Knoxed Out

First, forgive the pun. More on that in a second.

Second, I received yesterday a letter from the College of Law at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK) in which they wrote that they were unable to offer to me a spot in this fall's entering class. Oh, well; c'est la vie.

UTK wasn't on my original short list of law schools, but they became a contender when I spoke with Karen Britton, the school's Director of Admissions, Financial Aid, and Career Services, at the law school expo at WFU back in November. My friend, Kim, did her PhD work in industrial psychology at UTK and was awarded a sweet assistantship during her time there that included a tuition waiver as well as a stipend, so I was interested to find out that the College of Law has a similar program. UTK's application fee is bargain-basement cheap (only $15!), so I figured that I had little to lose and much to gain.

When I opened my mailbox and found the very thin envelope, I did feel a bit of disappointment, but I'm far from crushed. If enrollment management at Tennessee's public universities works anything like it does at North Carolina's, then quotas mean that out-of-state students must have significantly better qualifications than in-state students for admission to the same programs. So, while my LSAT score was right around UTK's median, it's the average for all students and I suspect that the out-of-state median is quite a bit higher than the in-state median.

So, the title... yea. I wanted to come up with something fun based on the state song like I did when I received my decision letter from UVa. For that entry, I used the title of the former commonwealth song. Interestingly, Virginia currently has no official commonwealth song. By contrast, Tennessee has seven official state songs (appropriate since its capital is known as Music City), none of which lent themselves to a quick literary perversion. Zut alors ! :J