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Float Maker
Ryan Ballard
NEW ORLEANS — If you want to know why Ryan Ballard has been spending most of his free time and creative energy building a spaceship that will never fly, the answer is simple: He did it all for the Wookiee.
Two weeks before what will surely be the geekiest of this year's Mardi Gras parades, the man who is building the event's main float is working through crunch time with his co-conspirator Brett Powers at midday on a Saturday.
"Did you see the ashtray?" Ballard asks, holding a gold, plate-size Millennium Falcon model and gesturing at a silver-domed ash receptacle. "I was thinking about turning it into an R2. How awesome is that?"
"There's a difference between Chewbacchus and a lot of the fandom stuff that happens at, like, Comic-Con. We're not going for movie-scale or accurate. There's a whole parody, satire aspect and a heavy Mardi Gras-influenced joke angle that we're going for." —Ryan Ballard
"Anything worth doing," Powers responds wryly, "is worth overdoing."
"Worth overdoing" could easily be the theme of Mardi Gras itself, but the way these guys celebrate the Carnival gives that excess an unexpected sci-fi twist. Currently, they are the only two people standing in the 9,000-square-foot warehouse they call "the Den" — essentially a DIY party nerd laboratory in the Marigny neighborhood, just east of the French Quarter — but throughout the day many more will arrive, drawn to assist with the construction of a sci-fi chariot worthy of a Wookiee.
Welcome to the world of the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus, the rebel alliance melding sci-fi and fantasy with the very old traditions of Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
In the middle of the Den, under the Chinese lanterns and trapeze bar (acrobats practice here when they're not around), sits another Millennium Falcon, much bigger than the one in Ballard's hand. It's built on an airport luggage hauler; next to it sits a fully functional "Bar-2 D2," which performs as advertised. The Falcon is the main contraption Ballard and his Chewbacchus cohorts are building for this year's Mardi Gras, and when the finished vehicle rolls through the streets of New Orleans, it'll carry not only one really fantastic ashtray, but also the original Wookiee himself — Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the Star Wars films.
That means this Falcon must be flawless. As more and more float-hands filter into the Den throughout the day, a hacked rickshaw with an iPod dock — named Vimana after the mythological Sanskrit flying machines — serves as a boombox, much like it does during Chewbacchus' parades. Throughout the weekend it will play an ever-evolving mix of nerdcore hip-hop, brass band tracks, "drunken nerd blues," marching band versions of iconic Star Wars theme songs, and loads of music so geeky it can't be decoded by Shazam.
"There's a difference between Chewbacchus and a lot of the fandom stuff that happens at, like, Comic-Con," says Ballard, the founder of Chewbacchus, the night before over dinner. "We're not going for movie-scale or accurate. There's a whole parody, satire aspect and a heavy Mardi Gras-influenced joke angle that we're going for."
For those who have never lived in New Orleans, the concept of a Mardi Gras parade organization — "krewes" as they're called — can seem a bit foreign. Dating back to the original Carnival parade group Mystick Krewe of Comus in 1857, the krewes are the ones who throw the individual parades during Mardi Gras season, which runs from Twelfth Night until Fat Tuesday. They are, as Ballard notes, rooted in the idea of satirizing conventional norms, but they also have their own rich histories and traditions. Most of them — there are 63 holding events this year — have long histories, require fairly sizeable membership fees, have their floats made by Blaine Kern Studios and are comprised of celebrants who have been grandfathered into the krewes in the sense that their grandfather was part of the same group.
So for nerds of modest means, what Ballard has done with Chewbacchus, which will hold its third Mardi Gras parade Saturday, is nothing short of revolutionary. He's designed a way for them to give Mardi Gras a geeky spin while also offering a DIY option to get involved with the sci-fi spectacle.
"They're certainly unique," says New Orleans City Council member Stacy Head. "I think they're adding a new dimension to the Mardi Gras fun that we haven't had added in a long time. It brings that whole comics and tech-y type world that we're now seeing move to New Orleans and it gives them something that's a takeoff on New Orleans and Mardi Gras but it's focused on a different group."
If it's possible to have just the right pedigree to become "Space Commander Chewbaccacabra" of a Mardi Gras krewe, Ryan Ballard has it. Raised in the Missouri Ozarks (he shares a hometown with the outlaw Jesse James), his father was a women's basketball coach, his mother was a stay-at-home mom and his maternal grandfather was a race car driver and Pentecostal preacher — a "snake-handling and charisma-oozing-out-of-every-pore" kind of man, Ballard says. Maybe it's in his DNA to enrapture people and get them to join his causes, to one degree or another. ("He's got a little P.T. Barnum [in him]," says Chewbacchus co-founder Kirah Haubrich.) A consummate tinkerer and artist, Ballard was a bit of an outcast and misfit as a kid. His childhood nickname was "Encyclopedia Brown," and he was forced to attend a strict Christian school after a Rube Goldberg machine he built in eighth grade started a fire.
Ballard still remembers the first time he saw Star Wars. He was 10 years old and visiting family in rural Oregon. The effect was dramatic: During a hike later in the trip, he saw what was probably a bear, but he became convinced he was witnessing a Wookiee in the wild. "I came in and I told my mom and my cousins and they were like, 'You saw Bigfoot!'" he says. "And I was like, 'No, it was Chewbacca!'"
Ballard fared much better in college. He went to the University of Central Missouri, where he could do whatever he wanted without fear of retribution. For some, this newfound freedom leads to binge drinking and poor choices; for a budding artist, it can lead to, well, the same things, but also an environment rife with creativity. In his third year, Ballard got a scholarship to study abroad and went to Adelaide, Australia. When it was over he spent the next summer hitchhiking around the country. Bit by the exploring bug, he came back to the States and began working on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico servicing oilrigs. Then he moved to Utah to give wakeboard tours. Later he taught English in Asia before coming back to the United States to work as a guide on cross-country bus tours.
"By that point it was three years straight of traveling and adventure jobs — just bouncing around," Ballard says. "I was ready to move somewhere and set up a studio and start pursuing my art career."
Eventually he came to New Orleans with a fellow tour guide who would later become his wife. He worked for art museums, taught after-school programs and eventually started a puppetry company. The couple got settled and he set up a home studio. He even had the very New Orleans experience of meeting a bloodsucker. It was 2004 and he was at a bar in the French Quarter when a tall not-of-this-time gentleman introduced himself as Count Saint-Germain, vampire. Ballard didn't buy the shtick at first — not even after the man appeared to drink blood from his own wrist. After the count demonstrated that he could stop and start his heart on command, Ballard became more swayed. "That was unexplainable," he says. "I'm not unconvinced there aren't vampires lurking about."
Then in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit and Ballard lost everything: The contents of the house he and his wife rented, his grandfather's 1969 Ford Fairlane race car, the teaching position, every piece of art he'd created. When his family relocated to Colorado Springs, where he'd found a job teaching gifted high school students, he had very little proof he was even an accomplished artist.
"I had this big puppet company and a successful art career going and it was all leveled," he says. "I had no pictures of any artwork. I was like, 'I'm an artist, I swear!'"
Despite the devastation, moving to Colorado had its benefits. Ballard rebuilt his puppet company, earned a master's degree in education and he got involved with the Burning Man community, where he learned a thing or two about making artistic contraptions that could move across the playa. Eventually, as art programs began returning to the city's schools, he came back to New Orleans. Shortly after he returned, he took his Burning Man skills to the Krewe du Vieux — the group known for throwing what's called the "penis parade" for its racy floats — and was drawn into the world of Mardi Gras.
