ChiTownOrBust (2022-2023)

Yes, I was waitlisted at JMLS for the Fall 2005 class and they had no open seats. They did, however, send a letter stating if you were interested in the January 2006 class, they would re-evaluate you and you would not have to pay another application fee. So I did that. I do have great work experience and several honors, but was told that last year was the hardest year for anyone to get into law school anywhere. Hopefully this term shall be different. I think it will, but I continue to check my mail everyday hoping for the letter. I agree, the Chicago market is great and JMLS grads do wonderfully out of law school. Their stats don't necessarily show that, but they also have an excellent LLM Tax Law program, which I plan to apply to after I finish my JD. Well, like I said, if you want to e-mail me, feel free. We can chat and share ideas and stories. And hopefully we shall see each other in January.

Yes, I think that we do have a better chance, because the January class is much smaller than the August class and they do indeed look at other students who were willing to wait, such as ourselves. I got my decision on 10/14 and I sent in the seat deposit on 10/17. They only give you two weeks from when their letter is dated for you to send in the deposit. Their letter was dated 10/11, so I had to send it in my 10/25, whcih was fairly quick. Good luck to you and if you'd like to talk, feel free to drop me your e-mail.

For whateve reason, I can't see your e-mail address. I have no idea why, it is supposed to allow me to see it. Anyway, the reason you have a better chance in January is there are much less applicants. Very few students are willing to start law school in the middle of the year. Those who didn't get into where they would have liked usually wait until the next year and attempt to re-take the LSAT or improve their other credentials somehow. But there are so few applicants for the January class anyway, we should pretty much have no problem, since they were already considering us for admission then. I am taking a trip to Chicago over Veteran's Day and shall visit the school and attend some classes then. I have visited the school before, but never attended any day classes, only a few Saturday classes. Not sure how we can get in touch with each other, since I can't seem to view anyone's e-mail address.

I heard about my decision from FCSL through the mail. It came quite quickly, but that's probably because I was a previously admitted student. I had told the admissions rep. that I'd only go if I got a better scholarship and all they offered me was the same thing they offered me last year, so of course I'm not going there. Good luck to you.

login and click "Delete Individual Comments" to view the email address. I'll add the email addresses to each comment ASAP.

Hey, Actually, I don't know that i've ever made it through the movie, but the book was excellent. I actually had another account on here that had too much info, so i erased it and started this one. I was at the U of U law fair and they said that they look at LSN and try and figure out who you are. I'd hate for them to see my 25 applications pending. I'm sure UC is better than DU but they wouldn't even look my direction with these numbers. Hope all is well...

What do you know about FCSL's scholarships. I have a 3.8 GPA but only a 149 LSAT avg. I do have a high LSAT of 153. I was hoping that I would get around 10k a year. My Index is a 2.8

it looks like you're going to law school! hey, if you don't get the news you want from loyola or kent, just crush 1l and transferr. i might see you there. good luck with the rest of your apps.

maybe you should send a letter to both schools informing them of your acceptance to john marshall and that your decision has to be made quickly. i'm sure that they can understand your situation. it's not like you can wait. (well you can try to deferr, but there are no gurantees you get it.) it might help to inform them that they are your top choice and if accepted you WILL attend. i mean, damn, you have less than a month to go. oh and it would suck so bad to get notified of an acceptance while you're taking finals at jmls.

The only school I was considering in Indiana was IU Bloomington. But that was last year. I never even wanted to apply to IUPUI. I applied to DePaul last year and was outright rejected. Which was pathetic, because they accepted people with a lot worse numbers than mine with nowhere near the qualifications. Yes, DePaul is adjacent to John Marshall. However, I know a professor who teaches at John Marshall and they have an excellent tax law program. DePaul has a good family law program, but I just don't like the way they handled me last year and I wasn't about to pay them another $60 to apply. Their process is also not like the other schools. You have to have a one page resume, and mine is two, and trying to cut it down to one is like ridiculous. I did that last year, but it wasn't good enough for them anyway. Secondly, if I am going to go to a non T-100 school, I might as well go to one where I've already been accepted and can start sooner, rather than wait until the fall to start. So...that's why I didn't even bother to apply to DePaul. I'd rather go to John Marshall, as I'm planning on getting an LLM after graduation and they have an excellent LLM program as well.

