University of Illinois/Santa Clara University

It seems like I'm posting everything in twos, and they typically have nothing to do with eachother. This time, though, I swear that they are linked. As you can see in my last post, I was waiting for a notification from University of Illinois last Friday, and to my joy, I was accepted! They even gave me a scholarship, which really surprised me to see that a school ranked at the same place as Notre Dame would give me a 30,000 dollar scholarship (10k per year) when Notre Dame waitlisted me. I guess that just goes to show how much of a crapshoot this process actually is. Thank you, Dean Pless, for my acceptance! You have easily taken the preliminary lead in my law school search.

In other news, I withdrew my application to Santa Clara University today. I received my scholarship information from them, and they only gave me 33,000 dollars over the three years (equating to 11k per year). I will take the 1k less per year and go to a school that is ranked over 60 spots higher than it, even if it is not in California. Good luck to all who are still awaiting a decision at SCU, and hopefully my withdrawal will open a spot for someone who is very deserving of that spot.

Now for the rest of finals week. One down, three to go!

Wisconsin and Georgetown

So today was a very mixed bag of decisions. On the good side, I got accepted at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. It is tied with Ohio State at #35 in the country, so it is a very good school. I'm proud to be among the first few people who were accepted to this school. When it is a school as great as Wisconsin, it is an honor to be in that first batch. Guess I will have a little more research to do about good ol' Wisconsin!

On the flip side, I FINALLY received a decision from Georgetown. As one can probably infer, it was a rejection. It's not completely unexpected, but it was the most nerveracking week I can ever remember. The fact that I waited a week from the time a decision was made until the moment that I received an E-MAIL (a generic one, at that) telling me of my rejection was completely uncalled for. Obviously, maybe there were extenuating circumstances that caused them to have to delay the decisions that long, but I can't see anything that would cause them to be unable to send out a mass e-mail of rejection notifications. This process made me lose a lot of respect for Georgetown.

In the same sense, it made me gain a lot of respect for the University of Illinois. The dean of admissions at this school, Dean Pless, is a regular poster on the website Top Law Schools . I went under review at this institution on December 3rd, and he immediately posted that all individuals that went under review on this date would receive an e-mail notification of their decision on Friday, December 11th. That sort of honesty and transparency has to be admired, even moreso after the Georgetown fiasco. Well done, Illinois. Even if you send a rejection my way, I will always admire those qualities.