From the Admissions Office

We are still accepting applications for the fall entering class. It is not too late to apply! Our tentative deadline is March 1st but we accept applications through the end of March. The application for Washington University School of Law is still available at LSAC.org.

We hope to have all decisions sent out by the end of March to those whose applications were completed by March 1.

Washington University School of Law will be closed starting Thursday, December 30th at 12pm CDT and will reopen on Monday, January 3rd at 8:30am CDT.

Happy New Year!

-The Admissions Staff at Washington University School of Law

We have had a number of requests for applications to be held and not reviewed until the December LSAT scores come in. We are more than happy to do this. Please e-mail the Admissions Office if you would like your application to be held for this reason. Once we put an application on hold, it will be reflected on the Status Check page. After the December LSAT scores come in we will remove the holds and all applications that were previously held will be put back in the pool to be reviewed. If you have requested your application to be held and the current status on your Status Check page does not say “On Hold,” please notify the Admissions Office. If you have not explicitly called or e-mailed the Admissions Office to request that your file be placed on hold, it will not be done. Some applicants think that because they list a future LSAT date on their application, we will automatically put it on hold and this is not true.

To request a hold on your application please email admiss@wulaw.wustl.edu.

Washington University School of Law, like many other law schools, uses a real-time status check page for applicants to keep themselves apprised of the status of their application. Username and Password information for each applicant is sent to the e-mail address we have on file for the applicant.  Below is a list of the various statuses we use and what they mean.

Application Received- Your application has been received.

Application Complete- Your application is complete, meaning you have included all of the required items with your Application and LSDAS report. 

Application Incomplete- Your application is incomplete, meaning you are missing one or more required items with your Application or LSDAS report.

We require:
Completed Application
Application Fee/ Fee Waiver
Personal Statement
Resume
2 Letters of Recommendation (minimum)
LSAT Score
Transcript, processed by the LSAC

On Hold- You have asked the Admissions Office to place your application on hold.

In Review- Your completed application has been sent to the Admissions Committee to be reviewed.

Declined Offer- You have declined our offer of admissions.

Deferred to 2012- You have requested and been granted a deferral for one year.

Seat Reserved/First Deposit- You have paid the first deposit of $300 and reserved your seat in the incoming class.

Seat Reserved/ Second Deposit- You have paid both the first and second deposits, reserving your seat in the incoming class.

Application Withdrawn- You have withdrawn your application from consideration before a decision was made.

It is our school policy not to post final decisions on the Washington University School of Law status check page. All decisions are sent via e-mail.

For questions about the status check page please call the Admissions Office at 314-935-4525 or e-mail admiss@wulaw.wustl.edu

Washington University School of Law has a supplemental Financial Aid Form that applicants will need to fill out, should they be admitted and wish to apply for Financial Aid. This form is used in conjunction with the FAFSA form. This form, while mentioned on our application, does NOT need to be filled out in order to submit your application and does NOT need to be filled out in order for your application to be considered complete. We have received many questions about this form and just wanted to clarify.

If you have any questions about the Supplemental Financial Aid Form or Financial Aid please call 314-935-4605 or email eckrich@wulaw.wustl.edu

2 cycles ago the Admissions Office for Washington University School of Law decided to go paperless. With the implementation of a new web based system for the flow of law school applications, we decided to jump on the band wagon and revamp our admissions process.

First lets take a look at our old application process. In the past, when an applicant signed up for the LSAC services, and sent them transcripts and letters of recommendation to be processed, we would request them online and get sent giant packages of applications and LSDAS reports. We would then hole punch the documents, put them into folders, and make labels for each one. After this process we would have to manually flip through the pages of each application and LSDAS report to make sure each applicant had included everything we require in order to be complete. These packages would come everyday along with regular mail of addendum, updated resumes, letters of rec, etc. All of these mailed items would be put into a giant accordion folder alphabetically for our work study to hold punch and file into each application folder. There was a constant flow of paper into our office and it took a lot of  time to process it all. We had massive file cabinets in our office color coded for applicant files that were complete, incomplete and ready to be reviewed. Our Admissions Committee would take giant stacks of files into their offices and read through them to make decisions.   Little did we know how wonderful (and relatively painless) the transition to paperless could be.

So what exactly does it mean to be paperless?
First and foremost it means we no longer receive paper applications or LSDAS reports from the LSAC (Law School Admission Council). As an applicant, as soon as you submit your application to us online, we receive it within an hour. Over 95% of our applicants apply online through the LSAC. When an application flows into our database, we look over everything, skim through the PDF files of the application and LSDAS report to make sure all the required materials are included and then we change the status of the file to either complete or incomplete. If an application is complete it is ready to be reviewed by our Admissions Committee.  This does not mean the file is necessarily reviewed right away, as we do not do rolling admissions. If an application is incomplete it usually means we are missing a letter of recommendation (we require 2), the applicant has not yet taken the LSAT, or the most common thing we see is an applicant misses one of the conduct questions on the application. Once these issues are resolved, the application can be completed.

But what if I want to send in additional documents or addendum?
Applicants are welcome to send in any additional materials through regular mail or e-mail. Documents that are mailed will be scanned, converted to PDFs, and electronically attached to the specific applicant’s file. Documents sent as e-mail attachments will be saved as PDFs and then electronically attached to a file.

How can I check the status of my application?
Washington University School of Law as well as many other law schoo’s have implemented a Status Check Web Page. We send a confirmation email to all applicants with a generated Username and Password which allows each individual applicant to check the status of their application in real time. Applicants will always need their Username and Password to log into the Status Check Page, and a link to this page can be found both in the confirmation e-mail as well as on the Admissions homepage for Washington University School of Law.

How will I get my decision?
We send all of our decisions via email. Scary? Yes. Exciting and instant? Yes!!! This is why it is extremely important to keep the Admissions Office apprised of any email changes and double check the information you enter into each application. A lot of students are applying to law school while still in undergraduate school and may have a University assigned e-mail address. We suggest creating a new gmail, yahoo, hotmail, sbcglobal, etc. e-mail address before starting the application process, so there is no need to switch email addresses or have to forward e-mails to a new account should the University one be closed after graduation and in the middle of the application cycle.

If you have any questions about the paperless process, please comment below or feel free to call or email the Admissions Office at 314.935-4525 or admiss@wulaw.wustl.edu

Welcome to the Washington University School of Law Admissions Blog. The Admissions Office staff will be posting weekly to update applicants about events going on at Wash U Law and answer questions from prospective law students.