Fall 2027 Applications are Open

Anna Donovan:             Welcome everyone to a new season. In a new episode of Applying Yourself, a law school admissions podcast from WashU Law in Saint Louis, I am one of your hosts. My name is Anna Donovan. I’m a director of admissions here. We are very excited to have a whole new season of the podcast in brand new episodes to be rolling out over this application cycle, and I’m very excited today to get started and my very special guest is Alison Smith. She is the assistant Dean of admissions here at Washu Law. I have brought Alison on, and we are going to talk a little bit about what this past application cycle looked like as we’ve just closed it out here, and a look ahead to the 2026-2027 application cycle. I hope that my millions of listeners, I was joking with someone earlier that probably because we haven’t ruled out new episodes, that has probably dipped half a million, and we’re going to bring our viewership and listenership back up to easily a million, if not more. This new rollout of episodes, we are hoping to have new episodes where we also interview some new faculty we have here at WashU Law. We are going to put together a group of first year law students and follow them through their journey of their one year. So I think we’ll have a lot to offer again for all of our millions of listeners. Circling back, I’d like to welcome Alison. Alison, do you want to start off telling us a little bit about your role here at WashU Law?

Alison Smith:                  Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Anna. Excited to be back on the podcast. It’s been a few years, but excited to be back in the studio. So as Anna mentioned, I’m Alison Smith, I’m the assistant dean for admissions here at WashU Law. This fall. I’ll be starting my third cycle with the admissions team. Before that, I was at WashU Law in the Career Center, and then prior to that was practicing law. So came into the role in admissions with some experience on the back end, the outcome side of the law school experience and I’m thrilled to be entering year three. As the assistant dean of admissions at WashU. I oversee a wonderful team of directors and admissions specialist in the admissions office, and we do everything from recruiting applicants, sharing information about the law school, reviewing applications, interviewing applicants, extending offers of admission, and then working with students to see if Washu law is the right fit through our programing and our admitted students day, and then this week was kind of our Super Bowl where we welcome the new class in. So work on the life cycle of the admissions from August to August and excited to be here today.

Anna D.:             Well, thank you again. We are thrilled to have you as the the leader of our office. So as you mentioned, we have just wrapped up the 2025-2026 application cycle, and I was wondering if you could take us back and tell us a little bit about how the cycle went as we just closed it out here?

Alison S.:           Absolutely. So I would describe the fall 2026 cycle as a ride. It was a wild ride for some, a fun ride for some, but it was certainly, certainly a ride. So for the third year in a row, application volume was up. So from a law school perspective, that was exciting. We had a lot of fantastic applicants. We had a lot of interest in, in the law school, had a great pool of applicants to choose from as the admissions committee was building the class. And from an applicant’s perspective, you know, haven’t been in those shoes for at this point, a couple decades. But what we heard is that it this this excitement that we may have been experiencing on the school side was a bit chaotic, potentially with so many applicants, again, with increasing application volume year over year for several years, there were a lot of applicants in the pool, a lot of moving pieces, and so for some it may have been a tough cycle. So while we certainly enjoyed the experience of having a lot of applicants to select from and from the interest in in future, lawyers certainly want to acknowledge that this one may have felt different for some, some of our applicants, and may have been a less than a wonderful cycle for everyone and so our hope is, as we turn into a new cycle, that we can continue to build off the momentum and the excitement of the past cycle, while also making changes and and leaning into the new year, because of our our fantastic application pool that I mentioned earlier, we were excited to bring in an amazing 1L class. They are truly exceptional. We just were on our second day of classes here at WashU Law, and so we had a fantastic class. We’re looking at a class that’s a little bit smaller than the class we brought in in 2025, around 245 to 250 students. And excited to to do it again.

Anna D.:             Yeah, we can vouch they are really exceptional group of students we have here. Hopefully they’ve you know, they were oriented you know, and thrown right into classes. A few stopping in our office which is always wonderful. And we are really getting ready to turn it all around and start over again in early September with our new application. So anticipation of this new cycle. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, you know, we never want to anticipate what the cycle is going to look like. But for us here at WashU Law, you know, if there are any changes or anything maybe different or slightly different that the applicants can expect when they are considering applying here for law school?