Ryan Ballard's Favorite Chewbacchus Parade Jams
- 1 Drunken Nerd Blues — Some Metry Guy
- 2 Rock the Chewbacchanal — MC Chewbacon and Amen Five
- 3 Keeping Up With the Jetsons (feat. Ballzack) — Odoms
- 4 Zombie Apocalypse BBQ — C.O.G. (Consortium of Genius)
- 5 Land Speeder — Sci-Fried
- 6 Waterfall — Quintron and Miss Pussycat
- 7 Immigrant Song — Tin Men
Ballard's breakthrough came in May 2010 after he ran into his friend Haubrich in a bar. Co-owner of an artists' space called The Big Top, she'd had an epiphany about what a sci-fi krewe would look like, and she planted a single seed in Ballard's mind: "Chewbacchus," a mashup of "Chewbacca" and "Bacchus," the Roman god of wine.
"Between the time she said that to me and the next time I saw her, I had created Chewbacchus," Ballard says. "She knew I would do it; she knew if she passed this idea on to me that I was going to take it and run with it."
The launching of the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus went a lot better than the launching of some other new krewes, which tend to come and go. Building on knowledge he'd gained in Krewe du Vieux, which is fairly established but still far more raucous and crass than most of the Mardi Gras organizations, Ballard possessed the basic tools necessary to avoid major pitfalls that await fledgling krewes.
After a few weeks of building out ideas in his home studio, he put out the word to friends, made flyers and generally got people excited. He started holding krewe meetings at his home studio on Wednesdays. Eventually dozens of people showed up.
"We're offering people access to Mardi Gras that they might not otherwise have," says Ballard's Krewe of Chewbacchus comrade Powers. A New Orleans native and member of legendary Star Wars costuming group the 501st Legion, Powers is Chewbacchus' resident super-nerd. He said the sci-fi krewe makes it easy for New Orleans transplants or out-of-towners to "show up and have the benefit of being in a krewe without all the formalities."
"Our dues are super-cheap," he says. "It's basically DIY — if you can imagine it, we'll build it."
Easy access is clearly part of Chewbacchus' appeal, but the very nature of New Orleans is part of the reason for the new krewe's success. It's the kind of city that draws a group of people interested in creating a hybrid that combines old Mardi Gras traditions with the new ones of sci-fi and fantasy — it is, after all, the city that has given us cultural wonders as diverse as jazz, Anne Rice and hip-hop alien Lil Wayne. New Orleans' creative types tend to be as talented and city-proud as they are uncanny, and the people that choose to live there would seemingly be the sort ready to embrace a group of revelers that, as Ballard notes, "pray to a sacred drunken Wookiee."
New Orleans' creative types tend to be as talented and city-proud as they are uncanny, and the people that choose to live there would seemingly be the sort ready to embrace a group of revelers that, as Ballard notes, "pray to a sacred drunken Wookiee."
Still, it's the South, and tradition — and civic rules — still apply. No single governing body manages Mardi Gras, and any krewe must navigate the same channels any group looking to put on a parade would: getting permission from New Orleans City Council, approval of the local neighborhood association and assistance from the police department. It's generally understood that Mardi Gras krewes and parades have mythological themes (Dionysus, Thor, Endymion, etc.), so when the members of Chewbacchus introduced their idea at a city council meeting, they explained that their krewe's mythology was based not only on a Roman god (Bacchus), but also sci-fi, which they stipulated is the great mythology of our time. The council approved.
One of the krewe's first big endeavors came at Wizard World New Orleans Comic Con in January 2011. Ballard and a few of the original members brought Bar-2 D2 and an X-wing bicycle to the convention center and put on a mini Mardi Gras parade in the middle of the geek gathering. William Wyche, who was there with the Renaissance-recreating Society for Creative Anachronism, found himself intrigued by this new group. He tracked them to a booth, where he was told the krewe aimed to be the "future of revelry" and that they were a green organization — no combustion engines propel their contraptions. He thought they were hippies.
"I started talking to Ryan and I'm like, 'Well how much does it cost to join a Mardi Gras krewe, I've always heard it's hundreds and hundreds of dollars and you have to know somebody,'" Wyche says. "And he goes, 'No. It's all open-source, anybody can be in. It's do-it-yourself — if you can make a contraption or make your own throws, if you participate, then you can be in the krewe. Dues are $42.' And I'm like, 'The answer to life, the universe and everything? That 42? How would I pay you?'"
Ballard took his money via Square. Wyche is now captain of Redshirt Rebellion Security, an organization that takes its moniker from the guys on Star Trek who were always the first to risk death-by-alien on a new planet. In the Chewbacchus world, Redshirt Rebellion Security keeps order during parades.
These days the krewe is so strong — with about 500 dues-paying members, up from around 300 the first year — that it has "sub-krewes" that will roll in the Chewbacchus parade. Among them are the Krewe du Who for Doctor Who fans, the Krewe of the Living Dead for zombie aficionados, and — most awesomely — P.A.D.M.E. (People Allied for Droid Marriage Equality). P.A.D.M.E. was started by a married couple, one of whom will be parading in a tuxedo and C-3PO mask, while the other will wear a wedding dress sporting a beaded image of R2-D2. Oh, and their float is a giant wedding cake. (Side note: The Overlords of Chewbacchus would really like Star Trek star George Takei to be on their royal court in 2014, mainly so Ballard can build him a pink "Barship Enterprise." Hear that Sulu?)
That cake, as well as most of the other Chewbacchus floats, is being built at the Den in a flurry of activity that has consumed many a weekend and post-work cram-session. Many are self-funded — Ballard estimates that he's but thousands of dollars of his own money into Chewbacchus efforts over the years, but declines to say exactly how much — but the Millennium Falcon was funded by Kickstarter, which brought in $5,768 for construction of the ultimate pimped-out ride. (In addition to the $42 dues, Chewbacchus also raises funds for its parade and other efforts through the sales of T-shirts and fundraising parties.)
The Falcon's carriage — a Taylor-Dunn B-248 electric utility vehicle — was acquired in rural Louisiana and was brought here on a trailer. Ballard made the schematics, scaling up from a model of the smuggling starship. The throne for the parade's king and queen — Mayhew and his wife, Angie — has been upholstered with what has to be the closest approximation to actual Wookiee fur produced outside of Lucasfilm.
The hacked-together texture of the ship comes from reclaimed computer and cellphone parts attached to its surface. There's also a Star Wars logo and Rebel Alliance emblem made entirely out of woven Mardi Gras beads. Its undercarriage will be lit with around 300 RGB lights that can be controlled by remote. During the krewe's parade — which, in the "have costume, will travel" ethos of geekdom, will undoubtedly attract out-of-town "Bacchanaliens" — the royalty will be passing out homemade trinkets ("throws" in Mardi Gras parlance) that include R2-D2 medallion-ed beads, fuzzy Chewbacca beer cozies and Krewe du Who trading cards. Bar-2 D2 and more than a few other apparatuses that carry or dispense booze will accompany the Millennium Falcon.
As for the float's king and queen, they couldn't be more stoked to be Chewbacchus royalty. The couple had their first Mardi Gras experience when they participated in a parade with the 501st Legion and the Krewe of Tucks. It was there that they realized "the parades are the most fun you can have with your clothes on."
"Ryan Ballard has more energy than any 10 people that we know and is an amazing artist," the Mayhews wrote in an e-mail to Wired. "This year we are expecting the 501st to again be with us as we honor not only Chewbacca and Star Wars, but all science fiction genres across the galaxy."
None of that can happen until the Millennium Falcon float is actually done, and at this point — 5:15 p.m. two weeks before Chewbacchus rolls — there is a list of things both big and small that need finishing back in the Den. The latest is that ashtray. It's nearly done, and Ballard is attaching it to a console between the two thrones. Meanwhile, various krewe members are working on things like the Falcon's quad laser canon and electrical wiring.
