Ah, Thanksgiving Week! The time when law school admissions officers most notably and deeply combine their professional stressors (Apps are way up! …But how are we going to read all these files?!) with their personal ones (Why didn’t anyone start thawing the turkey yet?!).

Truly a gift of a season!

But we also know that—much like the bird on Thanksgiving Day—there’s plenty of stress to go around with November LSAT results coming back. So let’s do our regular trip around the news and headlines from the world of law school admissions for this abbreviated week of madness.

November LSAT—Here It Comes

As a wise man once said while contemplating whether his actions would stop the velociraptor-based carnage on his doorstep:

Truly evergreen advice.

We’ve been tracking the November LSAT for months now, from early registration numbers, through pre-registration deadline run-up, to the eruption, to watching intently and with horror as registrants simply did not cancel their November LSAT plans, to its current place as the LSAT with the highest number of test takers in the past six years. Per LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report, the final numbers are checking in at a slight smidge over 33,000 folks:

It’s been a ride!

But now we’re going to see if one of our big predictions comes to pass—if this six-year high in LSATs will then translate into a tidal wave of applications over the holiday weekend. While it seems logical that:

  • The vastmajority of this group took this LSAT for this admissions cycle rather than the next one,
  • They’re getting their results back on Wednesday, which is,
  • The day before Thanksgiving,
  • When they’ll likely spend time with family members who will hector them about their future plans,
  • And use the remainder of the holiday weekend to submit their applications,

we acknowledge “Logical” flew out the window at some point in the past year when every LSAT administration saw increased registration numbers from the year before.

But speaking of that hot streak, the January LSAT registration deadline is just around the corner on December 3rd. We’re guessing that we’ll see the usual last-minute surge of registrants (especially after the November LSAT results are released), but we’re also guessing that it won’t be enough to continue our hot streak into 2025. This is likely where the LSAT hot streak madness will end … but we’ve been wrong before!

National Application Totals

And as we await next week’s probable wave, this week’s check on the national application scene via LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries report shows that national numbers are still high but they’re at least receding for the moment:

Last week’s blog post showed these numbers at +25.7% and +37.2%, respectively, so at least we’re getting a little bit of a simmer down before next week’s probable explosion.

And when we check on the LSAT distribution of these applicants, we also see things continuing to cool down among the highest LSAT scorers. While the national increase is still being driven mostly by applicants in the upper ranges of the LSAT

the numbers are gradually coming down a bit. While applicants in the 165-169 score band were up 36% last week, it’s just 30.1% this week. Things are calming down, if only temporarily.

(And our apologies for the wonky screen grabs this week! As is likely to surprise none of our loyal readers, LSAC's website was acting up while we were pulling this week's data. Hopefully you don't need to squint too hard to make out the hazy numbers!)

How and if these numbers will translate into updated strategies from law school admissions officers remains to be seen. As we continue tracking waves via each school’s “Admit Chart” on lawschooldata.org, Washington University in St. Louis remains the only school of note to have set their target medians higher than last year.

7Sage Events

We’ll be taking a week off from our series of live classes on different components of the application process. But we’ll be back the week of December 2nd to do another two rounds of “What Does My Score Mean” classes and a session on “Why School X” statements. Registration is free but required. You can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.

Our next episode of the admissions podcast came out on Monday and focuses on one of the great mysteries of the law school admissions process—what happens to your application between the time you click “Submit” and the time your status checker says, “Decision Made”? Be sure to tune in on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!