Cami Trachtman : Levett Career Center : Hanover College

Cami Trachtman

Cami Trachtman '17
earning JD and MPH
Indiana University Indianapolis

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Cami's Advice

To begin, don't stress out about this before you need to. I didn't decide on law school until the July before my senior year. Up until that time, I had no set plans of what I wanted to do.

Study hard, but don't waste money on a class if you know you have the discipline to study on your own. I ordered several prep books and spent a lot of hours in the library, and it was way more cost-effective for my goals.

For the LSAT, make sure you take TIMED PRACTICE TESTS! I cannot emphasize this enough. While many LSAT questions are not hard in and of themselves, the real challenge is completing a number of problems in a set, short amount of time. The first time I took a practice test I got about halfway through a section when the time was up, and although most of my answers were correct, about half were unanswered. You do NOT want this to happen on test day.

I would highly recommend taking the September/October LSAT. While the June LSAT is nice in theory, it will require lots of studying over spring term which is not something I foresee a lot of Hanover students doing. With the fall LSAT, you have all summer to study and you are still able to take the December LSAT if you need to up your score. I took my LSAT the last weekend in September and had all my applications done by Christmas. This took a lot of stress off of my second semester. Even though deadlines are late, I recommend doing your applications as early as possible (this may be advantageous for scholarships as well).

Have several people read and edit your personal statement for clarity. As annoying as it can be, more edits are a good thing!

In-state tuition is your friend. Utilize it. Graduate school is really not that long of a time (think about how quickly your years at Hanover have gone by!). If you aren't living in your dream location, that's ok--it's better to not be in debt. Apply for any scholarships you can find, because the worst case scenario is that you don't get it (oh well). Also consider finding a roommate! I cut my rent in half by living with a roommate.