Diversity in Law School Admissions (Sydney Montgomery) (Ep. 415)
Thinking LSAT
Nathan Fox and Ben Olson
4.8 • 868 Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2023
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sydney Montgomery is the Executive Director and Founder of Barrier Breakers, a nonprofit that aims to increase access to higher education for BIPOC and other marginalized students. Sydney returns to Thinking LSAT to share her insights into what the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action means for applicants of color. She and the guys also discuss perils of student loan debt and Sydney’s work to help applicants secure their best possible scholarship offers.
0:00 - Introducing Sydney Montgomery - Sydney Montgomery introduces her edtech software company, Outline It, Inc., which helps students organize and outline their writing projects. She then speaks about her admissions consulting work through Barrier Breakers and S. Montgomery Admissions Consulting. Sydney insists that anyone pursuing law school answer two questions: Why law school? And why now?
17:21 - Supreme Court Decision - Sydney reacts to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action in college admissions. She believes that the decision will lead to much confusion in law school admissions and increase the burden on applicants of color. She maintains, however, that the elements of a strong application have not changed.
29:37 - Student Loan Debt - Sydney acknowledges that graduate students of color have about twice as much student loan debt as their white counterparts. Barrier Breakers aims to help applicants and students make sound financial decisions at every stage in their journey. Law school should be an opportunity to break cycles of generational poverty and debt—not to create more.
57:48 - Scholarships - Sydney encourages applicants to apply broadly to increase their chances of receiving excellent scholarship offers. She also steers applicants away from conditional scholarships, which Nathan and Ben dub “scams.” Sydney and the guys agree that the best thing for many applicants to do is postpone their applications and work on increasing their LSAT scores.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to episode 415 of the Thinking Elsat Podcast. I'm Nathan Fox. With me is Ben Olson. We're the co-founder of |
| 0:14.0 | Elsat demon.com and the Elsat demon daily podcast. We've also got a special |
| 0:18.3 | guest with us today, Sydney Montgomery. Hi Sydney. We're gonna get to Sydney in just a second. |
| 0:25.3 | You can be El-Sat famous if you want to talk to us, share news, ask questions on our website, |
| 0:29.2 | thinking-L-Sat.com. |
| 0:30.6 | You can also find us on all the social media. |
| 0:33.0 | We have a free class coming up. |
| 0:35.0 | I hope everybody will register for that. |
| 0:37.0 | It's Thursday, September 14th, 5 PM Pacific, 8 PM Eastern. |
| 0:41.0 | It is my class. It's a. It is my class. |
| 0:43.0 | It's a free version of my class. |
| 0:44.8 | That's a two-hour, all levels, all topics, L-SAT class. |
| 0:49.4 | And you just go to L-SAT. |
| 0:51.0 | Link forward-slash free if you want to sign up and come take a class with me. |
| 0:56.2 | All you need is a demon-free account. |
| 0:58.5 | Again, that's Thursday, September 14th, 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern, if you want to take an entirely free Elsat class with me. |
| 1:07.0 | All right, let's get around to Sydney. |
| 1:10.3 | Sydney, you were previously on Thinking Elseat Podcast, |
| 1:13.3 | Episode 290, where you discussed ways |
| 1:16.3 | that minority applicants can strengthen |
| 1:18.7 | their law school applications. |
| 1:20.5 | Welcome back to the show. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nathan Fox and Ben Olson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Nathan Fox and Ben Olson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.