Alison S.:           Sure. So at the core, our admissions process will be similar to how it has been over the past couple cycles. We are committed to a holistic review. We have a rolling admissions process, which means that applicants can apply at any point after our application opens through the end of the cycle, and we rerelease decisions on a rolling basis. We also have, as part of our application process, a interview. We extend interview invitations, and for applicants that are invited to interview, a member of our team conducts a face to face zoom interview with applicants, and we are excited, I know that it can be a lot of a lot of interviews for the team, but I think a fantastic way for us to get to know applicants and to identify those students that we think are a good fit for the class. So, in those ways, kind of the hallmarks of the WashU Law application experience, things will be staying the same again. Committed to that holistic review, rolling admissions interview is a is a key component. We are making a few slight changes, so I would refer to them probably as tweaks in our application for this year. A couple of things. The first is that for those of you that are follow ABA releases or ABA news, you may have seen that WashU Law was granted a variance to standard 503. What that means is that we submitted an application to the American Bar Association, which was granted to allow us to accept and matriculate applicants who don’t have a standardized test score in certain instances. And so how we plan to deploy that variance for the coming cycle is using it to expand the existing variance for graduates of WashU undergrad. So I wanted to address that because I know different schools have different policies that they build around their variance and around their 503 requirements. And so for us here at WashU Law, we will be extending the time period that students who have graduated from our undergraduate institution are eligible to apply to the law school without taking a standardized test. So either LSAT, GRE or JDNext, we also moved our application deadline up a little bit. So in this past cycle, our application has closed around the time that the class begins. So for us this past year, it was around August 15th that our application closed. And then our students started class on the 24th of August for this coming cycle. Our application deadline will be July 1st, and so that will still allow us to review applicants and applications who took the June 2027 LSAT. It still gives us a broad swath of time to accept applicants, which is part of our commitment to finding the right individuals for our class, but tightens up that application deadline on the back end just a little bit in in an effort to ensure that we have our class set and our applicants processed in in a timely manner there during the summer, in the final change I wanted to mention is that we made a few modifications to our essay prompt. Again, I would describe these as tweaks, but they are important to us because we use our essays and our essay prompts is a way to encourage applicants to share information with us about their experiences and their perspectives. That allows the admissions committee to see the contribution that that applicant might make to the classroom here at WashU Law. And so each year we revisit those, we look at the essay prompts, and we look at the way that our application invites applicants to share that information. And we made some tweaks this year, again, in an effort to encourage applicants to share more with us about their experiences and perspectives that would contribute to the classroom here at WashU Law.

Anna D.:             And, you know, we always have so many great candidates who maybe reapplying, you know, cycle over cycle. I’ve already talked to a number of candidates who may have applied this last cycle and, you know, maybe didn’t get the outcomes they were hoping for, or they took a job or, you know, kind of their timeline got changed a little bit. So, you know, kind of being sure that everyone’s eyes are kind of on those tweaks. I’m sure there are many other law schools kind of in the the same place, you know, everything won’t look exactly the same. So keeping your eyes on those details, one thing I’m so excited about is that now that we have started our academic year, we have returned to our office a really exceptional resource of students. We call them Admissions Ambassadors here at WashU Law. We have an excellent subset of second- and third-year students that assist our office. You know, mainly with with tours for any visitors here to the law school, but also happy to re-up our admissions ambassadors zoom consultations. Alison, could you maybe do a little plug for our and just great ambassadors, what they do for our office in specifically the the rollout, I think maybe tomorrow of consultation appointments that prospective students can schedule.

Alison S.:           Absolutely. So in our our role Anna and myself in the admissions office, we’re often asked by prospective students what it’s like to be a student at WashU Law, or the best part of being a student, or how the school support students in certain situations. And while we certainly do our best to answer these questions and to provide information to applicants, there’s really no substitute from hearing it from our wonderful students. And so the admissions consultations serve a couple purposes. They are an opportunity for applicants to seek feedback and advice on the application cycle from somebody who is in their shoes not long ago, they’re an opportunity to ask questions about Washu Law to the people who can really provide the answer, you know, who have have sat in the classrooms, who’ve registered for courses, who’ve applied to the clinics, who’ve worked with a career center and share their experiences. And as you mentioned, Anna, our group of admissions ambassadors is just a fantastic group of people with a variety of different experiences, different backgrounds, and so provide great perspectives and such a fantastic resource that are so generous with their time to prospective students.

Anna D.:             And another way that we are able to implement our admissions ambassadors is through our virtual programs. We have just been able to roll out our slate of virtual events on the law school website, really throughout the entire cycle. So really starting we have one starting tomorrow. These are going to be, for the most part, two times a month. And we are doing WashU Law Wednesdays, which are virtual programs at mostly at 4 p.m. Central Time. I think there’s a few odd times in there, depending on the needs of some of the guests we’re having on, but there will also be opportunities to speak with current students through our virtual event avenue as well. So I encourage everyone to check out the WashU Law website, and you can register for any and all of those events, and you’ll get reminders in a in a specific Zoom link if you’d like to start attending those. And as we are anticipating really next week, the turnover of everything. I was wondering, Alison, if you had any Alison Smith tips for prospective students who are getting excited to apply to law school?

