Waitlist Q & A – Pilar Mensah

Q:  Is the waitlist ranked?

A:  The waitlist is not ranked.

Q:  When will you look at the waitlist?

A:  The Admissions Committee will review applicants on the waitlist after all decisions have been mailed.  Review of the waitlist usually occurs in late May to mid-June.

Q:  Can I send in addendum or supplement my application?

A:  Applicants may submit additional new information, such as updated resumes and statements of interest.  This information may be sent directly to our Office.  As a waitlisted candidate, you no longer have to submit information through LSAC.

Q:  What percentage of applicants are admitted off the waitlist?

A:  There is no set number of applicants that are admitted.  Every year the number of applicants that are admitted off the waitlist is different.  It depends on the applicant pool for that year, how many of those that we admit accept and decide to attend UHLC, and the number of applicants on the waitlist.  The process is not entirely in our hands, as we have to wait to hear back from admitted students on whether or not they will attend.

Q:  UHLC is my #1 choice, what can I do now to strengthen my chances of being admitted?

A:  We recommend you submit a letter of continued interest.  You should wait to submit the letter until mid-May (for Full-Time Applicants) or mid-June (for Part-Time Applicants).  If you submit the letter too early in the process is will not be as relevant as a letter we receive right before we begin the second review of your file.  Remember, if you choose to send a letter of continued interest, only one will be added to your file, so make it count!

Professor David Dow nominated for National Book Critics Circle Award

UHLC Cullen Professor David Dow, has been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award for his acclaimed autobiography, The Autobiography of an Execution, released earlier this year.  The NBCC awards were created to honor the best literature published in English each year.  The awards are selected by critics and are chosen in six categories. 

Professor Dow is the Director of the Texas Innocence Network and Litigation Director for the Texas Defender Service.  He also teaches Contracts and Constitutional Law to first-year students and an upper-level course on the U.S. Supreme Court.

For more information on Professor Dow, please visit our webpage, http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/main.asp?PID=12.

For more information on the Texas Innocence Network, please visit http://www.law.uh.edu/cji/homepage.html. 

For more information on the National Book Critics Circle, please visit http://bookcritics.org/.

Tips for a Successful Personal Statement

Happy Thanksgiving!  The Office of Admissions wants to wish you and yours a safe holiday weekend.  Enjoy catching up with loved ones, the shopping, and the food!  We know that a lot of you will be using your time off to work on your personal statements, and we wanted to give you a few tips to keep in mind:

• Use the space provided.  We allow 3 pages for the personal statement; if you submit a 1 page document, you’re really just cheating yourself.  Remember, this is your one opportunity to tell us about yourself; it’s your interview on paper.  Make sure that by the end of your statement, you’ve included everything you want us to know about you, and we have a complete idea of you as a candidate.

 

• Don’t be too creative.  We want to be able to see your unique personality and character through your writing, but remember that you are applying to a professional degree program, not a creative writing seminar.  It’s best to leave out the poetry and illustrations, and focusing on a well written, thoughtful statement.

 

• Focus on the ‘personal’ in personal statement.  For example, you may have been inspired by someone to go to law school, and we want to hear that story, but just be sure to keep the focus on you and your strength, and how an experience with that person may have shaped your decisions.  If you tell us the life story of the other person, we’ll know everything about that person, but unfortunately nothing about you.

 

• Keep it positive.  The personal statement is not the time to explain why you did so poorly during a semester of undergrad.  Save those explanations for the option statement, and keep the personal statement positive.

 

• Don’t duplicate information.  A common mistake applicants make is including the information that is on their resume in their personal statement.  If you tell us information that is already presented somewhere else in your file, you are wasting one of the few opportunities you have during the application process to tell us about yourself.  It’s fine to elaborate on a specific point in your resume, but done make your personal statement just another list of credentials and achievements.

 

• Remember your audience.  This is not the time to try to show us how much you know about the law.  We’re all lawyers; chances are we know more than you.  Focus on information that will help us understand your strengths and why you will make a good law student.

 

• Last but most definitely not least, proofread!  In addition to reviewing spelling and grammar, make sure you aren’t sending a personal statement intended for one school to another.  Mistakes like this are completely avoidable, and can be embarrassing for an applicant.  Don’t rely on your computer’s spell-check; a lot of words you didn’t mean to use will slip under the radar because you spelled them correctly.  Have others read your statement.  Proofread, proofread, proofread!

 

We hope this helps answer some of the many questions you probably have about the personal statement.  The most important thing to keep in mind is that your personal statement will act as your sales pitch, your writing sample, and your admissions interview.  Make sure that when it’s complete there are no unanswered questions, and we have a clear picture of you as a candidate to our program.  We look forward to reading your personal statements, and getting to know more about you.  Now, back to the turkey!

Congratulations!

The Law Center’s Blakely Advocacy Institute and its mock trial program have earned yet another accolade–a win at Regionals of the ABA Arbitration Competition.  The team of law students Sean Monks, Luis Batarse, Whitney Wester and Nadia Barrow was coached by Dennis Clifford ’05.  The student were undefeated, beating teams from Memphis, Seton Hall, Duquesne and Fordham on their way to the title. They will now compete at the national competition in Los Angeles in January.

Congratulations to our students, to coach Dennis Clifford, and to mock trial teams coach Jackie Houlette and good luck at Nationals!

Students help free Death Row inmate

One of the many benefits of earning your law degree at the University of Houston Law Center are the various opportunities to gain real world legal experience while still in school.  While all of our students have their own personal victories through the numerous practice-based programs at UHLC, every now and then something truly extraordinary results from the hard work and dedication of our faculty and students.

The Office of Admissions is thrilled to share one such instance with you.  Thanks to the hard work and collaboration of Law Center students and several other members of the legal community, Anthony Graves, a former Texas death-row inmate, has had all charges against him dropped after an 18-year legal battle.  The case originated in UHLC Professor David Dow’s Texas Innocence Project and over a dozen Law Center students have worked on the case during the past decade.  The ruling is especially remarkable because the exoneration was not based on DNA, a very rare situation.  To read more about the truly impressive feat, visit:

Students help free Death Row inmate.