Soon, Ballard and Powers are trying out the thrones where Mayhew and his wife will sit. "It's too big for me, so I think it might be just right," says Powers, swinging his feet like a child in a highchair. (Peter Mayhew is nearly 7′ 2″ tall.) Ballard, who can be a bit particular about the building and execution of his designs, agrees.
Ballard then checks on the placement of the latest Wookiee-themed fixture that will adorn the float — there are about a half-dozen in place with the Millennium Falcon still coming together in the warehouse. He heads to the front of his wonder whip, where he sizes up a bobble-head Chewbacca with grapes in its hair. The decoration has been placed on a cup-holder near the driver's cockpit. Ballard inspects it, giving it a little bounce-inducing tap.
She may not look like much compared to the massive colorful floats that roll through the streets of New Orleans on Fat Tuesday, but she's got it where it counts. And just as Ballard steps back to take in the full Falcon, the original Star Wars theme begins to play from a set of speakers not so far, far way.
"It's so awesome," he says, looking at the handiwork of his krewe. "It's perfect."


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Founded in a garage, Invitrogen's growth fueled biotech
In 1987, three local researchers gathered in an Encinitas garage with an idea that, 26 years later, is worth $13.6 billion.
The garage belonged to Lyle Turner, who got together with partners Joe Fernandez and William McConnell to create Invitrogen, a company that initially sold kits that researchers could use for isolating and cloning DNA.
While most biotech companies focused on creating the next blockbuster drug, Invitrogen adopted the Home Depot strategy, building an ever-growing catalog of supplies, equipment and services that researchers could use to understand and capitalize on the treasure trove of potential that is the human genome.
Duane Roth, chief executive of Connect, a San Diego nonprofit that links researchers and investors, said that was the genius of Invitrogen.
"In the beginning, they realized that the reagents that were used in these experiments were not standardized, and they were not easy to make. By focusing on this niche, they became very efficient," Roth said.
That niche has grown from relatively simple test kits to creating some of the most sophisticated DNA sequencing machines available.
Along the way, the company has never balked at a chance to grow.
In February 1999, the company went public, with annual revenue listed at $31.4 million and 221 employees. The company's stock offering raised $52.5 million and led to the acquisition of fellow San Diego biotech supply company Novex just a few months later.
A much larger deal was just around the corner.
In 2000 Invitrogen purchased Dexter Corp., a 233-year-old Connecticut-based chemicals company for $1.9 billion in cash and stock. Invitrogen kept only Life Technologies, the Dexter subsidiary that supplied chemicals to the biotech industry.
It was a brash move. At the time, Dexter dwarfed Invitrogen, which reported $68.3 million in revenue compared with $1 billion for Dexter.
"They were fearless of growing, and I think the reason it happened here is you have so many research institutes here. There is just a huge demand for these kinds of products," Roth said.
By the time Turner, who has a degree in biochemistry from UC San Diego, retired in 2003, the company had become an international player with 2,635 employees and annual revenue of $630 million.
With the founder's exit, the board turned to current CEO Gregory T. Lucier to shepherd the company in an era of even greater consolidation.
Lucier, the former chief executive of General Electric's Medical Systems Information Technologies unit, executed the company's largest acquisition in 2008 with the purchase of Applied Biosystems of Foster City for $6.4 billion in cash and stock. Applied was best known for supplying genetic analysis machines to the Human Genome Project.
Just as was the case when Invitrogen bought out Dexter in 2000, the company purchased a much larger rival. Applied Biosystems' annual revenue in 2008 was $2.2 billion, while Invitrogen's was $1.3 billion. After the merger, the company took the name Life Technologies.
Joseph Panetta, president of Biocom, the San Diego-based life sciences association with 550 members in Southern California, said Life Tech has done a lot to help put San Diego on the map as a hotbed of biotechnology.
"It's probably the best example of how innovation in San Diego creates the kind of company that has global impact," Panetta said.
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subset: commoncrawl


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En Route to the Catastrophe
Babel Tower
In the 1970s the British novelist A.S. Byatt (b. 1936) embarked on an ambitious project: a sequence of novels that would trace the growth of a woman of her own class and generation and education, from the drab early 1950s through the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
Byatt planned four novels. In The Virgin in the Garden (1978) and Still Life (1985) she followed her heroine, Frederica Potter, the daughter of two middle-class literary intellectuals, through the last of her Yorkshire schooling and her three years at Cambridge; Still Life ended with Frederica in the arms of Nigel Reiver, the first man to awaken her sexually.
Since then six years have passed. Babel Tower, the third novel of the series, opens in 1964. The marriage with Nigel is not going well. Cooped up with his horsy sisters and odious housekeeper in a house in the Home Counties, Frederica feels stifled. She would like to see her old college friends, now making names for themselves on the buzzing London cultural scene, but Nigel doesn't like them. When they write, he intercepts their letters. An ex-commando, he has no scruples about roughing her up in ways that leave no telltale marks. She becomes a virtual prisoner. In a terrifying episode he hunts her around the outbuildings in the dark, flinging an axe that wounds her in the leg. Frederica flees with her four-year-old son, to find shelter with friends in London. Nigel pursues her, leaving a trail of violence in his wake, demanding her back, or, if not her, then the child.
Marital cruelty is not the central concern of Babel Tower. Nevertheless, the Reiver marriage stands out only in the egregiousness of its violence. At the ever-so-polite cocktail parties that Frederica begins to frequent, the talk is dominated by men; the women huddle in corners exchanging notes on anti-depressants. At one such party the wife of an eminent academic makes a scandalous outburst. With the discreet efficiency for which the British are renowned, she is spirited from the scene and order returns. It is this kind of future, as much as Nigel Reiver, that Frederica knows she must escape.
Frederica has been brought up in "that tolerant, non-conformist, cautiously skeptical tradition that requires you…to look for the good and the bad in everything." On the one hand she fears and hates Nigel, on the other she is unnerved by her hatred; her urge to cut all ties with him is balanced by a puritanical determination to be fair to him. In sexual relations Nigel may be a practiced cynic (he operates by rules like "If you say 'I love you' to a woman, it makes her wet"). Nevertheless, Frederica continues to be fascinated by him. Even at the divorce trial she feels a hot rush of desire.
It is the Lawrentian flavor of her response ("the dark, dark look, the intentness that always stirs her": the very language is Lawrence's) that, to Frederica, identifies it as a symptom not of…
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Fastball: Charlie Sheen's 20-city live show kicks off Saturday in the Motor City. Trolls are advised to stay home.
The ex-"Two and a Half Men" star turned "unemployed winner" and "warlock" will bring his two live-in "goddesses" and rapper Snoop Dogg to Detroit's Fox Theatre Saturday, he told a local radio station.
Sheen's "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option" tour will then roll though Chicago on Sunday.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
While the specifics of what Sheen has planned is unclear, his publicist told The Associated Press the 90-minute performance will feature music and a multimedia presentation.
Sheen said in an interview with Detroit's WKQI-FM that Snoop Dogg would also be on hand for the Fox Theatre show and he'd selected two Detroiters as winners of a YouTube contest to perform "The Star Spangled-Banner" on stage.
Kelley Jean is the owner of an adult-themed website, the Detroit Free-Press reported. The other singer, Lisa Jacques, is a college student, according to the paper.
Sheen also reportedly told another college student, Heather Pachota, that she'd scored an "internship."
"I thought it was an April Fools' Day joke when I got the call," Pachota told the Free Press. "It's exciting, but I'm a little nervous to see what's going on, what I'll be doing."
Sheen has also unveilled a a special website where fans can ask "about his career, the tour, or his future goals and plans." The site says that Sheen "may pick your question to answer" during his show.
While the actor has boasted of selling out his Detroit show, more tickets were later released and are still available, the Free Press reported.
As for what Sheen has planned with Snoop Doog, the rapper said on "Lopez Tonight" Thursday the pair had been "trying to put some music together" in studio, E! News reported.
