To defer, or not to defer...

The same thoughts have been swirling around my head for weeks, and I have yet to make a decision. I have all the information I need and am entirely ready to decide, but I don’t know what is holding me back. Two months ago I had the freedom of not knowing my future and two months from now my future will be set in motion, but right now I am stuck in the middle, trying to decide my path to law school.

I applied to law schools in the fall of 2008 and graduated college this May, or at least I did in theory, for when I walked across the stage to receive my diploma, I took only the symbolic diploma case. It wasn’t there. All my friends took pictures in their caps and gowns with their diplomas while I received a consolation letter that my diploma would be mailed to me in a few weeks.

I was rejected from most of the schools I applied to, waitlisted at a few, and accepted to a smaller few, some with scholarships. Continuing with my luck from graduation, the schools that I would have traded my first born to go to rejected me. The schools I applied to on a whim or because it supplied a free application and had no intention of taking seriously were the ones that accepted me. Now I am taking them seriously.

But the question then becomes, should I let my fate be decided for me by these particular schools and a particularly grueling application season? I could be happy at these schools and succeed. Or, should I remain confident that with a better LSAT score and a new year, I will find more success in the schools I have strong feelings for? Or, is there a third option to defer to a school I am accepted to but take my LSAT again, re-apply, and cross my fingers?