Applicants, get excited.

This year, Yale Law School has extended its application deadline from February 15 to March 1. Yale Law School Associate Dean Asha Rangappa LAW ’00 said that each year, Yale Law receives many requests for an extension of its application deadline, for reasons varying from students facing technical difficulties with the electronic application to those who have just taken the February LSAT and want additional time to compile their applications.

“While we have an official deadline of February 15, we have always had a grace period with a ‘soft deadline’ through LSAC to accommodate individual extension requests,” said Rangappa in an email to the News today. “This year we simply made our extended, soft deadline public on our website and our Twitter feed. This relieves our office of the administrative burden of responding to each request individually, and is also fairer to all applicants.”

She added that the extension will have no effect on the timing of the admissions process, as decisions will continue to be out by mid-April. This is the second time that Yale Law has officially extended its application deadline, the first time being in 2007, when the deadline was moved from February 1 to 15 to give students more time to complete their applications. This was the same year Yale Law began to accept the February LSAT as well.

Since 2007, Rangappa said the school has seen an increase in applications submitting their applications after February 1 – for example, last year 27 percent of the total applicant pool for Yale applied after that date.

“On my end, I much prefer to read an application that has been put together and proofread carefully than one that has been hastily submitted,” she said. “So offering more time ends up being a win-win for everyone.”

The school may or may not adopt March 1 as its official deadline depending on the number of students who apply during this extension.