Admitted Student Days

Peyton Cope: Welcome to Applying Yourself, a law school admissions podcast from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. My name is Peyton Cope, and I am a member of the admissions team at WashU Law. I’m so excited to be joined today by a few of our Admissions Ambassadors, who will be chatting with me on all things Admitted Student Days. We’re gonna dive right in by starting off with our ambassadors introducing themselves. Ava, do you want to get us started?

Ava Meng: Hi, yes. Hello, everybody. My name is Ava Meng. I am a 3L from Kansas City. At WashU, I’ve been involved with the Journal of Law and Policy. I was in the First Amendment Clinic last semester. I’ve been involved with the Women’s Law Caucus and the Law and Business Society. I worked with a judge my first summer in Kansas City and have worked last summer in Denver with a firm specializing in real estate law, which is where I plan to return after graduation.

Kami Adeleye: My name is Kami. I’m also a third-year law student at WashU. I’m from Nigeria, but I’ve spent time in Texas, Pittsburgh, and a little time in Maryland, and now I’m in St. Louis. During my time here, I have served on the executive board for our Black Law Student Association, BLSA. I also work as a staff editor on one of our academic journals, the Global Studies Law Review. For my first summer, I worked in-house for a corporation out in Pittsburgh. My second summer, I worked for a law firm, a big law firm out in Chicago, and after graduation, I will be returning there to do corporate work for the firm, and I’m very excited to be here.

Peyton Cope: Am I right in assuming that both of you attended your own Admitted Student Days before matriculating to WashU?

Ava Meng: Yes, it was a major factor that made me attend WashU Law.

Peyton Cope: Amazing. What about you, Kami?

Kami Adeleye: Yeah, same, same. I’ll never forget my Admitted Student Day at WashU. It played a big, big role in my decision.

Peyton Cope: Well, I’d love to take it back to that. What did it feel like to be an admitted student at WashU Law at the time? Do any memories or feelings stick out to either of you?

Ava Meng: Yeah, I was so excited to be admitted. I had been admitted in October, I believe, so I had kind of built up this excitement to visit and finally meet all of the amazing admissions team and meet the fellow admitted students, and just to see the campus in person, to see St. Louis, and meet the fellow admitted students for sure.

Kami Adeleye: Yeah, it was a similar experience. I just kept waiting for the inevitable email to come in to say, oh, we made a mistake, you’re not meant to be here. But no, I was so excited. I couldn’t believe. I couldn’t wait. I’d never been to St. Louis before, so I was just like, I couldn’t wait to, you know, see a new place, see new people. And this feeling stayed even until, like, right before I got on campus. Amazing time. Amazing. Amazing.

Peyton Cope: What was it like to step foot on campus for the first time? Did you notice anything specific right off the bat?

Ava Meng: Being on campus, that was definitely one of the selling points. It was like, I really see myself here. The campus is beautiful. The buildings are so pretty. It was springtime, you know, great weather. Trees are in bloom. It was beautiful. And then just immediately walking into the building and seeing the courtyard just filled with everyone just so excited to be there, such a great energy. And I really feel like that has been something that has stayed true for my time at WashU, is just the energy is unmatched. It’s so great here, and everyone’s just so welcoming. And just the experience that from taking just one foot into the door was just amazing.

Kami Adeleye: Yeah, it was, oh, I can’t, I can’t put it into words. It was stepping foot, and like this campus comes like straight out of a storybook. The red brick buildings, the beautiful trees, the weather, the sun, everything was just perfect. The pictures don’t do it justice, and the pictures are really nice. It’s just, and like, like Ava said, you walk in and there’s so many people in the courtyard. If you haven’t been to the courtyard, the acoustics travel super well. So even before you get in, you just feel the buzz in the building. Everyone’s excited. Everyone’s talking. People were friendly, which helped, but it was a great time. A lot to take in. But it was like the first step of something amazing. And I just, I couldn’t wait to get started.

Peyton Cope: I love that. And so after you had gone home and kind of resumed real life, was there anything that stuck with you for a really long time, kind of in that in between stage going to ASD and then matriculating here?

Ava Meng: I would say the pull of the people that I met, both the admitted students, and one of Commune’s, our civil procedure professor, Professor Hollander-Blumoff. Life is amazing. Everyone knows she’s amazing. She did a little guest lecture and that definitely stuck with me like I want this professor and I want her to teach me. And I was right with that. She’s amazing. Silver procedure was great with her. And also just meeting the fellow mid students, I made connections on LinkedIn. My best friend through all of law school, we had, I met her there and I remember on the first day seeing her again and we saw our schedules matched up. We were in the same section, every single class together. So that was exciting to have already have that a little relationship established with her, but yes, everyone was so nice. I remember the lunch experience being one, something that stuck out is like, they gave you a voucher to kind of explore St. Louis a little bit and the group I went to lunch with, it was a great experience and just to explore a little bit outside of the campus and not be constrained there. It was cool.