Thanks, and congrats on your acceptances. Just keep in mind that my Kent app was complete almost a month before yours, so it will probably be a few more weeks until you hear. Good luck!

i never recieved a complete postcard, it was probably lost in the mail. we probably did go complete around the same date. i wouldn't give up just because you haven't heard back yet, though! some applications take longer to review than others, for a number of reasons (I heard at some schools how fast you hear is completely up to who is assigned to read your file). good luck to you and congrats on JM!

was up man. it looks like a done deal huh? i might be seeing you there, but in the fall. i am applying to iu-indi and depaul in the area as well. i might get dinged though. i am also applying to lewis and clark. i have heard so many good things about jm. it is really hard to believe it is a fourth tier. good luck and give em heck.

haha. it looks like you doin it up! did you look on craig's list? i bet you could rent a whole house for half the condo price. are you near the loop? if so, that has got to be a grip. good luck this semester

i was wondering if you can give me some info on jm. i left my email. the part before the @ is my aim. what i am really curious about is did they give you any scholarship $? can you get $ for doing part-time?

So, it seems were in similar boats. I switched to PT/e for Jan then will do FT in fall and pick up property over the summer. Good luck

Hey, I was reading your comments left to another person on the site and felt I had to respond. I am currently in my last year of school, hence the 3L, and I have NEVER heard of any of the classes you think will be offered in the summer to actually be offered in the summer. Contracts, Property and Con Law are all 2 semester classes that usually start in either the Fall or Spring, depending on whether your school has a Spring entering class. I would hate to see you make an assumption that the classes offered in the summer are the typical "first year" courses. You may get a few electives offered in the summer, however, many electives come with prerequisites that are, of course, first year or semester completion minimum. I would really check with the school over the next few days to make sure there are some classes available during the summer. I am a part-time evening student (started Jan03) and I know we had some courses available to us, however, they were all electives since the classes offered were Evidence, Remedies, Wills, and other courses that required a specific class or two. Oh, your school is going to tell you what classes you have to take as a PT student. you wont have the luxury of decision making for another semester or two, and you stated you will have switched to FT by then. Perhaps you should consider private loans to tie you over with living expenses.....

I did check JM's schedule. They do indeed offer Property over the summer, but they are not offering Contracts. They are also offering Criminal Law I, but I'm not sure if that's an Elective or if that's the first semester of Criminal Law. The dean at JMLS told me I could drop whichever class I wanted to. That was on the 20th of December that I spoke to him. So I told him I wanted to drop Contracts, so I could only go to school 2 days a week. But that was under the condition that I'd get to take Lawyering Skills in the evening on Thursday night or Saturday morning. As for Private loans, they don't work the way they should. You can only get them up to the cost of attendance, minus whatever financial aid you've gotten from the government, which of course is the $18,500. Well, the cost of attendance for PT plus living expenses only comes out to be about $21,700. So since you get $18,500 from the government, that means I can only get $3,200 from a private loan. That's all my school will authorize. Now....tuition for PT is around $10,800, so that means that I only have less than $11,000 to live on. Most people would think that's plenty. Unfortunately, for my expenses, just to pay my rent and assessments comes out to that amount, so I can barely even afford to buy food as it is. So...private loans don't really cover what they need to cover, so FT pretty much is no longer an option. Perhaps it never will be at this rate. The Dean at JMLS has been very nice to me, so I'm just going to ask to switch to the evening program, just like Elazin did. FT is for rich people or people with rich uncles or who have tons of money saved up or have lots of roommates with no bills. None of those apply to me, so it's out the door with the FT.

Yes, where I am living is only 2 stops on the blue line from JMLS and is in the southwest corner of the Loop. I didn't want to live outside of downtown and spend an hour to an hour and a half commuting to law school like I did for my undergraduate and graduate years. I wanted to be able to maximize study time, attempting to maximize success. I guess I'll just take Contracts next Fall with a bunch of new 1L's and take Con. Law I in the summer, since I'll have already taken Property. That won't be so bad, because I didn't want to take Con. Law I and Criminal Law at the same time anyway. Those are the two classes I know I'll hate more than anything, so it's best I not take them together anyway. So even though my schedule will be pretty messed up, I guess it won't be so bad after all.

on chi-kent! way to go. now you can save up some rent money. things have worked out well. one question. do you get any money back from jmsl?

