Podcast: When Should You Reach Out to an Admissions Office, and How Should You Do It?

In this short episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike discusses a question that tends to come up frequently this time of year—“Should I contact x law school's admissions office to ask for an update since I haven't heard back yet?”—then talks generally about when it can be advantageous to reach out to admissions, why, and how you should do it.

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.

Welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. Today is going to be law school admissions. I had promised a podcast on U.S. News rankings—we're waiting for a bit more information on these lines. I think the rankings are going to come out late March just FYI. And I think that there's going to be waves of merit aid offers and admits after the rankings come out, because right now no one knows the weights of the metrics, so no one knows if the LSAT’s going to double or half in weight, if the GPA is going to double or half, selectivity probably won't move much. So next week we'll have the rankings one up.

I saw a post on Reddit this morning, “Should I call an admissions office and ask them about the status of my application?” So I thought this would be a good time to do a podcast, a quick podcast on how to reach out to admissions offices. There's multiple ways, but the only two ways to initially reach out that you should consider are phone calls or emails, right? So don't message them on LinkedIn or find their Twitter account, etc. Don't do that.

It is all the more appropriate—I mean it's their job—to call or email them. But I want to click on why you should call, why you should email. I've talked about this before. To the post I saw, “Should I call the admissions office and ask them for the status of my application?” there's a heuristic I use: Are you doing it to placate your nervousness, anxiety—understandable, waiting—or are you doing it to enhance your chance of admission? So calling and saying, “What's the status of my application?” is not enhancing your chance of admission. If they had a status, they would tell you. The second a decision is rendered whether it's waitlist, denial, admit, or if they're putting a group in a holding pattern, they're going to let you know. So calling and saying, “Hey, what's the status?” is not beneficial at all. Emailing saying “what's the status” is not beneficial at all.

On the flip side, let me just give you the best ones: emailing and saying, “I’m deeply interested in…”—we’ll say Princeton Law School. Until there's a Princeton Law School, and a Dean of Princeton Law School to get mad at me for using their school name, it's going to be Princeton Law School. So emailing Princeton Law School and saying, “Hey, I know it's a long cycle, and I completely understand, but is there anything I can do to enhance my application? I'd love to visit. I would love to speak to an admissions officer on the phone. I can update my resume.” There's the value-add. If you have new things to offer, a visit, a phone call. But again, not a phone call saying, “Hey, what's the status?” A phone call saying, “You're my top school. I would attend and matriculate if offered”—incredibly value added.

So, an email with a new resume, if you got a new job, saying, “Please find my updated resume, I have a new job,” a letter of continued interest. I'm a big fan of letters of continued interest about five, six days after school seat deposits are due if you're on the waitlist, because that's when they get a sense for how many people they're going to take off the waitlist. So, an email saying, “Attached is my letter of continued interest, please know that blah, blah, blah,” you can say your number one choice, if it is your number one choice. Or you can say, “You're my top choice,” which a student can have three or four top choices. So, that verbiage is not startling or alarming to me. The thing I would hesitate for you to say is “You're my number one choice” if it's not. Because what could happen is they admit you, and then all of a sudden you blow them off—this doesn't happen often, but it does happen—they say, “Well, you said, ‘you're my number one choice,’ and we admitted you, we didn't hear from you.” So, there is a process that goes through LSAC's committee of infractions where they could give your name to other law schools. And if it's found out that you're telling every law school [they’re your] number one choice, that might not go away. That's why I'm a fan of “top choice.” Obviously, you can have a dream school, you can have a number one school, and you should be telling that school you would matriculate if admitted.

So, reaching out to law schools, theme of this podcast—and I promise it's going to be short, mostly because I have to run somewhere, and I felt like I owed Reddit message boards something—I’m a big fan of reaching out, it shows interest. I'm a big fan of measuring your pace. So, please don't reach out every other week. Once every month and a half, and then you can increase the pace because the risk-reward factor changes over time. And also, late in the cycle when schools' medians are locked in. Remember it’s medians not means. This is greatly to your favor. When medians become locked in, if you just happen to email someone on the right day, and all of a sudden their medians are locked in, and they had three people drop off… this is why also I’m always a fan of a signature block; if you're going to email someone or, look, if a Dean of Admissions gave you their cellphone number at a forum or a fair and you text them—I get these texts all the time, “Hey Spivey, blah blah blah,” and then there's no who this is. So, if you're going to text them, say who it is. If you're going to email them, have a signature block with your phone number in the signature block. Why? This is going to amaze you, but this happens every year. They can just mash the button on their phone and call you and say, “Hey, we do need to make a few admits. We want to know, would you attend if we admitted you?” And if you say yes, you can get an admit on the spot, just because you’ve made their lives easier to call them. That kind of admit happens late cycle, not right now—it's a slow cycle.

