More Updates

After the huge wave of decisions right before Christmas, there was a break in the action. Included in that break was a trip to Texas to visit my brother. While I was down there, I paid a visit to Baylor. It was a beautiful campus, and the law building was awesome. Seeing the mock courtrooms, the library, the classrooms, everything. It was just a great experience. The admissions office was very friendly, and there was even a professor that stopped and talked to me for a few minutes. It was a great place. I would highly recommend it to anybody. Except myself. It just didn't seem right. This is the reason why it is so important to visit schools. To get that feeling of knowing this is where you should be.

I've received a couple more decisions. There were some bad, some good, some middle. I was accepted at University of Colorado and George Washington University recently (I will write a separate blog post soon about GWU. It's a good looking school). I was waitlisted at Vanderbilt (which was a big bummer. That was one I would have loved to go to). Finally, I was rejected at NYU and University of Michigan.

I'm going to be making a few more visits over my long President's Day weekend. Hopefully I will have some more decisions before that, but this is it for now.

Lots of Updates

Towards the end of last week, I received a huge amount of decisions. Well, by huge I mean 5. The good news is that 4 of them were acceptances! The bad news is that the one that wasn't an acceptance was from a Top 10 school. The mediocre news is that that decision was a waitlist, so I guess I can't be too down on it.

The 4 acceptances were from Chicago-Kent (75ish), University of Houston (60ish), George Mason University (41, in Arlington, VA), and Wake Forest University (40, in Winston-Salem, NC). The waitlist was from the University of Virginia (10). I'm really hoping that the waitlist turns into something more, but we will see.

Just to help everyone out, now seems like a good time to recap how the deicisions have been thus far:

Accepted at:
University of Illinois
University of Iowa
Ohio State University
University of Wisconsin
Wake Forest University
George Mason University
University of Cincinnati
University of San Diego
University of Houston
Baylor University
University of Pittsburgh
Chicago-Kent Illinois Institute of Technology
Santa Clara University (Have since withdrawn from here)

Waitlisted at:
University of Virginia
Notre Dame

Rejected at:
Georgetown University

Still waiting for decisions from 16 schools, meaning I am now at the halfway point. Still a LOT of big decisions to come.

Great Day

This is a great day. It really is. I have my last final exam of the semester. It's bittersweet because I get to go home soon, but I'm also halfway done with my senior year. Either way, I'm really excited for what life has in store for me next semester, next year, and for the many years to come.

I also have a job lined up for next semester, working about 25 hours as a clerk at a law firm that I clerked for in 2007. They were really excited I contacted them about a position, meaning I must have done something right that summer.

But most of all, today is a great day because my only sibling, my brother, a member of the Military Police in the Army, is flying home from Iraq. He has been overseas for almost a year now and has missed so much, including the birth of his firstborn child. Even though I will not be with him on Christmas Day, I'm very excited to go see him a few days after Christmas, and I'm happy to know that he will be with his family for the holidays. Unfortunately, many members of the armed forces will not be returning in time for the holidays, and I think it would be a great idea to just reflect on that a little bit during this time that many of us take for granted. This post has very little to do about law school, but I think it would be wonderful if, during this joyous and family-oriented time of year, we say a little thank you, even silently, to the troops overseas who won't be with their families on Christmas, Hannukah, or any other holiday they may be celebrating.

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.

Cincinnati and Notre Dame

So it's been a mixed 4 days. On one hand, I got accepted at the University of Cincinnati on Friday (12/4/09). It is a good school, but not quite as high up as Iowa or Ohio State. I will certainly keep it as a possibility, but chances are I will not be attending Cincinnati.

On the other hand, I received a decision from Notre Dame today. Waitlisted :(. Bummer, I know. It is better than a straight out rejection, though. I'm hoping that I can still get into a top 20 school (Notre Dame is tied for 23), but I guess only time will tell.

In other news, Georgetown has made a decision regarding my admission. It was made last Tuesday (12/1/09), and I still have heard nothing. I'm still trying to determine whether I should be happy (rejections and waitlists are said to go out via e-mail, and acceptances are said to go out via snail mail) or scared. Hopefully I will get a decision soon enough. Pray for me!

University of Pitt

So I got a very pleasant surprise today as I got back to school from Thanksgiving Break. In my mailbox was a very nice acceptance letter from the University of Pittsburgh, along with a very large, heavy, shiny gold paper clip (there was also a $52,000 scholarship attached to it, which helps out). This application was one of the applications that I sent out at the end of October when my only acceptance was from Baylor. Being my pessimistic self, I applied here, thinking that Pittsburgh was actually a very underrated town in terms of safety and beauty and that this might be the area of schools that I would be going to (Pitt is ranked 71). Now that I have some acceptances from Iowa and Ohio State, it seems like Pitt probably won't be an option for me. I will wait a little bit to withdraw, however. Maybe the job prospects on the east coast will be somehow better for someplace like Pitt as opposed to the midwest colleges. We will see! For now, I'm simply enjoying the acceptance, hoping that some of the higher ranked schools will give me a chance.