Congrats on your decision to attend Kent! =) And I love your username!

can you tell me why you felt so strongly about applying only to chicago schools? also, how were you able to secure both a job and a condo so quickly?

i'm in at john marshall but they only gave me 4000/yr. i got waitlisted at depaul. this kind of freaked me out. it probably means they might take me but force me to go pt at night. is it really worth it? what do you think? how far is too far to live from school? i have seen some pretty cheap rents about 5/6 miles from school.

can you tell me your thoughts on chicago as a city? seeing as how you are new to the city, i am curious as to your thoughts and first impressions. thanx

I'm aiming for Chicago, too ... if a school comes through for me. Curious why you didn't apply to DePaul?

hey... I messaged you here a while ago... just wanted to say congrats about kent, and perhaps i will be seeing you there in the fall! =)

I guess since you're from Chicago, you seem to be the person to ask about Chicago law school! I've gotten in at John Marshall but I'm a little hesitant about going there because I know people that have gotten in with really, really low scores. What kind of a reputation does the school have? I haven't heard much about it.

I was considering taking the LSAT again and applying for the next admissions cycle, but I just got accepted to one of the schools I really liked. So, if anything, I might transfer out after a year, but I'm pretty sure I'll be happy there. Congrats on getting into Kent and Marshall. What did you do different for this admissions cycle than last years?

I liked the location, the proximity of their dorms, and that it seemed to have at least a semblance of a campus. That being said I kind of had a bad experience with Loyola involving my deposit check. I shorted them 25 dollars on accident and they pretty much demanded I send the amount priority mail or drive it out to them. (I live in Detroit) I guess I thought it was kind of petty, seeing as $225 is a substantial chunk of change and I though it would 'show real intent', which seems to be the purpose of deposits. Anyways, I had withdrawn from every other school I had gotten into, so I did what they said and priority mailed it. The day after they called me at 5 PM saying "We still haven't recieved your $25 check, should we just send back your original check" Pretty fucking rude. It made them seem desperate for that money. Out of pure happenstance Indiana, where I was waitlisted, had called me about 5 minutes prior, informing me of my acceptance and a scholarship offer. Since I'd rather attend Indiana anyway I responded to Loyola's call with 'Yeah, why don't you go ahead and do that" The entire episode seemed entirely outlandish and hey, it worked out great for me. I decided to e-mail the assistant Dean at Loyola to tell her about what had happened, not out of spite but merely because I liked her a lot and thought I'd let her know so they could prevent losing other potentials this way. Anyways, basically she responded with what amounted to an elaborate way of saying "fuck you for thinking we're petty, you're petty for going to this other school over us." Ironically, she claims they were doing me a service by demanding that $25 dollars immediately, because as she put it "we know individuals do not have a lot of disposable income." I really don't know how to figure that one. Look, I would have been happy to pay the stupid $25 dollars, but isn't general mail quick enough? Are you that cash strapped to make me pay $16 dollars to overnight your stupid money? I dunno, maybe it was just a huge misunderstanding.

Thanks for the post. I am still on the fence about Kent as I would like to do the whole full time shot but it is a great school. Putting my faith in DePaul and Loyola PT I guess for now but I very well may see you there in the fall. Chicago is such a great city and to practice law at any of those schools would be a dream for me. Best of luck to you and hope to see you in the fall!!

hey- thanks for the honest feedback & advice!

yeah, you're right and it feels good...so, wait, are you a 1L now???

Thanks for the heads up on UNLV, for now I will just enjoy life and try not to think about it. Best of luck as a 1L at Kent!

Thanks for the note. I think IUB is a great choice and you never know with LSATs...mine weren't exactly spectacular. Good luck.

Thank you for the well wishes and I hope you effort to come back to Vegas works out!

I ABSOLUTELY ADORE CHICAGO! Went to undergrad here and would LOVE to stay for law school! Good luck at Kent!