The Origin of the "Ding"

[aestuo]

I got the impression it started on the adcomm-side of things.  Anna Ivey has this extremely obnoxious page in her book where she lists petty ways that applicants had annoyed her and punctuates each sentence with "DING!"  The term gets annoying, how hard is it to say "rejected" or "rejection" instead?

[ptown]

I really don't think that this was specifically developed in response to law school admissions.  Ding is a VERY common colloquialism which can be used to describe any sort of detrimental response to your performance by a higher up. 

For example, if you were coming up for your yearly salary review and you had some bad mark in your file, it would be called a ding.  Also in something like a quality control evaluation, a defect would be a ding on the report.

Very common, at least in the work world...I would venture that the term crept into law school admissions, not t'other way 'round. 

[gocubs2k6]

when my fraternity would vote on extending bids to those going through the rush process, anytime we didn't offer a bid and outright rejected someone, we called it a ding.  so i guess the same applies here for admissions to law school

[.....]

when my fraternity would vote on extending bids to those going through the rush process, anytime we didn't offer a bid and outright rejected someone, we called it a ding.  so i guess the same applies here for admissions to law school

we called it a bong, but it was in Berkeley

(and I guess a loud ding would be a bong)

I doubt a Berkeley "bong" has anything to do with a bell.