"He's a brilliant guy. I'm having so much fun just being around him," Snoop said. "I love having relationships with different people who aren't the normal, who aren't the usual. One thing about Charlie, he's not normal, he's not usual."
Stay tuned for how it all shakes out.
Selected Reading: E!, AP, Detroit News, Free Press


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We have seen a whole new crop of questions in recent weeks, related to changes in the admissions process caused by Covid-19. We will endeavor to gather them all together in one place for efficient dispatch. Please email us at
firstname.lastname@example.com if you have suggestions for topics to include.
Absolutely not—whether because your school has mandated pass/fail across the board for every class, or because your school has allowed professors to choose the grading for individual classes, or because your school has employed an optional P/F system (at the University of Michigan, undergrad grades for this semester are presumptively P/F, but a student can choose to "unmask" the grade), or because there is some other system out there we don't know about; whether you have a single P/F designation or a semesterful of them. First, we will absolutely be mindful of the stresses—the uncertainty and adversity—you were likely undergoing. Thus, whether you opted for P/F grades or your school made that choice for you, we fully understand that the surrounding circumstances have made P/F an absolutely appropriate outcome.
Bear in mind that there are excellent schools in this country that
never use letter grades, and their graduates routinely get admitted to law school!
Whether because you weren't able to produce a semester of stellar grades because everything is now P/F or because you still have letter grades but just weren't able to perform in March and April the way you did in January and February, please remember that grades are but one factor among many, and one semester's grades are but one-eighth of that one factor. They simply are never make or break.
Bottom line, it would be the woefully incompetent admissions person who would let a single semester of grades earned under—oh, we hate to use this word for the 10,000th time, but here we go—unprecedented circumstances be treated as a critical factor in the scope of an entire law school application.
We completely understand this mindset, but please allow us to assure you that this isn't how law school admissions work: We don't take two applicants and compare them head to head. Moreover, again, grades are but one factor in any school's holistic admissions process, and one semester is only one-eighth of that factor. We have yet to see a candidate for whom our decision hinged, for good or for ill, on a single semester of grades. Finally, please remember that the students at [the relatively small number of] schools where there has not been a change of grading are still going through all the strain of these weeks, just like the rest of us. It is unlikely that there will be many people viewing this time as a golden opportunity to increase their GPAs relative to students at other schools.
And now, a special note to those of you who have an optional P/F system, and who are exhausting yourselves and ignoring other demands on your time and energy because you're concerned that opting for a P will speak poorly of you and your motivation: It won't. Truly, it won't. Your goal should be to do your best to stay engaged with the course material to the extent you can, and glean whatever learning you can.
Why yes, actually, we think we will! While many aspects of our daily life are uncertain now, we feel pretty confident that we will remember this period for many, many years to come. But no need to trust to the imperfections of human memory. The Law School Admissions Council will be including, in perpetuity, a note with any Law School Report that has a transcript from this term, reminding reviewers of the circumstances. Further, many (if not most) colleges will have a designation on the transcript itself.
If you want to share your circumstances, you are welcome to provide an addendum. (In fact, in general, we routinely invite applicants to explain why their application metrics—LSAT and/or undergraduate GPA—are not reflective of their abilities.) Our advice is to make this about a paragraph, and as dispassionate as possible—trying to attain some emotional distance, and keeping it brief, will let you provide the most clarity. Your goal is to add critical context, but not to make this the centerpiece of your application. Remember, too, that there will be many, many heartbreaking stories from this period; if possible, demonstrate your recognition of that perspective.
For those of you who aren't inclined to share: You certainly shouldn't feel compelled to. Be true to your own instincts.
This is familiar territory for those of us who were reading applications in 2008 and years immediately following: It will be harder for everyone, but particularly recent college grads, to find gainful employment. We will expect to see that, and will account for it in our process. If you're in that situation, your job is to make clear in your application—either on the resume or separately in a brief addendum—what you
are doing with your time. Looking for a job, volunteering at a nonprofit, helping out a family member, learning some new skill, perfecting an old one? Help us understand how you're spending your time, and have confidence that we aren't viewing the lack of paid employment as a mark against you.
Nope. We have a lot of faith in the Law School Admissions Council's ability to ensure their traditional high levels of security, validity, and reliability. LSAT-Flex will be composed of genuine LSAT questions that have been developed and tested in accordance with LSAC's rigorous standards and processes, and all test takers will be remotely proctored.
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There is no particular major or curriculum that is required for admission to or success in law school, and we find that a student body with backgrounds in a variety of disciplines adds depth and breadth to the classroom dialogue. As a result, an entering class at Michigan Law typically includes 65 or 70 different majors. The majors perennially most common in our entering classes are political science, history, economics, English, and philosophy; some atypical majors that we think provide particularly good training for law school are computer science, mathematics, engineering, and hard sciences, which make up about 15 percent of the class. Classics, seen relatively rarely, is also an excellent foundation for legal study. But pursuing a particular major simply because you think it will give you an advantage in the law school admissions process is an exercise in futility, since you are less likely to perform well in a major that doesn't engage you. We recommend, therefore, that you study subjects that are interesting to you. Because we seek curricula that are both broad and deep, we also recommend that you take challenging courses in whatever is your chosen core field, and that you branch out and test yourself in areas outside your comfort zone. Classes that give you experience with close reading of texts, detailed analysis, logical reasoning, and extensive writing are always helpful.
We accept students from a wide variety of undergraduate schools, with more than 280 distinct institutions represented in the student body. While the strength of an undergraduate institution is certainly a factor we consider in the admissions process, our commitment to maintaining the excellence of our student body does not limit the wide range of educational institutions from which our students hail. There most assuredly is no accredited school whose graduates we would be simply unwilling to admit. (And for the record, contrary to popular belief / persistent and intractable rumor, students who attended the University of Michigan for their undergraduate studies are not at any disadvantage over students from other schools. Go Blue!) Now, we're all about visual aids, so below are a couple of fancy charts to illustrate our point that we admit people from lots of different institutions.
First, this chart shows the distribution of undergraduate institutions within the student body—in other words, each piece of the pie represents the number of schools from which a certain number of people in the student body as a whole have graduated. There are about 145 schools where only one person attended, and that works out to about 53% of the total number of schools represented by the student body. And so on.
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Our second chart gets at the same question from another direction, asking: how many people in the student body come from school(s) that send a particular proportion of people? In other words, if you're the only person from School XYZ, how many other people will also be from schools that only have one graduate represented?
As with majors, we have no preconceived list of "best extracurriculars." You should pursue the areas that interest you. So, while as a general matter we like to see some evidence of involvement and engagement in something outside your studies or employment, we have no particular preference for the type of activity. It is helpful if you give us some sense of the nature and extent of your involvement; further, if the name of a group or organization is a little mysterious to the uninitiated (e.g., the whacky-sounding Kalamazoo Moustache Society, which actually raises money to combat domestic violence), it might be helpful to describe briefly the mission or purpose.
The LSAC report for an applicant who has sat for the LSAT more than once will show every score or cancellation, as well as the average score. The ABA requires law schools to report score information based on an admitted student's highest score, and therefore, that is the score to which we give the most weight. We do, however, consider the average score as well, because data provided by the Law School Admissions Council suggests that it has the greatest predictive utility. The average score becomes less useful, though, as the disparity between two scores increases; for that reason, if you have a significant disparity between scores (six or more points), it would be very helpful to address any explanation for the difference in an optional essay or addendum. And if you sit for the test three or more times, an explanation for that can also be useful to file readers.
