Amicus Partners

Back in March last year, we ran a pilot of The Amicus Project (TAP) for graduate admissions at US law schools.  Broadly speaking, TAP was focused on two essential components of the LLM application process – deciding an applicant’s chances of admission, and the quantum of aid she would receive if admitted.

For this pilot, we partnered with UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law, globally well regarded for their IP focus, and the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law at IIT Kharagpur (RGSOIPL). Given the common focus areas of the two schools, there was a strong possibility that RGSOPIL graduates would be considering further studies in IP law.

The day the pilot was launched, hopes were high, with plans and dreams involving scalability and improbable valuations.

Six weeks later, it was clear that TAP had failed.

The platform managed to generate only eleven leads, and not a single LLM application. Worse, these leads did not cross the query stage, much less reach the admissions stage.  

On all metrics then, an utter failure.

Yet.

When seen in context, my terribly unbiased view was that TAP was a resounding success.

In less than a week of filling out a form and uploading their CV’s, potential LLM applicants from RGSOIPL were informed of their chances of admission (low, medium and high) and the minimum financial aid they would receive if admitted. This was a conversation between the school and the applicant; no third parties were involved.

The eleven leads came from a single Indian law school, all from individuals who met the criteria for admissions in the coming academic year; benchmarked to previous outreach activities, it would have taken seven-eight Indian law schools to generate a similar number of high-quality leads.

The entire process, from start to finish, took less than eight weeks to set up and execute. There were no banner advertisements, no SEO optimization, no in-person visits nor LLM fairs – none of those expenses were incurred. All it took was an email to a faculty member who wanted to help her students.

That is impressive.

And now just imagine if TAP was implemented on a slightly larger scale. It would work with ten different international law schools, each specializing in a particular field of law and/or geographical location.  

Indian LLM applicants (and eventually those from around the world), would now have access to a bouquet of LLM programs, each with complete transparency on admission chances and scholarships on offer. All this without spending a single rupee on application components like document assembly services, English proficiency tests, or even highly priced admission counsellors.

Cliched as it sounds, TAP would become that elusive “win-win” in the world of student recruitments.

Applicants would benefit from clarity and transparency. There would be publicly available data on quantum of aid offered (as opposed to the current opacity), as well as concrete information on the kind of profiles that make for successful LLM applicants in different schools. 

Recruiting schools could see substantially lower recruitment costs, and a very public commitment to greater transparency in admissions. These schools would have the option to tailor the TAP platform as per their requirements – use it as a CRM tool for example. 

Eventually, TAP could branch out into different streams of study instead of simply focusing on law. So, an applicant could reach out to a business school and a law school and get the same information from both through a single platform.

For recruiting schools, TAP could become an admissions dashboard of sorts, allowing admission teams to quickly identify high quality candidates, and hand hold them through the different stages of the application process.

Sooner rather than later, TAP would branch into an offline format as well, allowing for truly universal access.

So, why hasn’t any of this happened yet?

Well, for one, TAP will only work with a minimum time horizon of three years. Can international schools and their leadership work with such a long gestation period? Two, most schools require bespoke solutions – a one size fits all approach simply will not work. TAP will have to reconcile the individual nature of schools with the universal ethos that is at its core.  Three, the technology exists but across multiple categories like CRM, data analytics etc – TAP will have to be an amalgamation of this.

These are just three reasons, there are twenty more than I can think of, and a hundred more that I cannot.

But what I do know is that international higher education is in urgent need of a disruption. And it can all begin with a single tap.

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