(Note to Michigan law admissions committee members: If you are reading this, please stop now. Go to the classifieds on the next page. Maybe someone sent you a 'U'-Mail.)
For myself and my fellow law school-bound seniors, it all started in June with the much-hated Law School Admissions Test. Midway through the test, we came across a passage that really captured the utter irrelevance of the test to the study or practice of law. El Niño, it seems, must be taken into account when trying to determine volcanic effect on global weather patterns. So that's been the missing link in all of the great legal questions of the ages. Ah ha, El Niño! It all makes
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Jack SchillaciSlam it to the Left |
But never forget, the LSAT is (somewhat) correlated with first-year law school grades. But with what are first-year law school grades correlated? Weight? If so, I'm screwed (no fat jokes, Anuj). How about ability, intelligence or work ethic? You might be able to make a case for some of the latter, but I'll bet there are more than a few good lawyers and judges out there that really screwed up their first year of law school (Earl Warren, for example).
Though I've (thankfully) never taken them, the GRE, GMAT, MCAT and DAT look equally (if not more) repulsive. Geez, at least the LSAT is done after four hours or so. The MCAT takes a whole damned day.
With the standardized tests behind us, we academia-addicted seniors endeavored to find the school that would fit us best. But could these grad schools come up with some better PR people? "Here at XYZ University, we pride ourselves on our tradition of academic excellence." Well, duh. You wouldn't exactly advertise a tradition of academic incompetence, now would you? "Our faculty are highly trained practitioners who are devoted to research on emerging areas within the field." As opposed to what, poorly trained monkeys?
And then there's my favorite: "We look beyond test scores and grades to get an idea of who the applicant really is and what kind of contribution they could make to our outstanding institution." Yeah, right. That explains why test score and GPA medians are displayed prominently at the back of every brochure.
Every single Website, pamphlet and forum one visits or reads rehashes the same painfully predictable statistics and ideas. Sooner or later, the ubiquitous U.S. News & World Report rankings come out and the grad school-bound take their test scores and their GPA to figure out where they stand.
Having used the time-honored method to select where we'll spend the next two to five years of our lives, we who want more letters after our names embark on the task of summarizing our life in a personal statement. Somehow, we are supposed to help give admissions committees insight into who we "really are" in a page or two. How vacuous do these people think we are? I strongly doubt that two pages is sufficient to give an adequate summary of what most on this campus have done.
The writing prompts also leave something to be desired. "Please write a two-page essay discussing something that is important to you and how it relates to your career goals." Well that's vague and useless. A lot of things are important to me. How about bacon? Life without bacon is no life at all, as far as I'm concerned. Mmmm ... bacon (I said shut up, Anuj). Does that count? How does it relate to my career goals? Um, I someday hope to be an attorney for Peppridge Farms? Is that OK?
In the home stretch, we finally turn to the tedious forms that grad schools require of applicants. Slightly longer than an undergrad application but with essentially the same questions, the law school variety are invariably cause to buy many bottles of white out. But some of the questions are just ridiculous. Why does my future law school care what my parents do for a living or where they were born? They're not alumni, so what difference does it make? I'm not filling out a financial aid form here. But if it helps my chances of getting in, I am more than willing to help out, I guess. What other irrelevant minutiae would you like to know? My shoe size? Eight. My favorite movie? "Clue." My favorite color? Red. My feelings about phrenology? I don't buy it - but no one has for about 150 years. My favorite recreational drug? I plead the Fifth.
Finally, the moment we all have been waiting for - writing a check for $70 to get the honor of being rejected from a really good school. If this column does anything, it should tell all the academically inclined underclassmen to forgo extra years in school and hours before a computer - and get a job instead.
- Jack Schillaci, Esquire, can be reached over e-mail at jschilla@umich.edu, but not for four years or so.
11-22-99
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