We do not use an admissions formula or index system when we evaluate applicants, nor is there a floor below which we will not consider a candidate. However, the University of Michigan Law School is very selective, and the LSAT is an important—though not dispositive—factor in our consideration of an applicant. The median LSAT score for the 2019 entering class is 169 (97th percentile) and the 25th and 75th percentiles for the class are 163 and 170, respectively. Bear in mind that there is no statistically significant difference within plus or minus three points of any particular LSAT score.
With LSAC now offering test administrations nine times a year, you have lots of good options. It's helpful to take the test early enough so that if something goes horribly wrong, you will have enough time to take it again prior to the admission season really heating up—that means that taking the test by November of the admissions season in which you are applying is the safest possible choice. The January exam (and those later) place you at a bit of a disadvantage because the score will not be released until about the time of our application deadline. (Although we can't review an application without an LSAT score, simply submitting your application by
our deadline is enough to satisfy our deadline.)
LSAC will produce score reports as old as June five years prior to the admission season. So, for the 2019-20 season, a score from June 2014 is the oldest we can accept.
While one canceled score will not raise any red flags in an application evaluation, a pattern of canceled scores may cause some concern. (For one thing, it shows that you have been exposed to the test on multiple dates, and any subsequent score needs to be assessed with that in mind.) Depending on the circumstances, an explanation for your cancellation(s) can be helpful.
LSAC requires people to make test date changes at least three weeks in advance of the test. That means that people who have very good reasons for postponing can't do so if they don't learn of the conflict in the necessary timeframe. What to do?
First, if the conflict is with the date itself—e.g., you're scheduled for surgery—your only option is not to attend. There will be a notation on a subsequent score report showing that you were absent for the test. A single absence is simply not a big deal at all, and you shouldn't worry about it. A pattern of absences may be a red flag, however, and so you would be wise to be careful to keep your calendar free for your next test registration date, or to be sure to postpone within the timeframe prescribed by LSAC. If you're really worried about the notation of an absence, you're more than welcome to submit a couple of lines in explanation along with your other application materials, but it truly is not necessary.
Second, if your conflict is not with the test date itself but with the necessary preparation (e.g., you're a paralegal and were unexpectedly asked to participate in a trial for the two weeks prior to the test), you have two choices: (A) take the test and roll the dice with the score, or (B) take the test and cancel the score. (For information about canceled scores, see the prior FAQ.) Only you can know which option makes the most sense for your situation—but rolling the dice tends to be a pretty low-cost risk. Schools report the higher score, so if you retake and do better, that's the score that will carry the weight. And there's always a chance you'll do well and be done!
In general, law school admissions offices operate on a rolling basis, meaning that application files are reviewed in the order of their completion (although we don't necessarily reach a decision on an application in the order in which it is read; some decisions simply take longer than others). This means that there is some advantage to applying earlier in the process (when more seats remain to be filled) rather than later. It is also true, though, that it is to your advantage to have the highest possible score on the LSAT—so you shouldn't take the test until you're ready for it. Applicants will need to take these competing considerations (application timing versus getting the optimal score) into account for themselves. Consider, though, that you can always reapply in a future year and overcome the disadvantage of a late application, but you cannot erase a low LSAT score.
If your score was significantly different from your practice tests (and you are confident that you were accurately timing yourself), and if you can identify something in particular that might have negatively affected your score the first time (you didn't prepare; you were sick; there was a marching band outside the exam site), you should seriously consider retaking the test. In the absence of both of those factors, though, odds are that a second score will not be a substantial improvement; the vast majority of people who retake the LSAT get a score that is only a couple of points higher. It would probably make more sense for you to put your energy into making sure the other elements of your application are the best that they can be. Some matters to take into account when considering taking the test again: there is no statistically significant difference within plus or minus three points of any particular LSAT score, so small differences are unlikely to be viewed as important by an admissions committee; although we give the most weight to the highest score, we also consider the average score (see also our discussion above, about how to handle multiple scores); and, most horrifyingly, there is always the possibility that you will receive a lower score on a subsequent test—a possibility that, statistically speaking, becomes more likely when the initial score is 165 or higher. For a longer discussion of that last point, visit the
A2Z blog.
If you are comfortable with all your other application materials, we encourage you to submit your application now rather than waiting for a new LSAT score to send everything—and to make sure to let us know the new score is en route. Because we have a rolling admissions process, there is some advantage to being reviewed earlier rather than later, and if you submit all your materials only after receiving your score, your application will not be complete and ready for review until several additional weeks later. If you submit all your other materials in advance though, then when the score arrives we can complete your application file immediately and submit it for review, rather than just beginning to process it at that time. While we do not universally hold applications in limbo while we await a new score, our reviewers will see that you are registered for a future LSAT. If we feel that a new score could be a decision-making difference, we will set the application aside and re-review it once the new score arrives. But if we are comfortable admitting you without seeing the new score, we will go ahead and do that; by the same token, if we are sure that an increased LSAT score would not alone lead to a different outcome, we will issue a final decision before receiving the score. If that happens, you are welcome to request that we reconsider your application in light of new information.
If you think you may be entitled to accommodation on the LSAT, whether extra time for a learning disability or some adaptation for a physical disability, you should certainly apply to the Law School Admissions Council; forms are available on the
LSAC's website. Often applicants worry that accommodation will reflect negatively on them in the application process, but accommodated scores are not "flagged," and whether you received accommodations will therefore not be evident to admissions offices. (And in any event, it would certainly never be the case at Michigan Law that an accommodated score would be looked at with a jaundiced eye.) Further, if you are entitled to accommodation and do not utilize it, it is likely that your score will be negatively affected; while we would take into account any contextual information you provide about why the score may not be predictive for you, you would nonetheless be better off simply to have a more favorable score in the first instance. For a detailed FAQ on the subject of accommodated testing, visit the
LSAC's website. Please be aware that the accommodation process can be time-intensive, and it would be to your benefit to apply for accommodation well in advance of when you intend to sit for the test. If you apply for accommodation but LSAC does not grant it, we would encourage you to provide us with any information that you think would allow us to more accurately gauge your score. Likewise, we encourage you to provide us with any information about your disability that you think is relevant to an evaluation of your academic background, work history, or any other element of your admissions materials.
An online version of our "Experience 100+" publication is available
here, and information from our viewbook can be viewed
here. You may request paper copies through our
website, by sending an email to
firstname.lastname@example.com, or by calling the Admissions Office at 734.764.0537.
You should apply electronically via the
LSAC FlexApp. As you complete the FlexApp, we think it can be useful to refer to our
annotated screenshots of the FlexApp questions, where we provide guidance on the information we are hoping to elicit. It may also be helpful to refer to a
PDF of the application in the format in which our reviewers will see the answers you submit via the FlexApp.
We need a completed application (that is, the filled-out FlexApp along with answers to our questions about your work and outside activities), the LSAC report (with transcripts from all colleges and universities you have attended and LSAT scores, and recommendation(s) if using LSAC's Recommender Service), personal statement, optional essays (if any), recommendation(s) (if sending directly to school rather than via LSAC), and application fee ($75) or fee waiver. Note: one recommendation is required, but three are allowed and suggested.
We have two types of fee waivers: need-based and merit-based.
"Merit-based" waivers are given out based on information that we obtain from the Candidate Referral Service (CRS) via LSAC. CRS fee waivers are automatically sent to highly qualified applicants who have registered for CRS, and will appear automatically during the LSAC checkout. (We also send letters and emails to recipients, making them aware they've been selected.)Need-based waivers are given to applicants demonstrating financial hardship. Generally speaking, if you are eligible for an LSAC need-based waiver, then you'll be eligible for our application fee waiver as well. Our fee waiver application form is
available online as a PDF you can complete and print. You may either attach the completed copy to an email, or send it to us via US Mail.
Finally, we are pleased to waive the application fees of US military members and veterans, as well as of corps members and alumni of both City Year and Teach for America. Just
send us an email to let us know your status, and we'll get back to you with a fee waiver code.
