When can we expect to start hearing back from schools about whether or not we got accepted? If I get accepted to more than one school, how long do I have to let them know my decision to attend or not?
Sorry if this has been covered. I've been in LSAT mode, and probably didn't pay as much attention as I should've to the application process.
Good rule of thumb: The earlier you submit your apps, the sooner you will get a response (usually). However, this also depends on when you submit your apps. Apps submitted in mid-September will probably hear by late October (but only if they are "auto-admits" or "auto-rejects"--in some cases, if your app places you in the mushy middle, it might get pushed for review until later, when AdComs have a better application pool to compare you to).
In most cases, if you submit your app by the end of the year, you'll hear by February. Most schools, from what I've seen, have a 6-8 week turnaround time on decisions, particularly once a good-size pool is available to them for review.
Not all schools do rolling admissions; right? Don't some wait to receive all the apps by a certain deadline?
The vast majority of them do. All of them want to receive all the apps by a certain deadline, but the bulk of them will start handing out decisions on apps on a first-come, first-serve basis.
To get specific information about what is going on this cycle I called the admissions offices of many law schools across the country, including my alma mater USC (fight on!) to probe them and spot check timelines.
The only LS I talked to that said they've sent out decisions already is UCLA. They said they started sending out some ED acceptances less than two weeks ago but have not yet sent many. They also specified that they are only sending out acceptances right now, not rejections. So basically they are just starting to send out the big envelopes to auto-admit ED applicants. They will be sending out ED decisions until the end of December. For non ED applications they will be sending out the bulk of decisions during January through April.
USC (University of Southern California, -not South Carolina-) has not started sending out decisions and will not until the new year. They will start sending out decisions in January after the holidays with the bulk of them rolling out in January through April.
Cornell: ED decisions will be sent out in a big pile by and around the 3rd week of December. They are not going to start sending out decisions on regular applications until April, making them an unusual outlier with the timelines.
For regular applications, the 'when to expect decisions' time window appears to be similar with the majority of them, January through April. (After the 5th school I called my scratch paper was filled up and I got tired of writing down detailed notes since it was all basically the same information for general applications)
The decisions will not start getting pumped out in volume until early January 2011 and will roll on for many months, possibly even up to late summer shortly before law school 1L classes begin. The majority of decisions will be made and sent during January through April.
*disclaimer about possible sample bias* My research involved calling 15 law schools. The majority of them were T14 schools. I did not call any schools ranked below #100 in the most recent USNWR rankings.
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