What factors go into admission for a visiting year?
April 24, 2024 1:31 PM Subscribe
You are in admissions, or know people in admissions at a graduate or especially law school. What factors, including internal, have caused you or others to admit or deny an applicant for a visiting/transient year?
1. I understand that personal circumstances are kind of the default necessity for this. But what level do the personal circumstances need to rise to?
2. How rigorous is the selection process? How many people generally apply for this, and how many are selected out of those applications?
3. What university factors go into this? What pressures do you or the people you know face to admit or deny?
4. Are you more interested in their academic record? Their social contributions? What are you looking for in terms of their contribution to the school?
1. I understand that personal circumstances are kind of the default necessity for this. But what level do the personal circumstances need to rise to?
2. How rigorous is the selection process? How many people generally apply for this, and how many are selected out of those applications?
3. What university factors go into this? What pressures do you or the people you know face to admit or deny?
4. Are you more interested in their academic record? Their social contributions? What are you looking for in terms of their contribution to the school?
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1. Personal circumstances can be a differentiator to add additional context to what we see elsewhere in your application. Did your grades suffer at some point during your academic career? Were there extenuating circumstances for that which aren't visible from a resume or your essays? Many schools take factors like this into consideration - google holistic admissions for some general info on this approach (though not sure if your school will follow this practice).
2. My school has multiple specialties within our grad programs. Some are more in-demand than others. The more in-demand programs are more selective - they just have more applicants than they can accommodate. The less in-demand specialties will admit anyone the faculty deem prepared and capable of success, but that doesn't mean everyone who applies, necessarily.
3. Enrollment capacity can be limited by many factors. For us it's faculty capacity primarily. We'd love to take more students but we currently have an upper-limit for this reason. I wouldn't say there's an externally-imposed cap.
4. Academic record is important to us for reasons of ensuring preparation for a rigorous academic program. Social contributions for ensuring that they have similar goals as the profession and the University. In my school those weigh pretty equally. Not every school will have the same ranking of priorities.
This is a really challenging series of questions to answer because every school will vary in how they think about this. I'd recommend connecting with a recruiter or admissions counselor for your school. They should be able to provide you with some good advice about the priorities of the school you have in mind.
posted by owls at 8:26 PM on April 24