Someone asked what my admissions friends are saying. What my admissions friends are saying right now is, and this is—I don't mean this to sound judgmental; it's just the view from the admissions offices—“We are getting bombarded with incredibly anxious people. And we get it, we're going slowly, but it’s doing them no good to be incredibly anxious.” So, a very calm professional email—even better by my estimation, a very calm professional phone call—to the admissions office, “Hey, this is Mike Spivey”—by the way don't say that, but—“Hey, this is Mike Spivey, I'm an applicant. And I just wanted, if anyone had time, I know you all are super busy, two to three minutes, just to let an admissions officer know you're my top school.” That kind of phone call differentiates because so few people do it. The kind of phone call where it's, “Hey, this is Mike Spivey and it's been four months. When am I going to get in the decision?” That also differentiates, but differentiates in a poor way.

So, let me end on the heuristic. If there's an update, if you're going to do something value-add, if you're going to do something upbeat and calm, if you're going to do something professional, fire out that email. But on the flip side, if you're really just reaching out to calm your own nerves, which are incredibly understandable. I'm nervous for people. It’s an incredibly slow cycle. But admits are coming, and they're going to let you know when you're admitted or waitlisted or denied. They're going to let you know. So, if you're doing it for those reasons, just to get an update, no, it's not a good idea to reach out. I hope this was helpful. This was Mike Spivey of the Spivey Consulting Group.

Latest Podcasts

August 12, 2025

UVA Law Admissions Dean Natalie Blazer on the 2025-26 Cycle, Rising LSATs/GPAs, the "Why UVA" & More

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco interviews Natalie Blazer, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Chief Admissions Officer at the University of Virginia School of Law, on the upcoming 2025-2026 admissions cycle, how applicants should be thinking about and taking into account relevant current events, and advice for prospective law students preparing to submit their applications. They discuss predictions for the 2025-26 cycle (1:56), rising LSAT and GPA medians (20:22, 27:45), changes they've made to their application this year (12:30), the new student loan cap (30:26), how admissions offices are considering applicants writing about politics and protest in the current political climate (4:18), how they evaluate applicants who have been unable to get a job after graduating from college (7:36), whether writing about AI is overdone (36:34), advice for the "Why UVA" essay (13:05), and much more. As a brief disclaimer, Dean Blazer speaks for herself and often for UVA Law in this episode; her opinions do not reflect those of all admissions officers.

In addition to her work at UVA Law, Natalie has served as Director of J.D. Admissions at Georgetown University Law Center and was Associate Director of Admissions at Columbia Law School. She hosts the UVA Law podcast Admissible, which "offers insights into the world of law school admissions and a behind-the-scenes look at life as a law student through interviews with students, faculty, alumni and staff."

We've interviewed Natalie twice for Status Check before, and though we weren't able to get to all of the questions that Redditors requested we ask, we answered many of them in these past episodes:

Please note: At the time that we recorded this episode, we noted that August 2025 LSAT registrants were up 27% relative to August 2024 registrants but that that number would come down over the days of the test administration. Ultimately, August LSAT registrants landed at a 23.7% increase vs. last year.

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.

August 4, 2025

Bill Treanor on 30+ Years as a Law School Dean & Standing Up to Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews William ("Bill") Treanor on his long and recently-concluded tenure as Dean of Georgetown University Law Center as well as his experiences and perspectives from a 40-year career. Bill talks about the the biggest changes he's seen during his time in legal education (16:06), the coming changes he foresees in the short-term future both good (19:22) and bad (20:56), his proudest accomplishments as a law school dean (41:57), the biggest challenges law students face today (24:27), and how he reacted and famously responded to the letter from Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin threatening not to hire Georgetown Law graduates if the school was found to be teaching a curriculum involving diversity, equity, and inclusion (1:33).

Dean Treanor's response to then-Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin is below. You can also read it in full here.

