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Law school admissions experts Linda Abraham and Christine Carr share wisdom about how to achieve application success during COVID-19 [Show summary] In part two of this joint interview, TextMax Prep’s Branden Frankel and Jelena Woehr interview Accepted’s Linda Abraham and Christine Carr on what applicants should expect entering the law school admissions process. Click here for Part 1: The Test Prep Experts’ Guide to the LSAT >> How will the coronavirus pandemic impact law school admissions this year? [Show notes] [Jelena] Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, have you noticed more people interested in applying to law schools, fewer, or no change? What are students' feelings about applying to law school from your point of view right now? [0:37] Linda: We're seeing more law school applicants this year. There's no question that we're seeing more inquiries, and I think it'll ultimately significantly increase our law school admissions businesses this year. [Branden] Are applicants bringing different concerns to you than they were bringing before? [1:26] Christine: Not necessarily. Actually, with respect to the pandemic specifically, I'm generally the one that's bringing that up and asking questions as to how they're informing their decisions based on the current state of affairs and remote learning, etc. I've been seeing that most of the applicants are asking the same types of questions. Personal statements are still top of mind for many people, and how to get started, so it's not necessarily any different right now. Linda: I think there is some concern about starting law school online and the quality of their education, especially if that continues. On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of optimism about a vaccine coming out in early 2021. So for the people applying this cycle, by the time they start law school, hopefully much of the population will have been vaccinated and the restrictions that we're dealing with now, we won't be dealing with. [Jelena] Should online learning lead to any changes in an applicant's application strategy? Should they be highlighting different traits about themselves than they would in a pre-pandemic world? [2:58] Linda: I think, in general, adaptability is something that everybody is valuing a little bit more these days. I don't think that's going to fundamentally change what law schools look for in a law school personal statement. It might change a little bit. If you're showing that adaptability, grit, perseverance, and resilience, those qualities have become more important in the last six months. But fundamentally, I don't think you're going to see big, big, big changes in the core of the personal statement. Christine: I think that adaptability piece is a big piece, and that's a thread that we carried pre-pandemic, that ability to take on many things and handle different aspects and multitask and think critically about different things. When I was working with applicants from March, when the bottom fell out, essentially, and people were making decisions about where to go, I was counseling many of our applicants to look at schools for their adaptability, how they handled themselves and how that frontline admissions office was taking questions and handling questions. Are they forthcoming with information? And are they keeping in contact? Because that's setting the tone for the type of community that you're going to be joining, and in order for you to be successful, ultimately, you want to be in a community that is able to adapt to those types of changes as well, right alongside you. You don't want to be the only one that's adapting and showing those characteristics. You want the community that you're joining to already be setting that tone. So I was counseling many of my clients to be very cognizant of how you're being treated as an applicant, and how the offices are moving forward when they're making the transition to online, because it was on the fly.