Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School

TWO QUESTIONS, BOTH MANDATORY: 'All applicants to Simmons Law must include a personal statement that addresses the following two questions', quoted in full above. This is a structured essay rather than an open statement, and an applicant who answers only the first has answered half. NO PAGE LIMIT IS RECORDED, DELIBERATELY: 'Personal statements should be 2-3 pages in length, double-spaced, and uploaded as an attachment to the online application.' 'Should be' with a range is guidance about expected shape, not a published cap -- there is no 'no longer than', 'not exceed' or 'maximum' -- and per docs/CURATION.md guidance is not converted into a limit. Treat three pages as the practical ceiling. Double spacing is specified; no font or margin instruction is given. WHY THE ESSAY MATTERS HERE: 'The Admissions Committee conducts a holistic review of every file including non-numeric factors. Therefore, all applicants are required to submit a personal statement.' The second question -- about drive, determination, perseverance and leadership -- covers ground other schools split into a separate perspective statement, so no perspective_statement row is recorded for this school. NO WHY-SIMMONS QUESTION is asked and no separate why_x_essay or optional essay is published.

Verified 2026-08-20 · source page

ONE ADDENDUM IS EFFECTIVELY MANDATORY AND IS TIED TO THE RESUME RATHER THAN OFFERED AS AN OPTION: any gap 'of more than six months' in education or employment requires that 'a separate addendum should be included to explain the gap.' No length or format is published for it. SIMMONS PUBLISHES NO GENERAL-PURPOSE ADDENDUM -- there is no named slot for explaining a low GPA or a score disparity, and no optional-materials section. Given the school's 25th-percentile UGPA of 2.93 and 25th-percentile LSAT of 146, both among the lowest in either batch, a meaningful share of admitted applicants have academic history they might want to explain and no published place to do it beyond the personal statement's second question. Recorded as the school's silence rather than a refusal. CHARACTER AND FITNESS IS THE MOST FULLY SPECIFIED PART OF THIS APPLICATION and the disclosure standard is among the broadest in either batch: 'Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School requires all applicants to make a complete and full disclosure to the Character and Fitness questions at time of application. If the answer is "Yes" to one or more of the Character and Fitness questions outlined in the application, applicants will need to upload a written explanation of each incident that includes dates, locations, charges, associated fees, and final disposition.' The sweep is then spelled out, and the final clause is unusual: 'Full disclosure is required for any charges against you, including those that have been dismissed, and those for which you were acquitted, adjudication was withheld or deferred, a conviction was reversed, set aside, or vacated, any records were sealed or expunged, you received court supervision, or you pled guilty or nolo contendere to the charge, and regardless of whether you have been previously told that you do not need to disclose any such instance.' A CONTINUING OBLIGATION AND STATED CONSEQUENCES: 'applicants are under continuing obligation to update disclosures and add new occurrences. Failure to make complete disclosure on this application may result in revocation of an offer of admission to the Simmons Law School and/or denial of your application for admission to practice law in a particular state. Discrepancies between disclosure on this application and an applicant's character and fitness application for admission to the bar may result in serious consequences while in law school and when applying to take the bar examination.' Recorded on the addendum entry because the taxonomy in docs/DATA.md has no character-and-fitness type; required is false because both obligations are conditional.

Verified 2026-08-20 · source page

'All applicants are required to submit a current resume that includes all post-high school education, employment history, honors and awards, and extracurricular activities including community service.' Four required content areas, and note the scope starts after high school. THE GAP RULE IS THE THING TO KNOW, AND IT IS UNUSUALLY SPECIFIC -- most schools never mention gaps at all: 'Gaps in an applicant's education or employment history of more than six months should be included in the resume; however, a separate addendum should be included to explain the gap in education or employment. The resume (and addendum, if applicable) should be uploaded with your online application.' So a six-month break must appear on the resume AND be explained in a separate document. That threshold is short enough to catch a gap year, a period of caregiving, or a delayed graduation, and an applicant who simply omits the period has broken the rule twice over. No page limit is published for the resume, so none is recorded.

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'Two letters of recommendation', listed as one of the three components of the LSAC Credential Assembly Service Report alongside the LSAT score and transcripts. Letters therefore route through CAS rather than to the school. NO MAXIMUM IS PUBLISHED, so count_accepted is left unset rather than guessed. NO GUIDANCE ON WHO SHOULD WRITE -- no preference for academic over professional recommenders, no discouraged categories, no recency rule, and nothing about what a letter should address. Recorded as the school's silence. What is published is only their weight: letters are named among the 'non-numeric factors' the committee considers, alongside 'the personal statement... and work experience, community service, honors or awards reflected through a resume.'