Alison S.:           Absolutely. So my first one, I think, is a tip that you might universally hear from admissions personnel and admissions offices around the country, and that is to proofread. Every year I review applications, review files, review correspondence that contains typos. And it’s hard as a as an admissions professional to not let that be distracting or to let that be indicative of the the quality of the file. And so encourage students to proofread. And the second thing I would say is to take advantage of resources. So if you are listening, if you are one of the millions of listeners to this podcast, you’re already doing that, right? You’re taking advantage of resources from schools. But what I mean by that is review the website, listen to the podcast that the admissions office puts out, attend virtual events, gather as much information as you can about the schools that you’re targeting and that you’re applying to, so that you can make your application as tailored to that school as possible. I mean it in, in big, kind of grand ways so that you can identify with the school, with the values and the mission of the school and how you would fit into that school’s incoming class. And I mean it in small ways, such as the rules that a school might have. A school might say your resume cannot exceed one page, or your personal statement needs to be double spaced or those sorts of things. And so kind of across the board, whether it’s big picture or whether it’s more logistical, certainly encourage applicants to take advantage of the plethora of information that is out there directly from law schools that will guide you as you submit your applications.

Anna D.:             I would love to tag off of that. And, you know, probably a universal tip from law schools is to apply early. But I think, you know, applying early, and I think certainly the pressure that some applicants feel may cause them to rush a little bit. And so really taking time again, as Alison said, to read the fine print, read the application instructions, read over the all the questions, you know, in every law school is going to have probably similar but slightly different questions on the application themselves. I think one of the great things about the LSAC portal for applying to law school is you can you can, you can answer some questions, you can save and you can come back to it. You aren’t beholden to filling everything out and submitting all at once, but really paying attention to everything and how, you know, really giving each school the attention you know at once. Or if you’re spreading that out over a, you know, a couple of weeks of applying, etc., for what specifically that school is asking, applying early is truly I think one of the best ways to set yourself up for success. And so we would love to see our millions of listeners convert into millions of applications for this coming cycle. For anyone who has listened to any of our older podcast episodes, we’d love to end on a Saint Louis note. And so we we talked about this a little bit before we started. But Alison, what is one really fun thing that you did over the summer?

Alison S.:           So I knew this question was coming because I have listened to past episodes. So I thought about it a little bit as I was walking down to the studio. And I think one of the fun things that I did in Saint Louis this summer that I would like to share with our listeners is I spent some time on the river, so some folks may not know that Saint Louis, where we sit at Wash You, there’s a confluence of several major rivers that that happens here in Saint Louis. And so it creates a really cool place to spend time. My personal favorite are the Mississippi River bluffs. If you close your eyes and open them, you, it almost feels as though you’re in a different place or a different state than you were when you parked your car before before going there. So I spent some time as a river person this summer, both on on the water and on the patios on the side of the river, and would encourage those that are coming to Saint Louis checking it out, or students that are making a home here to give the river a chance. My river summer culminated this past Friday when I went with my partner and my two sons to see the River Circus, which was truly an amazing and hard to explain experience. This was down on the Mississippi. There was a floating circus boat with circus performers, and I would say that really sealed my fate as a as a river person here in Saint Louis.

Anna D.:             And correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it it was free, but they took donations.

Alison S.:           That’s correct

Anna D.:             to attend. And I think one of the exceptional things about Saint Louis, and as someone who’s lived here my whole life, is all of the free things that you can do here. The thing I will talk about is not free, but it is not super expensive. I deeply, deeply, deeply love all things ice cream. Actually most all things dessert, candy, etc.

Alison S.:             Same.

Anna D.:             But my summer is frequently. Pinpointed by trips to Ted Drewes. Ted Drewes is a local frozen custard place here in Saint Louis there is a Ted. There are two treasures locations. One is exactly 0.9 miles from my house. Sometimes I will go there on the way home from work, but in the summer, on the weekends, I will make myself walk there and feel a little bit better about getting a very large hot fudge sundae. It is a Saint Louis staple if you they’re busy all the time, but if you go there before or after a Saint Louis Cardinals game, it is so fun to see so many people from Saint Louis quite literally spilling into the streets and the parking lots. And then a very fun thing is they turn and they in the winter, right before they close her very short amount of time, they sell Christmas trees. And I mentioned Christmas trees because I think it’s just so hot here in Saint Louis and hoping for some, some cooler weather. Thank you so much, Alison, for being here today. We are so thrilled to start new podcast episodes, to roll out amazing resources to prospective students, and to start a new cycle all over again. So I hope everyone will keep listening. Thank you everyone and have a great academic year.

Alison S.:           All right. Thank you for having me, Anna. And with that, that plug I think I need to get some Ted Drewes.

Anna D.:             Yes, all of us. Thank you.