With the New York LSAC Forum in their rearview mirror, law admissions officers are officially on the home stretch of their travel season. Sure, they’re still figuring out their last-minute travel arrangements between law fairs in Boise and Waco on consecutive days next week (Southwest through Dallas and Las Vegas? Alaska through Portland? Star Trek-esque teleportation?!?!), but the most intense part of autumnal recruitment is behind them. But there’s little rest for the weary as they’ll get home with just enough time to buy some Halloween candy … and then disappear for a few weeks to focus on reading an increased number of applications.
So let’s wish our AdComm friends the best as they navigate their last round of connecting airports and take a few minutes to go through the headlines from around the world of law school admissions.
LSAT Numbers
Let’s do our weekly live check-in on the registration figures for the November LSAT per LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report:
Point being, we’re two weeks away from test day and registrations still aren’t really budging much.
We were at 42,743 registrations after the registration deadline closed earlier this month, and at 42,238 registrations last week. We normally see far more cancellations by this stage in the process. Additionally, many LSATs see a total decline of 25-33% as we move from a test’s registration deadline up to exam day. While it’s certainly possible that we’ll see 10,000+ people reschedule their November LSAT in the coming two weeks, it seems far more likely that we’re going to see the highest numbers for a single LSAT in the past six years.
Meanwhile, the results of the October LSAT are coming back this week and it’s very likely that our update next week will show….
National Application Totals
…a little further of a bump in national app totals.
As we mentioned in last week’s blog, the main story for now regarding national app totals is that they’re—to use the fancy technical term—way up but that those numbers will likely calm down a bit in the long run. Last week, national applicants were up 25.8% versus the same date in 2023 while applications were up 37.8%. Per this week’s check-in on LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries report, let’s see if our prediction is holding up alright. Drumroll, please….
Hey! We’ll take it! A decline is a decline even if it’s just going from “up 37.8% in applications” to “up 36.9% in applications.”
Our guess for next week’s check-in is that both applicants and applications will go up a touch. This is because October LSAT results are coming back on October 23rd and this will spur a few more applications from folks. Additionally, it should be noted that the October 2023 LSAT results came back on October 25th. Two days may not seem like a lot, but it can be at this early stage of the process.
The bigger looming issue over the applicant pool is what will happen when the November LSAT results come back on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. But rather than think about that too much, we just encourage everyone to keep working assiduously on their application materials!
Recruitment Events
In the home stretch of travel season, AdComms turn their attention to events in the warm weather climates of the Southwest, Rocky Mountain, and West Coast regions.
- Wednesday, October 23rd: LSAC’s Digital Forum, Florida State University’s Grad and Law School Fair, the University of California-Davis Grad and Law Day Fair, the Miami (Ohio) Law Day Fair, and the BYU Law Fair.
- Thursday, October 24th: The Ohio University Law Fair and the University of Arizona Law School Expo.
- Friday, October 25th: The Arizona State University Law Fair.
- Saturday, October 26th: The Denver Law Fair.
- Monday, October 28th: The Colorado Law Fair at the University of Colorado-Boulder and the Hendrix College Law Fair down in Arkansas.
- Tuesday, October 29th is the day for hyphenated-school law fairs: The University of Nevada-Las Vegas Law Fair, the UC-Irvine Grad and Law School Fair, and the University of Texas-Dallas Law Fair.
- Wednesday, October 30th: The University of Nevada, Reno Law School Fair and the University of Oklahoma Law School Fair.
- Thursday, October 31st: The Boise State Law School Fair and the Texas Tech Law Fair. Even though it’s Halloween, you should still dress in business casual attire for the fairs.
- Friday, November 1st: The Baylor University Law School Fair and the University of Oregon Law School Fair. Y’all at the Baylor event—any law school rep at this event has just had to travel from Dallas, to Norman, to Lubbock, to Waco over four days. Bring them a kolache to thank them for their service.
- Saturday, November 2nd: The Boston LSAC Forum and the Portland State Law Fair.
7Sage Events
We’re continuing our series of weekly live classes on different components of the application process. With October LSAT results coming back on Wednesday, we’ll have two sessions of our “What Does My Score Mean?” classes. Next week on October 30, we’ll dive into Personal Statements. Registration is free but required. You can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.
You can also check out our admissions podcast on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts. Our latest dropped last week and features our September Law School Deans’ Roundtable. The admissions officers discussed all the matters going on at this time of year in law school admissions! We’re publishing our latest episode this coming Monday where we’ll go into the minutiae of the app season to this point.
And speaking of the Deans’ Roundtable, our October roundtable will happen on October 30th at 8 PM Eastern. Registration is free but required. The topic du jour will be addenda and character & fitness explanations.