Verified 2026-08-20 · source page

'Two letters of recommendation', listed as one of the three components of the LSAC Credential Assembly Service Report alongside the LSAT score and transcripts. Letters therefore route through CAS rather than to the school. NO MAXIMUM IS PUBLISHED, so count_accepted is left unset rather than guessed. NO GUIDANCE ON WHO SHOULD WRITE -- no preference for academic over professional recommenders, no discouraged categories, no recency rule, and nothing about what a letter should address. Recorded as the school's silence. What is published is only their weight: letters are named among the 'non-numeric factors' the committee considers, alongside 'the personal statement... and work experience, community service, honors or awards reflected through a resume.'

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THE CHECKLIST SAYS LSAT AND THE REVIEW PARAGRAPH SAYS 'LSAT (OR GRE)', which is a small internal inconsistency recorded rather than resolved. The JD Application Checklist lists only 'LSAT taken within the past five years' among the CAS report contents, with no mention of the GRE anywhere in the requirements. But the holistic-review paragraph on the same page reads: 'while GPA and LSAT (or GRE) are important factors in the admissions process, non-numeric factors are considered.' THE 509 SETTLES THAT THE GRE ROUTE IS REAL: it prints a GRE row with 2 admissions enrollees alongside 131 LSAT enrollees, and a school cannot report GRE enrollees for a test it does not accept. So the GRE is accepted; the checklist simply does not say so, and a GRE applicant has no published instruction on how to submit a score -- no ETS code, no notification step, no confirmation that CAS registration still applies. That is worth an email before relying on it. No JD-Next variance is claimed and the 509 prints no JD-Next row. FIVE-YEAR VALIDITY on the LSAT. NO MINIMUM SCORE is published, and nothing is said about superscoring, averaging, or how multiple sittings are weighed -- silences rather than policies. Both cohorts other than the LSAT sit below the ABA's under-10 publication floor, so no GRE percentile benchmark exists.

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'Applicants are required to register with the Credential Assembly Service (CAS) and must have all international transcripts, academic records, mark sheets, and degree certifications sent directly to LSAC for authentication and evaluation.' The CAS report must carry 'Transcripts from all institutions attended including graduate work, if applicable.' No minimum GPA is published, and Simmons publishes no statement about how the undergraduate record is read -- no grade trends, no institutional rigor, no major preference. THE RESIDENCY POSITION IS THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL FINANCIAL FACT ON THE PAGE AND IT RUNS THE OPPOSITE WAY FROM MOST PUBLIC SCHOOLS: 'Non-residents pay in-state tuition rates at the SIU Simmons Law School!' The 509 corroborates -- resident and non-resident per-credit tuition are both certified at $547, with identical $5,678 annual fees -- so unlike Montana or South Dakota in these batches, there is no out-of-state penalty to plan around and no residency documentation to assemble. ACCOMMODATIONS ARE HANDLED AFTER ADMISSION, NOT DURING IT, and Simmons is explicit that disclosure is not expected at application: 'Applicants are not required to identify known disabilities in the application. Admitted students with a physical or learning disability who seek an accommodation... should immediately contact the associate dean for academic affairs.' Documentation 'must be... obtained within the last two years preceding the beginning of law school classes' and 'should include assessments, diagnoses and specific recommendations for modifications.' That two-year currency window is worth knowing early, since re-testing takes time. A separate International Applicants page exists and was not fetched for this file, so no TOEFL or IELTS terms are asserted here.

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THERE IS NO APPLICATION FEE: 'There is no application fee', stated on the admissions page. The 509 independently certifies 'Application fee 0', so both sources agree and required is recorded as false. Because the fee is zero there is no waiver process to document. LSAC's own CAS and report charges are separate; Simmons directs questions to LSAC rather than addressing prices itself. No seat deposit amount or deadline is published. Worth reading alongside the tuition position recorded on the transcript_cas entry: non-residents pay the in-state rate, so the two largest costs of applying and attending are both lower here than the sticker comparison would suggest.

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Recorded as the site's silence, not as a statement that Simmons does not interview. The admissions page -- which carries the application checklist, the personal statement questions, resume and gap rules, CAS instructions, residency, character and fitness, ADA and equal opportunity policies -- never uses the word 'interview', as fetched on 2026-08-20. The described process is entirely file-based and ends in a status-checker posting: 'All admission decisions are posted to the applicant's online status checker.' The published evaluation names GPA, LSAT or GRE, and the non-numeric factors of personal statement, letters of recommendation, and work experience, community service, honors or awards reflected through a resume.

Verified 2026-08-20 · source page