With leaves falling more steadily and trips to the grocery store for the one-time-per-year stock-up on cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes happening, law school admissions officers are furtively reviewing applications so as to have some semblance of a nice Thanksgiving holiday. File-reading season can be a bit like training for a marathon—it’s okay to miss one day of training, and you don’t need to worry about missing two straight days … but three? More?!?!?! Those miles aren’t going to run themselves, nor will those applications get reviewed unless someone puts down the turkey and trundles over to their office! So while our friends in admissions offices continue putting their “Speed Reading for Beginners” lessons to good use, let’s take a quick review of what’s going on in the law school admissions world.

Apps Continue to Surge

Continuing our multi-week trend, apps are continuing to catch up with last year’s pace. 

Here’s the lay of the land on November per LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries report:

The difference in applicants is a pretty normal standard deviation. Meanwhile, apps are still trailing versus last year but they’re getting there. Two weeks ago—back on October 30th before the October LSAT results dropped and we had a number of Early Decision deadlines—apps were down 14.4%. The average student had submitted 5.1 apps. Last week, apps were down 10.8% and the average student had submitted 5.4 apps. We’re now at apps being down 9.3% and the average student having clicked “Send” on 5.5 apps. The trend is pretty clear!

And while apps are slowly catching up, so are higher LSAT scores. Let’s check out the applications submitted thus far by their LSAT scores:

And zooming in on actual test scores instead of score bands:

Compared to last week, we’re seeing a little positive movement in that 170-174 range. You can be sure that schools in that LSAT range—i.e., the T20s—are keeping a close eye on that so that they can properly calibrate their statistical targets for this year.

The November LSAT—Final Registration Numbers

Now that the test date has passed, we can make a final call on registrations for the November LSAT. Let’s take a look at the final numbers per LSAC’s LSAT Registrant and Test Taker Volumes report:

While numbers dropped drastically after the October LSAT results went live (they were north of 32,000 registrations at one point!), the final registration number is still a 22% increase from last year. This would seem to indicate that there are a lot more applications to be submitted yet in this cycle. We’ll certainly know more when scores go live on Wednesday, November 29. 

Law Fair (Singular!) and On-Campus Recruitment Events

Just one law fair for the folks who read this blog when it goes live every Wednesday:

November 18

And thus does travel season finally—for real this time—end!

While travel season has concluded, be sure to continue checking out our page of law school-specific recruitment events. Of particular note for the coming two weeks:

  • Yale Law has their next Admissions Dean Office Hours on November 20.
  • Harvard Law will have another virtual admissions Q&A on November 16.
  • Fordham Law is hosting a virtual info session on November 20.
  • Michigan Law will host both a “Why Michigan” and general Q&A session on November 29.
  • Stanford and Chicago’s next joint “Dive In with the Deans” will be on November 16.

And remember that we continue to host a number of information sessions on different app components led by various 7Sage admissions and writing consultants. Be sure to check out the schedule and drop in for a session or two!

Taking a Week Off

Speaking of turkey and cranberry sauce, we’ll take a week off from posting so that we can hold to that greatest of American traditions—traveling for the holidays! We’ll be back on Wednesday, November 29 to see what fun the November LSAT score has unleashed on the world.