. And whatever well-roundedness gaps they're looking to fill this year might be different from last year's, so predicting what those gaps will be -- and whom your dream school is going to court -- is difficult.

On a related note, I'm reminded that college admissions heartbreak can come from different sources. Over the years, I've heard from a number of applicants whose hearts were broken by an athletic coach who was courting them hard and making big promises about their likelihood of admission. It's amazing to me how many coaches talk as if admission were a done deal. Sometimes they have that kind of admissions pull, but sometimes they don't. Don't let a coach break your heart; take their promises of admission with a grain of salt. 

Community service

In talking to many college applicants as well as admissions officers, I've noticed that community service jobs have come to crowd out other kinds of extracurriculars. Service jobs are great, but admissions officers know that many high schools require them, or give out awards and perks for logging a minimum number of hours. As a result, community service has become highly inflated (in terms of résumé value), and it can be hard for an applicant to stand out through service activities alone.

One admissions officer also pointed out that it's immediately obvious when applicants haven't really internalized their service experience, because they parrot what some adult has told them to think about the experience. Guess what: teenagers don't observe the world or reflect on it the way grown-ups do. Admissions officers can spot the authentic reflections -- and the parroted ones -- a mile away, and that can sometimes mean the difference between acceptance and rejection at the most competitive schools.

Please share your own experiences and feedback. I'm curious to hear how the season went for you.

From LSAT tutor Nick Eddy of Mentor Test Prep:

To all students:

The LSAC has quietly slipped an important (and unfortunate) change into their regulations regarding the deadline to change the test date once you have registered for the exam.

The deadline to change the June 8th exam test date (in other words, postpone) to September is now May 17th (online); May 15th (mail/phone/fax):

http://www.lsac.org/LSAT/test-dates-us-june.asp

Previously, it was possible to change the test date of your exam until midnight of the first workday after the exam, so long as you did not show up at the test site.  This action was invisible to law schools, and so you could wake up the morning of the exam, decide you were not up to it, and simply push the date back, at the cost of about $33.

But it didn't show up on any record, and did not count toward the limit of 3 LSATs taken per 2 year period.

This change means that once the May 17th deadline expires, you are committed to either:

• take the exam
• cancel the exam - within six calendar days of the exam (unsightly but not fatal)
• pull a no-show (very bad form)

Each of these actions will show up on all future score reports, and each will count towards the 3 exams-per-2-years limit.

Therefore you must now make a very serious appraisal of your form and likelihood of improvement, roughly 3 weeks before your test date.  To add insult to injury, the fee for changing the test date has been increased to $66:

http://www.lsac.org/LSAT/lsat-and-lsdas-fees.asp

This is not going to reduce anyone's stress levels, but it is obviously very consequential, so keep it in mind.

Hope all is well.

Nick

[And Nick's follow-up to me:]

Let me also give you a link (in case you haven't seen it) that I use to inspire my students to study harder for the exam:

http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/composite.pdf

Lord knows what those percentages will look like in 3 years' time... 

I received a wonderful email from a law professor (and former Department of Justice and private law firm attorney). He writes, "I was asked to send my thoughts to a college student who is considering a number of top-tier schools" and allowed me to share.

____________

Before I begin, I should state the disclaimer that you generally don't get value unless you pay for it in America, and my advice is free, so draw your own conclusions.  My three and a half points to consider:

First, if you are choosing between top-tier schools, go to the best school you get into.  Jobs during law school, jobs immediately after law school, clerkships, professors, networking, reputational impact generally, and learning-by-osmosis from your fellow students is greatly affected by even small increases in school ranking.  Certainly there can be reasons to go to a lower-ranked school but think hard before you do so, even if the cost difference is significant.  And don't ever think, "I'll go to the lower-ranked school, but I'll be a big fish in a small pond" (I actually heard a student claim this to me once).  Law school grade curves are very compressed and chances are strong that you will be in the middle of the pack wherever you go -- so you are likely to be choosing, for example, between being an average student at the #3 school versus being an average student at the #5 school.  Personally, I hate the rankings and think they are overblown, but the fact is that they matter.  I didn't take this advice myself, and for several years after law school I wished I had (fortunately, after five or so years of practice, it no longer matters).

Second, know yourself, and take a year off if you think you would benefit.  There is much recent cognitive science that indicates that the young adult brain -- particularly the young adult male brain -- doesn't have fully formed logic and judgment centers until one's mid-20s.  Obviously we are talking about averages, and you may be unusually cognitively mature, but most people will be better first-year law students at 24 than at 23, and at 23 than at 22, simply because their brains are older.  This matters because your first year grades are the ones that count the most.  Don't be too concerned about "putting your life on hold for a year" (I hear this frequently); there are lots of things to do, and your career in the law is likely to last forty years -- there's no rush to start.  Being a little older when you get out of school is also a plus; for the same brain-development reasons, a 27 year old is generally a better first year lawyer than a 25 year old, simply because the 27 year old is more mature.  About three quarters of my colleagues who did not take time off say they wish they had (although not always for the reason I just mentioned).

Read big-picture sources on what the law is about, and start NOW.  First year of law school isn't as bad as "The Paper Chase" but it is more information than most people can comfortably take in, and it's easy to lose the big picture in all the class details.  Give yourself a leg up by reading interesting, big-pictures sources.  A terrific source is the "Pre Law Reading List" by the Federalist Society.  That's a conservative/libertarian organization but the list is useful regardless of your politics; in fact, it's probably most useful if you aren't conservative/libertarian, since you will be challenging yourself.  I wasn't able to find a similar list from the American Constitution Society, which is the liberal/progressive counterpart, but do peruse that website.  Also peruse the American Bar Association's website; Most of the best U.S. legal thinkers are members of two of these organizations (sometimes all three).  

The 1/2 recommendation:  consider ROTC.  If you are well suited to do so -- again, know thyself -- consider the Reserve Officer Training Corps of the military or the National Guard.  Once you start practice or have a family, it becomes very difficult to take the time to do the initial entry training, or you may age out; therefore, the time to make a decision about it is now or very soon.  Without exception, everyone I know who did this counts it as his or her best decision, and that includes people who have had long deployments overseas.  The unselfish reasons are obvious; also, being a veteran helps significantly in getting government law jobs and in working in politics.  The drawbacks to service, of course, are equally obvious.  It's a big decision -- my point is that it's a decision that gets made for you in the negative if you don't make it affirmatively when you are young.  In full disclosure, I did not serve, and would not have been well suited to it when I was of prime age (I was declined as too old when I looked into it post-9/11; instead, I joined as a civilian law enforcer), so my information comes from friends and isn't first hand.  Seek first hand advice if you want to consider this further.

Good luck with your decision.  Despite my point #1, don't sweat it overmuch.  If you have a good mind, you will have a great career regardless of what you do in your first few years after undergrad.