In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning race-based affirmative action, law schools across the country, including Duke, have made several changes to their application components for the 2023-24 admissions cycle.
The court’s June decision came only two months before Sept. 1, the most popular date to open applications for law schools. Some of the essay prompt changes were therefore announced on short notice.
Duke Law School previously required a personal statement and offered applicants two optional essay prompts: a diversity statement and a statement of interest. After the Supreme Court’s decision, Duke Law School kept the personal statement and the optional statement of interest, but replaced the diversity statement with short essays.
Applicants are now required to submit one or two essays from a list of six prompts. Some of the new essay prompts invite applicants to share their “exposure to a diversity of perspectives and experiences” or their “special background,” while others center on applicants’ thoughts on equal justice, interest in public service, commitment to free expression and understanding of ethical leadership.
In previous years, many law schools required a personal statement and offered an optional diversity statement. For the 2023-24 admissions cycle, Harvard Law School has replaced the prompts with two new required essays, a statement of purpose and a statement of perspective. Several other law schools have also changed their application essay prompts, including Yale Law School.
“What they have out of this cycle is kind of testing the waters, if you will, to see if it's going to produce the kind of information they want with applicants,” pre-law advisor Patrice Barley said.
According to Barley, the lack of uniformity among law school essay prompts means applicants will have to spend more time tailoring their essays to every law school they apply to.
“Since the pivot was so late in the application cycle, I think that law schools will be granting quite a bit of grace in the essay reading process this year, because applicants didn't have a lot of time to grapple with them,” Barley said.
Revamped essay prompts are not the only change coming to law school admissions. The logic games section of the Law School Admission Test will be replaced by either a reading comprehension or logical reasoning section beginning in August 2024. The changes will not affect the current admissions cycle.
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