Foreign transcripts for postsecondary work outside the United States (including its territories) or Canada should be submitted through the LSAC JD Credential Assembly Service. For international undergraduate work, a Foreign Credential Evaluation will be compiled by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, which will be incorporated into your CAS report. To get started, log in to your online account and follow the instructions for registering for the service. Be sure to print out a Transcript Request form for each institution and send it promptly to them. Questions about the JD Credential Assembly Service can be directed to LSAC at 215.968.1001 or
email@example.com. Be aware that there can be significant delays in processing foreign transcript requests. If you completed foreign work through a study abroad, consortium, or exchange program sponsored by a US or Canadian institution, and the work is clearly indicated as such on your home campus transcript, then you do not need to provide copies of the foreign transcript.
Your file will be considered complete in our office once we receive your LSAC report, which will include all transcripts required by LSAC. So the short answer is, no; it is not necessary to send us any transcripts that LSAC doesn't require. However, our reviewers prefer to have as much information as possible when reviewing an application, especially in cases where there are courses taken (and perhaps grades earned) that will not appear on the degree-granting transcript. (With a formal study-abroad program, we get more information than a simple listing of total credits transferred.) If our reviewers read your application and have unanswered questions about your time spent at a foreign institution, that conceivably could have a negative effect on the decision. Other schools are likely to have a similar take—so if you decide you would like us to see your foreign transcript, we suggest that you send it to LSAC, rather than to our office. That way, it will be included as an attachment to your LSAC report for all law schools to which you are applying.
We begin accepting applications for first-year admission by September 1, although we are not able to begin making decisions until early November. Due to our rolling admissions process, in which files are reviewed as they are completed and decisions are made on a continuous basis, it is to your benefit to apply as early in the season as you comfortably are able. The application deadline is February 15, and submitting the FlexApp alone is sufficient to meet the deadline.
We recognize that scores from the January LSAT may not arrive until after our February 15 deadline, and that is not a problem for the applicant's satisfying of the deadline.
For our Early Decision program, applications must be submitted by November 15. That means all application components, including letters of recommendation and the LSAC report must be received by the Admissions Office by this date (with the exception that the LSAC report and LSAT score may not be available until later if applicants take the October LSAT). For more information, see our complete discussion.
Applications for transfer and visiting students will be accepted between May 1 and July 10.
While we can't review your application without an LSAT score, it is perfectly acceptable—indeed, a good idea!—to send the application and other materials as soon as you comfortably are able. That way, the rest of your application file can be processed and prepared while we wait for your score, and your application can be completed and submitted for review immediately after scores are released.
We very frequently have applicants send along pieces of their application prior to formally applying, and we have a great system for keeping track of it all. Unfortunately, however, we aren't staffed in a way that allows us to check on those individual pieces. Once you've submitted the application itself, you'll receive an emailed acknowledgment from us, and about a week thereafter, you'll receive an email about logging into our Online Status Check system. If at that time, you're still concerned about whether we've received some element of your application (because your application is showing as "incomplete"), please feel free to contact us. And as a general proposition, it is extremely rare that we encounter a situation where something has been mailed but never received by us; if you know you mailed something, or if your recommender tells you he or she mailed something, it is our experience you can feel pretty confident that all is well.
Please be assured that your previous application does not place you at any disadvantage. You are on equal footing with all of the applicants in this admissions cycle. To reapply, you must submit a new application and reregister with LSAC, even if you are not retaking the LSAT, so that we can order a new CAS report for you. If you completed any additional coursework since your previous application, all new official transcripts should be sent to LSAC. Any previous application materials submitted to us within the last year will automatically be added to your new application when it arrives, but if there is something in your previous application that you'd like us to pay particular attention to, please note that in a cover letter with your application. While we recommend that you submit a new personal statement and recommendations, we will review your previous personal statement in lieu of a new version if you direct us to do so, and will automatically consider any previous letters of recommendation to satisfy our recommendation requirement.
The personal statement is your chance to give a brief monologue to the file readers, so the best judgment about a topic is necessarily yours—only you can know what is most relevant about your background for purposes of admission to law school. To quote our application, "There is no formula for a successful personal statement, and different individuals will find different topics to be well-suited to them." Spend some time thinking about what it is that you would tell an admissions officer if you had ten minutes of undivided attention—perhaps about what led you to law school, about unusual challenges you've overcome, about your religious, political, cultural, or sexual identity, about unusual experiences or travel, or simply why you'd be an interesting person to have in the class. Whatever topic you choose, your statement will be evaluated on both content and construction, so your goal should be to write about something interesting and
write about it well. We also offer eight optional essay topics, from which you can choose to write up to two additional essays, in order that our decision will be based on as much information about you as possible. These essays are truly optional, and many people are admitted without submitting additional essays beyond the personal statement; at the same time, we often find that they add extremely helpful depth and perspective.
During the admissions stage, the only people to see applications are members of the Admissions Office and, on occasion, the faculty committee, all of whom understand the importance of and are accustomed to keeping the contents of the files confidential. Unless you check the box of our application asking us not to, however, we will often pass on to particular student groups the names and contact information of admitted applicants who have self-identified as being potential members of those groups. Admitted applicants who self-identify as African American, therefore, may be contacted by the Black Law Students Association, admitted women applicants may be contacted by the Women Law Students Association, admitted BYU grads may be contacted by the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, and so on.
If you are admitted and you matriculate, your application file will be transferred to the Records Office, and another set of eyes will have access to the materials. The privacy of current students, however, is protected under federal law by Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 U.S.C. § 1232g.
If you mark "yes" for in-state tuition on your application and we send you an e-mail telling you that you have to apply for it, it doesn't mean the Admissions Office thinks you're not eligible. All it means is that something in your record has triggered, under preset criteria, a need for you to apply. We understand this can be frustrating for people who have no doubt that they qualify, but the In-State Tuition Guidelines are complex and comprehensive and in order to ensure that they are fairly implemented, review of additional information by the experts in the Residency Classification Office is required in many cases—perhaps because you have been employed outside the state, or because you attended a college outside the state, or for one of many other possible reasons. The guidelines and application can be found at
ro.umich.edu/resreg.php, or you're welcome to contact the Residency Classification Office with your questions, in person or by mail at 1210 LSA Building, 500 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382, by email at email@example.com, or by telephone at 734.764.1400. The office is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.
Be assured that your application will not be held or delayed during the classification process. While you should apply as soon as you can, we do not wait for the official determination to review your application; we just give you the benefit of the doubt.
We typically receive between 5500 and 6000 applications for a target entering class of 300 - 320.
We often get semi-frantic emails and calls from people who are concerned that their applications are not complete, or that their failure already to have received a decision spells certain doom. In an effort to allay some of these fears, we provide this detailed guide to what goes on in the Admissions Office once we receive your application materials, and what you can expect in terms of timing.
First, when we receive the initial application materials from you, we immediately send you an email letting you know we've received them. This email does not mean that the application is complete, but it also doesn't mean it's not complete. It simply means we've received your initial materials. We then begin processing your application, which involves sending acknowledgments to recommenders, checking our files to see whether we have already received some submission from you or from your recommenders in advance of the actual application, printing your CAS report, performing considerable and time-consuming data entry, arranging the materials in our file folders, and printing labels and comment sheets for the readers. This takes a fair amount of time for each individual file, and it is not unusual for us to receive 150-200 applications a day, particularly in December and January.
You will receive an email from our office approximately 5-7 business days after we receive your application, with your University of Michigan ID and a link to our
Online Status Check. Once we have received and processed all your application materials, we mark your file as complete, and our Online Status Check registers the status change. Those files are parceled out for a first read, and then a second read. A file might receive a decision immediately or may proceed to further review before a committee. We are cautious in our decisions, either to admit or to deny, and do not like to proceed hastily. We take our responsibility of composing a top-notch class extremely seriously, and that is to your benefit; you can be assured your application materials are receiving a thorough review. We try to be sensitive to the stress law school applicants are under, and we hope you will be patient with our efforts.
