Got the email from Richard that I am under standby group. Congratulations to those who get an offer!

Good news for you too...the standby group in Chicago must be the group with the most optimistic chances, after the wait list for Cambridge.

Haha.. That'd make two of us (at least).. Indeed, a very small intake & thus I'm not very optimistic but it is the first school I'll be hearing from as well..

I hear Chicago decisions can be unorthodox where those accepted at YHS sometimes don't make the cut.. Not sure if that is the case..

I was denied admission yesterday, I applied to Tax concentration. Congratulations to those who are accepted.

I am also out :( It is my final year, and I assume that they really care about experience. Congrats to those who got their offers.

I thought that schools such as Columbia place the most emphasis on work experience? My friend and I are both in our last year of undergraduate studies in the UK and we both got offers for Chicago!

Here is what we say about this on the Chicago LLM webpage:

We say in our application materials that admission decisions take into account a candidates academic and professional background. In situations where we are considering applicants who are currently in school or are recent graduates, there understandably may not be much of a professional career to consider. Our faculty often say that they appreciate the perspective that experienced lawyers can bring to the discussions in their classes. As a consequence, our Graduate Studies Committee tends to favor candidates who have been working for a while before they come to Chicago. This factor will be balanced with our desire to have a variety of countries represented in the class. For example, there are certain countries in Europe where most of our applicants do not have extensive work experience so that becomes less important to us. As a general proposition, it is fair to say that the Graduate Studies Committee prefers experienced applicants from a country if they are available in the applicant pool.

Richard Badger

Got the letter! Congratulations to all those who got in! =D

TBH I am somewhat baffled with the decisions.. didn't fancy my chances alot but was hopeful.. & a colleague who I'm certain will be a very strong contender even at Harvard didn't make the cut.. I wonder if schools sometimes look over candidates they feel are likely to reject the offer?

@imnc - a friend of mine is waitlisted, but has no plans to wait.. common wisdom suggests that chances of acceptance are low & unpredictable, and a decision is likely to reach extremely late by default ruling out scholarship

=> I am curious - how many offers does a school make to fill 70 seats? Would Chicago have indeed made only 70 offers & put say 150 on waitlist?

Got the email from Richard that I am under standby group. Congratulations to those who get an offer!

Good news for you too...the standby group in Chicago must be the group with the most optimistic chances, after the wait list for Cambridge.

Why is that? I am under the impression that waitlist in Chicago basically denotes rej...

@imnc - a friend of mine is waitlisted, but has no plans to wait.. common wisdom suggests that chances of acceptance are low & unpredictable, and a decision is likely to reach extremely late by default ruling out scholarship

=> I am curious - how many offers does a school make to fill 70 seats? Would Chicago have indeed made only 70 offers & put say 150 on waitlist?

@imnc - Thanks, interesting points there.

After speaking to past year students & applicants, my vague gues-stimate is that UChicago makes around 280 offers & places 150 on WL. It would make sense to make offers to 4x students in the first instance rather than risk relying on WL students to confirm in April/ May.

I think its odd they don't willingly share number of offers made the same way they do for JD applications, especially when UChicago stresses on a transparent process.

Personally, I have an offer from CLS which I'm more inclined towards atm. Would you say making it to UC (ie, being amongst top 280 or so candidates) may be a reasonably good yardstick to blindly guess whether one will make it to HLS?

Hi guys. Just one thing. While I was accepted in Columbia, NYU and Georgetown (just to mention some of the schools you mentioned in your post, including an "ivy"), i was waitlisted in U.Chicago. It shows you that sometimes entering an Ivy is easier than U.Chicago (btw, U.Chicago and Columbia are exactly in the same raking of Law Schools around the world). I was about to go Columbia (which I agree with you it could be more attractive than NYU or Georgetown), but fortunatelly in the second half of April I received the acceptance from U.Chicago. It was a difficult decision since, among other things, I received a good schoolarship from one of the other schools I was accepeted, but finally I decided to come U.Chicago. The only thing I can tell you guys, is that it was the best decision of my life! In terms for the Program: (i) The economic approach is in everwhere, not only in classes with Judges Posner and Easterbrook, but in all the classes; (ii) The amount of the Program (only 70 people, comparing with Columbia for instance that has 250 people) is the best. Not that small, not that big. I can certainly say that I am very close friend of at least 85% of my classmates, which I´m sure it could not happen in bigger Programs. Here the "network" things is reached with actual friendship and not witg fake things; (iii) The environment itself is amazing, the Campus is an actual Camps; the JD´s are great (not as I heard from other schools); etc. In terms of the city, at the begining I thought NYC was super atractive, actually the city of Chicago was not in my radar. However, once i moved here (also having been in NYC) I can say Chicago is one of the best city to live as an student. In my view is a small, clean and organized NYC. And even NYC people agrees with me on that. It´s an amazing city, there are many things to do. Do an appropriate research and you will understand me. Im sure this is the best experience of my lyfe by far. Even if I am going to work for a while in NYC, now I really don´t want to move out of Chicago. If you were rejected, obviously look at your other acceptances, but if you were wailisted, fight for getting the acceptance. It worths it. And if you were accepted, don´t think about it! Pablo Mori Bregante, from Peru. If you guys have some doubt don´t hesitate to write me: pmoribregante@uchicago.edu.