Header: Georgetown Law, William M. Treanor, Dean and Executive Vice President, Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair, March 6, 2025, Addressed to: Edward R. Martin, Jr., Interim United States Attorney, District of Columbia Judiciary Center, 555 4th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. Contents of Letter: Dear Interim United States Attorney Martin: I write in response to your letter dated February 17, 2025, which you sent to me via email on March 3, 2025. As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding. For us at Georgetown, this principle is a moral and educational imperative. It is a principle that defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution. Georgetown University also prohibits discrimination and harassment in its programs and activities and takes seriously its obligations to comply with all federal and local laws. Your letter challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution. It inquires about Georgetown Law’s curriculum and classroom teaching, asks whether diversity, equity, and inclusion is part of the curriculum, and asserts that your office will not hire individuals from schools where you find the curriculum “unacceptable.” The First Amendment, however, guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty teach and how to teach it. The Supreme Court has continually affirmed that among the freedoms central to a university’s First Amendment rights are its abilities to determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it. Georgetown University Law Center 600 New Jersey Avenue, NW | Washington, DC 20001-2075 This is a bedrock principle of constitutional law – recognized not only by the courts, but by the administration in which you serve. The Department of Education confirmed last week that it cannot restrict First Amendment rights and that it is statutorily prohibited from “exercising control over the content of school curricula.” Your letter informs me that your office will deny our students and graduates government employment opportunities until you, as Interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, approve of our curriculum. Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution. Georgetown Law has one of the preeminent faculties in the country, fostering groundbreaking scholarship, educating students in a wide variety of perspectives, and thriving on the robust exchange of ideas. Georgetown Law faculty have educated world leaders, members of Congress, and Justice Department officials, from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We pride ourselves on providing an excellent graduate and professional education, built upon the Catholic and Jesuit tradition. Georgetown-educated attorneys have, for decades, served this country capably and selflessly in offices such as yours, and we have confidence that tradition will continue. We look forward to your confirming that any Georgetown-affiliated candidates for employment with your office will receive full and fair consideration. Sincerely, [Signature] William M. Treanor Dean and Executive Vice President Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair 2

Other topics they discuss include the value (and lack of value) of the Socratic method (16:30), experiential learning in law school (16:06) and the potential effects of a current proposal before the ABA (20:56), the growing field of law and technology (19:22), the prospect of government taking accrediting authority from independent organizations (21:57), the current and coming impacts of AI on legal education and practice (23:43, 46:58), how law firms have learned from past recessions and overreactions (29:33), Bill's take on the current surge in law school applicants (30:36), his advice for prospective law students today (33:48), and his thoughts on the law school rankings (35:18).

Bill Treanor served as Dean of Georgetown University Law Center for 15 years, prior to which he served as Dean of Fordham University School of Law for almost 20 years. His accomplishments at Georgetown were innumerable—you can read more about him and his impressive career here.

Letters of Recommendation

Admissions

July 14, 2025

Podcast: Military Applicants—Law School Admissions Strategy & More with Harvard Law Grad Brian Henson

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Spivey J.D. admissions consultants Danielle Early (former Associate Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School and military/veteran admissions specialist) and Mike Burns (former Director of Admissions & Financial Aid at Northwestern Law and Navy veteran) interview Brian Henson, a former consulting client of Danielle's, Navy Intelligence Officer, ⁠Service to School⁠ mentor, Harvard Law Armed Forces Association president, and recent HLS graduate. They discuss Brian's story of applying to law school from the middle of the ocean on an aircraft carrier and his experiences as a veteran at HLS, plus insights into admissions and legal education specifically targeted at military veterans and those on active duty.

What considerations should military applicants keep in mind that differ from non-military applicants? What is the adjustment like moving from the military to law school? What sorts of admissions resources are available for military members and veterans? What are common pieces of misinformation that military applicants may encounter, and what's the true story? They cover these topics and more, including admissions for enlisted soldiers vs. officers (29:36), getting letters of recommendation from supervisors/commanders (36:44), application timing (5:28 and 21:51), resumes (43:36), personal statements (46:08), determining your chances and making a school list (31:51), job search advice (1:03:42), and more.

Listen

Podcast: When Should You Reach Out to an Admissions Office, and How Should You Do It?

Latest Podcasts

Have questions? Get in touch with us

About

For Prospective Students

For Universities

Follow Us

Podcast: When Should You Reach Out to an Admissions Office, and How Should You Do It?

Podcast Transcript

Latest Podcasts

Have questions? Get in touch with us

Stay Updated!

About

For Prospective Students

For Universities

Follow Us