You went to great lengths to apply early in our season, and now you're disappointed—or, well, irritated—that you haven't received an answer yet. We understand how you feel, but we nonetheless ask for your patience. Once the Online Status Check shows that your file is complete, your application is reviewed within a week by a first reader, and is then sent on to a second reader—but even after getting two people's input, we can't always make a decision right away. Simply put, some decisions are more difficult than others. A delay doesn't mean we've forgotten about you; it just means we have a lot of applications to read and decisions to make. If you apply early in the season and we find we are unable to reach a decision quickly,
we will contact you to let you know we're still considering your application. We routinely and frequently review the files of applicants for whom we couldn't make an immediate decision, in an effort to balance our sensitivity to your stress levels—which, honestly, we are very conscious of!—with our mission of making the best possible decisions.
We have a binding Early Decision program; by applying to it, you agree to come if we make you an offer. For a fuller discussion, complete with deadlines, please visit our
The Law School uses a modified rolling admissions process, meaning that applications are reviewed as they are completed, but admissions decisions are not necessarily made in that order. Applicants are encouraged to apply and complete their files as early as they comfortably are able, because the later they wait in the application cycle, the fewer the seats that are available.
We view our student body as one of our greatest assets, and our goal is to admit a group of students who, individually and collectively, are among the best applying to American law schools in a given year. We seek a mix of students with varying backgrounds and experiences, who will respect and learn from each other. Our most general measures are an applicant's LSAT score and undergraduate GPA, and, as measured by those statistics, Michigan is among the handful of the most selective law schools in the country. However, each of these measures is far from definitive. Even the highest possible scores will not guarantee admission, and quite low scores will, likewise, not automatically result in a denial, as both circumstances may have significant offsetting considerations. We evaluate the strength of the personal statement and recommendations, the rigor of an applicant's undergraduate curriculum, significant work and life experiences, and community involvement, among other things. For more information about how applications are reviewed, please refer to Dean Zearfoss's article,
Admissions of a director. It's old but accurate!
We require only one letter of recommendation for your application to be considered complete, but we suggest that you submit up to three. (In general, we find that submitting more than three tends to result in unhelpful repetition of information—but that said, of course, additional letters may make sense in an individual case.) For most applicants, an academic recommendation is the most useful. It can be from an undergraduate or a graduate institution, and it need not be from a professor. The best advice is to select recommenders who know you the best and can speak in the most detail about your potential contribution, and for many candidates, that recommender will be a teaching assistant or graduate student instructor. We also find it very useful to hear from employers or others who have supervised your work (whether in a volunteer or for-pay capacity). For some candidates, a helpful recommender might be more idiosyncratic, such as a coach. The only recommendations we usually find unhelpful are those from people who have themselves attained impressive accomplishments but who have little detailed knowledge of the candidate, and those from relatives, who may know the candidate quite intimately but—we naturally attribute a certain bias.
Because we receive so many highly competitive applications and base our decisions on a wide variety of factors, it is very difficult to judge an individual applicant's chances of admission. Even if we have all of the relevant information for an applicant, admissions decisions are made within the context of the entire applicant pool—and we receive about 5500-6000 applications for a target class of 300-320. That said, the median LSAT score for the 2019 entering class was 169 and the 25th and 75th percentiles for the class were 163 and 170, respectively. The median GPA was 3.81 with the 25th and 75th percentiles at 3.56 and 3.88, respectively.
We send invitations to apply only to those people who, through the information they provide to LSAC's Candidate Referral Service, seem like they would be competitive applicants. However, the only information we have available to us through the Candidate Referral Service is limited: LSAT, GPA, major, undergraduate institution, and so forth. An invitation to apply cannot be a guarantee of admission, because, as described above, we take many other factors into account that are not reflected in the summary data provided by CRS. Historically, however, receiving an invitation does indicate a greater likelihood of admission.
Bear in mind that it's very difficult, for you or for us, to estimate your chances of admission (and that, as they say in the stock market, past performance is not a guarantee of future results). Typically, more than half of our applicant pool has numbers that are at or above our median scores for the previous year's incoming class, which is almost three times the number of people we can actually admit. Consider, too, that "the numbers" are merely a starting point for our evaluation of which candidates will make up the best possible entering class. If you want to increase your chances of admission, please take care with your application, and be sure to provide us with all the relevant information you can about your experiences, activities, and background and how you might be a good fit for our community.
Such questions deeply underestimate the confidence of this Admissions Office, which tends to assume that everyone who is admitted to Michigan Law will want to come to Michigan Law. Okay, okay, we know—not everyone comes, and people who are admitted to lots of other top law schools are the ones least likely to come. But if this
yield-protection allegation were true, then we'd be implementing our nefarious plans very poorly; every year, the school with which we have the highest overlap for admitted candidates is Harvard. We never deny someone because we think, by virtue of their LSAT and GPA, that they will be unlikely to accept our offer of admission. Most people with high numbers will be offered admission—but it is also true that people with very strong numbers will often
not be admitted. Like all top law schools, we simply receive far more applications from prospective students with high numbers than we could possibly admit—and we look at many, many factors apart from the numbers. No matter how strong a candidate you are numerically, it is worth putting effort into your application to ensure that you are portraying yourself as well as possible.
Michigan residency is a factor in admissions, but it is only a small part. We are a public institution, but we are also highly selective. We are fortunate enough to receive so many highly qualified applicants from Michigan that our incoming classes are composed of about 20 percent in-state residents. Our office makes only preliminary determinations of residency based on the answers that you provide in your application and the guidelines given by the University; if you have detailed questions about residency guidelines, please contact the University of Michigan's Residency Classification Office at 734.764.1400.
While evaluative interviews are not a part of our process, our admissions counselors are happy to meet with you and answer any questions you may have about the Law School or the admissions process. We also occasionally contact applicants to get clarification about certain elements of an application. We choose not to interview because social science research suggests that interviews offer no information helpful to the decision-making process; further, anecdotal evidence suggests that many fantastic and talented people do not always make a great first impression, particularly if the meeting takes place under the stressful circumstances of an evaluative interview. Interviews also present opportunities for discrimination on the basis of academically irrelevant personal characteristics, which we would prefer to avoid. And, to tell the truth: Dean Zearfoss is a bit of a control freak and doesn't like the idea of delegating the interviews.
It is worth noting that schools that do employ interviews typically do so not because it enhances their selection of candidates, but because it enhances their ability to select people who are committed to attending the institution. In other words, they believe that if you are willing to attend an interview, you are much more likely to attend the school if you are admitted.
If you are
planning a visit to the Law School, we would be happy to help arrange a tour or a class visit. Please visit our
Online Scheduling System for a list of classes for which the professors have given permission to have visitors attend, as well as a list of scheduled tour times. In addition, the Admissions Office staff is available for appointments, and would be delighted to meet with you. The best time to visit the Law School is on a weekday
when classes are in session. Although the Law School buildings are open on weekends, classes are not held and the Admissions staff is not in the office.
The University of Michigan Law School accepts
transfer students for the fall semester only. Candidates for transfer admission must have completed the equivalent of the first year of law school (at least 28 credits). They must complete the application and provide five items: a complete first-year transcript; if that transcript does not include class rank, a letter indicating the applicant's class rank; the first page of the applicant's CAS report; a letter of good standing from the dean; and a letter of recommendation from a professor at their current law school. For a detailed checklist and more information, see our
transfer admissions page.
The tuition and fees for the 2019-20 academic year are $61,944 for Michigan residents and $64,944 for nonresidents, and estimated living expenses are approximately $21,070.