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@imnc - a friend of mine is waitlisted, but has no plans to wait.. common wisdom suggests that chances of acceptance are low & unpredictable, and a decision is likely to reach extremely late by default ruling out scholarship

=> I am curious - how many offers does a school make to fill 70 seats? Would Chicago have indeed made only 70 offers & put say 150 on waitlist?

@ pmoribregante - thanks!

Is it possible in any way for you to confirm how many offers UChicago makes to fill the 70 seats & how many it puts on the WL?

Hi. Not really. I´m not part of the Acceptance team, just an student. I don´t know neither how many offers the other schools send though. All the best.

As someone who was accepted at Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, NYU, UChicago and chose to go to Columbia thanks to the generous financial aid they gave, here are my replies to your very patriotic post.

i was waitlisted in U.Chicago. It shows you that sometimes entering an Ivy is easier than U.Chicago

The amount of the Program (only 70 people, comparing with Columbia for instance that has 250 people) is the best

The environment itself is amazing, the Campus is an actual Camps; the JD´s are great (not as I heard from other schools); etc. In terms of the city, at the begining I thought NYC was super atractive, actually the city of Chicago was not in my radar. However, once i moved here (also having been in NYC) I can say Chicago is one of the best city to live as an student. In my view is a small, clean and organized NYC. And even NYC people agrees with me on that.

@imnc - Thanks, interesting points there.

After speaking to past year students & applicants, my vague gues-stimate is that UChicago makes around 280 offers & places 150 on WL. It would make sense to make offers to 4x students in the first instance rather than risk relying on WL students to confirm in April/ May.

I think its odd they don't willingly share number of offers made the same way they do for JD applications, especially when UChicago stresses on a transparent process.

Personally, I have an offer from CLS which I'm more inclined towards atm. Would you say making it to UC (ie, being amongst top 280 or so candidates) may be a reasonably good yardstick to blindly guess whether one will make it to HLS?

U Chicago has a disproportionate amount of prestige within the JD ranks, not so the LLM program. Disclosing the stats might show that the LLM program was not the most sought after. But I can tell you this. Last year when I applied, Chicago informed me that they had received 940 applications whereas HLS and CLS both received about 1800/1900 applications for the LLM program.

In general making it to CLS is a good indicator that your app is strong and you have a good chance at Harvard. A UC acceptance is not very helpful as many others would have got it.

@Chuck_and_Geck - thanks. Yes, you do have a point.

However, this is where I have an issue with the schools for not themselves providing adequate information which they could (and should, since they do so for JDs).

Picture this:

- UChicago may actually be making offers to 280 or 300 students to fill those 70 seats (because acceptance rate of UC offers, by all indicators, seems to be quite low).

Thus, acceptance rate of applicants 'could' then be as high as 30%!

- HLS, despite more seats (150 or so), may be making offers to only 225 students (because candidates may be less likely to reject the offers).

Thus, acceptance rate 'could' be as low as 15%..

TBH, I'm disappointed that schools want us to think they are more 'exclusive' by advertising a small class size, & calculating acceptance rates based on:
= [ intake ] / [ # of applicants ]

while it really should be:
= [ # of offers ] / [ # of applicants ]

What is worse is that they are aware of this hypocrisy, since they provide that information for JD admissions. My estimate is that UoC may be only slightly more selective than CLS, but may have a higher acceptance rate than HYS, and even UPenn, UCB, etc.

Agree, but so far this is just a speculation over figures, I wouldn't be obsessed with it.

Everyone needs to choose the Uni based on its academic / extra-curriculum preferences. As this is a UoC topic, I must say that the Uni is particularly strong in economic approach / antitrust (5 different classes in 2015/16) / Securities regulation (Henderson is one of the best in this field) / ConLaw (Geoffrey Stone!!) / Philosophy (Nussbaum!!). Basically, the offerings and schedules are available on their web-site. One may check and decide for himself whether she belongs to this place or not.

Good luck!

Speculation is all there is while we wait for decisions from other schools! =)

Questioning the authenticity of the selective nature of the highest ranked law schools (especially when many of us will be incurring copious amount of debt to attend & making huge life-impacting decisions) is an extremely pertinent enquiry IMHO. There is every reason to believe that a law school which is harder to get admitted to attracts more prestige; and several schools enjoy that prestige basis the small class-sizes they maintain. This I increasingly believe is a misleading yet widely prevalent assumption, & I only express my disappointment at lack of full disclosure of # of offers.

Participants on this thread are those who have already willingly selected UoC as a probably school, including for reasons listed by you.

Good luck =)

Let me clarify my earlier post.

All the top schools look for similar CVs. Top grades, good writing, referees, prior jobs, etc. Getting an offer from one is usually a sign that your chances are good at the rest, or at least better than a situation where you did not* getting that offer. Thus it can be concluded that someone who has offers from CLS + UChicgo stands a good chance of getting Harvard.

Speaking of the strengths of the law faculty at Chicago, they have 2-3 really good courses as you mention but their constitutional law faculty is (like CLS) poor and their corporate law faculty (unlike CLS) is also bad. I have no interest in constitutional law otherwise I would have gone to Harvard which has the best constitutional law faculty and the number of courses. Chicago (from my last year research) has less variety and depth of courses than Harvard, Yale and Columbia (and even NYU). Even if you are into anti-trust law or economics going to Chicago is a steep tradeoff in terms of prestige and location and other courses that you miss and I get the impression those in Chicago cling desperately to this 'small class' and 'economics' labels to feel good about themselves.