Kami Adeleye: Yeah, similarly, the people really stood out and I promise there’s more to do at ASW than eat food, but, so after the long day, one of the long days at ASW, a bunch of students just got together and thought, hey, let’s keep hanging out, you know? So outside the, it wasn’t an event. The school, I don’t know if they knew about this. They probably didn’t. But we all just got together and like went to one of the restaurants on the Delmar Loop, Turmeric. We all just went there, got dinner together, you know, had a good time, you know, learned about, learned about each other, who we were, where we came from, what brought us to WashU. It was just a taste of the collegiality that I had heard about come to WashU and seen it in a way that clearly could not have been manufactured because the school, you know, the school didn’t plan it. So just seeing it occur so like naturally, just reaffirmed my decision that this was a place I really wanted to be at and the place that I felt I could grow the best.

And that feeling of camaraderie stuck with me, you know, while I was making my decisions, when I paid my deposit, and all the, all the fun stuff. And just coming here, I could tell that, the collegiality I felt then is ingrained in the WashU culture. It’s not, it wasn’t a one time thing. It’s just a, it’s just a part of who, of who they are here. And I was, I’m happy to be a part of it.

Peyton Cope: Well, you both are going to be quite involved in hosting this year’s admitted student days as Admissions Ambassadors. So tell me, what are you most excited about for 2025 ASD?

Ava Meng: I’m excited to finally be involved on the other side of admitted students and kind of, I love this admissions position in general and just meeting all of the applicants is always such a fun experience to kind of help them through this time, which I know it can be a little stressful at the same time. But I’m excited to give tours of the law school, show everyone around, show what makes WashU so great, and get to meet them. Hopefully, you know, give them some recommendations for St. Louis. But yes, it’s really exciting to welcome them and make the admissions such a great experience.

Kami Adeleye: Yeah, I don’t know if anyone else has thought about this, but I’ve always wanted to, like, look into, like, a portal and look at myself, like, from years in the past. And I feel like being at ASW, I’m, like, doing that, seeing the people coming in excited, you know, wide-eyed about law school and about WashU specifically. I get a chance to, like, be a part of that journey for them, you know, show them, like, you know, talk to them about my experiences. I’ll provide them insight to them, just things that I found super helpful when I was in their position. So I’m really excited about that.

There’s also from what I’ve heard and what I hope to see, there’s gonna be like a pick your own adventure kind of deal where people have different topics that they can speak about and you get to pick who you want to talk to, what you want to learn about. So a bit more like direct and specialized way of like, you know, knowing what you need to know. I’m excited to see that because there are a lot of things I wish I could have asked about, but I wasn’t sure where to go. So I’m excited to see that there’s a way for, you know, incoming students to possibly do that.

Ava Meng: Yeah, I would agree that that was my experience, definitely. I was in between a few law schools, and so ASD was definitely a deciding factor in attending WashU. I was just so impressed how smooth everything went, how helpful everyone was. You know, my mom came with me and they had a whole session for her, and she was impressed about how helpful admissions was with, you know, providing housing for students and how they really wanted to be there every step of the way to, you know, it really ensured that WashU would be a smooth experience and you had so much support and, you know, then also getting to meet with the career center and seeing how you’d be supported throughout law school was something that I didn’t really find so much at other law schools. So that was something that really made it clear WashU was the place for me.

And then, I know we’ve said it so much, but just meeting all the law students and, you know, making friendships that lasted throughout the summer that I was like, I don’t want to leave these people. I want to go to law school with them. So, that was definitely a huge factor, and I’d say overall, in Admitted Students Day, I think I was ready to deposit after the experience.

Kami Adeleye: Oh yeah, I was pretty similar. I’m a natural overthinker, so even before ASW or Admitted Students Day, I was, I had had spreadsheets out of like, you know, the schools I was lucky enough to get into, you know, different factors about these schools, you know, putting them in order, trying to rank them. And I was, I was lost. I didn’t know what I was, I didn’t know what I was doing. But I ended up going to ASW, and then you kind of get a feel for the, like the intangibles, the things that you can’t really put on a spreadsheet. So like the atmosphere, the camaraderie, you know, how beautiful the campus is, you know, things that you just have to experience firsthand.

And those, you know, those intangibles, though, you know, they might not be concrete, they play such a such a big factor in deciding where to go, and at least I know they did for me. And those things, like, factored into my decision to where to go and chose WashU and haven’t regretted it ever since.

Peyton Cope: Well, thank you both so much for joining me today. It was so helpful to gain a little insight about what this event looks like from the student participant side. And I know our millions of listeners love to hear about what their Admitted Student weekend might look like for them. So thank you both so much.