Typically, three-fourths of our student body spend one or more years off before enrolling in the Law School; most take five or fewer years off.
The mean age of the 2019 entering class is 24.3; ages range from 20 to 32.
Michigan Law students have numerous on-campus and off-campus housing options. Typically, a little less than half of the first-year class has chosen to live on campus in the Lawyers Club, which is part of the Law Quadrangle.
The Lawyers Club underwent extensive renovations in 2013, thanks in large part to a generous donation by
Charles T. Munger. The Lawyers Club offers furnished single rooms with private or semi-private bathrooms, and a meal plan is included in the resident fee. The Lawyers Club offers an academic-year lease, which concludes after final exams in May, and room and board charges appear on the same billing statement as tuition charges, which means that funds from merit scholarships, need-based aid, and federal student loans can be conveniently applied to cover the cost of living in the Lawyers Club. Another on-campus option is our graduate and family housing on North Campus—called
Northwood Community Apartments—which is just a short, free bus ride away from the Law School. Finally, the
Munger Graduate Residence Hall, which opened in Fall 2015, is a unique option for graduate students from all University of Michigan programs and combines the convenience of single bedrooms and private bathrooms with an interdisciplinary program designed to foster community. Munger may be an excellent choice for some graduate students, but entering students should be aware of a few specific drawbacks that affect law students: University Housing, which operates Munger, expects residents to commit to remain in Ann Arbor and live in Munger over the summer. This commitment is, frankly, untenable for many students, given that the vast majority leave the area for summer jobs. Additionally, Munger residents should be aware that they will be asked to pay August rent in advance, at the end of July, which is about a month before funds from merit scholarships, need-based aid, and federal student loans will be disbursed.
Approximately two-thirds of our students live off campus in apartments and houses, most within walking distance of the law school. The
Off-Campus Housing Office has an extensive website that includes listings of apartments, rooms, co-ops, parking spaces, and a roommate matching service. It also includes maps and a list of landlords and management companies who have met certain criteria for inclusion. Popular neighborhoods close to campus include Angell, Bach, and Burns Park, which encompass Downtown, Kerrytown, the Old West Side, and the area immediately south of the Law School. Check out the Ann Arbor Observer's
neighborhood guide to get a better sense of which part of town is right for you.
Law students also have the option of living at The Kent Inn House of Phi Delta Phi, known as the
Phid House, which is very affordable and just a block from the law school.
Our students come from all over the country and all over the world. As the chart demonstrates, only about 22 percent come from Michigan and about 18 percent from the other 11 states that comprise the Midwest. A majority of our students come from the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and West Coast.
Ann Arbor is an exciting and vibrant city of about 120,000. Because it is, in many respects, the quintessential "university town," it offers many businesses and services geared towards students' needs, therefore making it a great place to be a student. Yet Ann Arbor is also remarkably sophisticated, offering a plethora of
cultural activities—theatre, dance, popular and classical music, films—as well as restaurants specializing in a wide variety of cuisines, innumerable coffee shops and bookstores. And, of course, the sports venues—both college and professional—are unsurpassed. Athletes, in addition to spectators, will also love what Ann Arbor can offer in terms of running, canoeing, cross-country skiing, and workout facilities. If you're moving to Ann Arbor with family, the city has great
public schools as well as parks and an award-winning
public library.
Some useful websites to introduce you to Ann Arbor are:
It is our impression that, perhaps due to some fundamental geographic confusion, many people imagine the weather in Ann Arbor to be much worse than it actually is. Protestations from us, however, end up sounding a bit pathetic. So instead, we say judge for yourself—check out the average temperatures and snowfall in
Ann Arbor,
New York and
Chicago. And bear in mind: it's always a balmy 70 degrees in the library.
We are at the western edge of the Eastern time zone, so we have the same time as our friends on the East Coast, but it is light for about an hour later in the evening—a particularly welcome fact during December afternoons.
The University of Michigan generally, and the Law School in particular, are committed to supporting undocumented and DACAmented students. All undocumented individuals are eligible for admission to any degree program at the University of Michigan Law School. When you are completing the JD application, for "U.S. Visa type, if any," simply write "none" or "N/A."
Undocumented applicants are eligible to apply for a
fee waiver based on economic hardship. All undocumented admitted students will be considered for merit-based awards, whether or not they have been granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) status. In addition, applicants who meet specific criteria (such as attending school in Michigan, and graduating from a Michigan high school) may also qualify for in-state tuition through
the Residency Classification Office.
Here is a list of external resources that may be some help:
United We Dream is the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the nation and seeks to address the inequities and obstacles faced by immigrant youth. They believe that by empowering immigrant youth, they can advance the cause of the entire community—justice for all immigrants. United We Dream also runs programs to advocate for access to higher education, stop the deportations of undocumented youth and their parents, and strengthen alliances and support for DREAMers at the intersection of queer and immigrant rights.
MyDocumentedLife.org is dedicated to providing up-to-date information and resources for undocumented immigrants. Here, you will find the latest on scholarship opportunities, immigration news, ways in navigating the educational system, and more.
TheDream.US is a new multimillion dollar National Scholarship Fund for DREAMers, created to help immigrant youth who've received DACA achieve their American Dream through the completion of a college education.
Educators for Fair Consideration (E4FC) is dedicated to empowering undocumented people to pursue their dreams of college, career, and citizenship in the United States. They provide direct support, leadership and career development, community outreach and education, creative expression, and advocacy.
U.S. Department of Education:
Resource Guide Supporting Undocumented Youth: A Guide for Success in Secondary and Postsecondary Settings.
We do expect to see essentially an equivalent level of mastery of written English. We expect to see certain types of minor mistakes—e.g., problems with plurals—with non-native speakers, but in terms of overall skill level, we expect full fluency. Applying this standard is to the benefit of the applicant, because this is the level of skill an applicant will need in order to succeed here.
We expect that essays are the work of the applicant. It's one thing to show them to a friend or two for input, but we definitely frown upon a professional service. This is true whether the applicant is a native speaker or not; all too often, U.S. natives will hire "admissions consultants" to actually pen their personal statements, and we view that too as a violation of our expectation that all the work is that of the applicant. You'd be surprised how easily we are able to detect these professionally polished essays. We will often compare the writing style of the LSAT essay with that of the personal statement, for example, and when there's a stark contrast, we'll know why.
We do not require TOEFL scores for the JD application as the LSAT is an adequate measure of English proficiency.
We don't have a formula, but it will certainly play an important role in the evaluation.
For the first scenario, we wouldn't at all be surprised to see someone seeking a JD rather than an LLM; the two degrees have very different purposes and functions. If someone has already earned an LLM in the U.S., however, it would be useful (though not mandatory, by any means) to include a discussion of what additional value the JD will provide.
We definitely expect all our JD candidates, including those for whom English is not the native language, to be fluent in English; to that end, being able to demonstrate significant English language background will be helpful. Majoring, however, is certainly not necessary. Any level of schooling in an English-speaking country would be a helpful indicator of English preparation but again, it's not required. Often we see students who have worked for U.S. companies or firms, albeit in another country, and that too can be a good way to indicate strong English proficiency.
It definitely won't hurt you—we won't attribute your professor's relative lack of English ability to you!—but it simply won't be a weight in your favor. If we have trouble understanding the letter, we will most likely simply ignore it. That said, it is important to have at least one strong letter of recommendation from someone who is able to communicate easily in English.
The biggest hurdle for the international applicant is often the personal statement. We really look for something personal; not something secret or scandalous, but something that only you could have written, and something that really gives us insight into what you would be like to have in the student body. U.S. culture likely trains U.S. folks to do this relatively easily, but it can be a more uncomfortable exercise for people from many other cultures.
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Process water – Food and Beverage
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