Now that we’re into May, we no longer need to speak about initial deposit deadlines (“Some are April 1; most are on April 15th, but the 15th falls on a Saturday this year so schools may move things to the 14th or the 17th; oh, and the T14 are usually on April 30th or May 1st, but let me check the lunar calendar to see if the moon is waxing or waning around then…”). All of the deadlines are past—yay! AdComms are continuing to assess their deposits and are determining if they need to make further offers of admission. As we detailed last week, the primary considerations in this determination are raw numbers—what’s our target class size for the year and are we below, at, or above that target? But there’s an additional factor that AdComms can consider that’s a bit of a mystery—the Commitment Overlap Report. Let’s take a few moments today to unpack this enigma, what information it contains, and how schools utilize it.
It may first be useful to know that LSAC provides tons of information to law schools. A treasure trove. A real dragon’s-hoard level of material including LSAT test-taking trends, geographic breakdowns of which regions students are applying from and which regions students are applying to, breakdowns of applicants by race/ethnicity and gender, and so on. LSAC actually provides a glimpse of this via the Research Library page of their website. Of particular utility to applicants are the Current Volume Summaries. For example, a student with a 169 LSAT who is applying to schools with 170 medians would be able to see that applications in the 170+ range were pretty flat this year—maybe the student then decides to apply to a few more schools with medians at or below a 169 just to hedge their bets a bit.
LSAC not only provides information to schools, it also receives a lot of information from schools. The most prominent of the data exchanges in the latter direction are LSAT/GPA correlation studies. LSAC and law schools continually analyze the predictive validity of both the LSAT and undergraduate GPAs. At the end of each academic year, schools will send LSAC a roster with the names and law GPAs of the students who just completed their 1L year. LSAC then studies that information and reports back to each school about how predictive the LSAT (both a student’s highest score as well as their average school), the undergraduate GPA, and the combination of those two stats are for that particular school. This is super helpful information for schools that are less concerned about how their stats may affect their rank and more concerned with enrolling students who are most likely to pass the bar exam in a few years’ time.
But this isn’t the only information schools send to LSAC in April and May—they also send information about their deposited students for the purposes of the Commitment Overlap Report.
The origins of the Overlap Report come from a good place. Schools found that some students would hold multiple deposits through the summer and then cancel just before orientation (and that was if those multi-deposited students were being polite; some would just be no-shows at orientation and then ghost the AdComms who were trying to figure out if the student was late in arriving, attending another school, or dead and—in this case—a literal ghost). So, LSAC developed two overlap reports. LSAC gave law schools the option to participate in the data collection process. Most chose to participate, but that strategy changed over time and we’ll explain why below.
The first report was available beginning in early April. Schools would report their deposits to LSAC, and LSAC would then tell the school:
- How many of their deposited students were deposited just at their school.
- How many were deposited at multiple schools.
- The names of the other law schools in question.
In last week’s update, we spent some time with the admissions office at the Random State University Law School—Go Fightin’ Randos! Let’s return to that august institution for a moment and say that they just ran this report on LSAC’s website. They may find the following:
- They have 200 deposits at the moment.
- Of those 200 students, 180 are deposited only at RSULS.
- 10 students are also deposited at one other school.
- Five students are also deposited at two other schools.
- The final five students are also deposited at three+ other schools.
Further, the RSULS admissions team would have a roster of the other law schools in question. They would know that of those 20 students holding multiple deposits:
- 10 are also deposited at schools ranked far higher than RSULS.
- Eight are also deposited at another local school that’s ranked a little lower than RSULS.
- The remaining two—for reasons unknown to gods or men—are deposited at lower-ranked schools far away from RSULS’s location and with which RSULS never competes for admitted students.
In this scenario, the RSULS admissions team would probably conclude that the majority of the 10 deposited at higher-ranked schools are going to choose that other school—that’s just how it goes. But the reverse is also true about the eight deposited at RSULS’s local rival—RSULS will probably keep the majority of those students. And those other two? Goodness knows because they seem like wild cards. Put this all together, and that probably means that RSULS can expect to lose around 10 deposits in the near future and that they should plan accordingly for some waitlist activity.
That was the first overlap report and it still exists. Schools use it to this day. The second overlap report no longer exists. This was the version of the overlap report that included students’ names.
Before we describe this report too much, we want to emphasize that last point so that we alleviate any spikes in blood pressure—this second report no longer exists. LSAC stopped providing this report to schools around five years ago as part of a broader consent agreement between the organization and various groups who were concerned with privacy and possible antitrust measures. Say it out loud a few times—“This doesn’t exist anymore, this doesn’t exist anymore, this doesn’t exist anymore!”
But now let’s talk about how crazy that report was.
The second overlap report was available beginning on May 15th. It would not only provide the information noted on the first report, it would also list students’ names and the other schools where they were presently deposited. It was a wild time! In an ideal world, schools could use this information to contact the students in question and have a polite/professional conversation about the student’s plans. And that’s mostly what happened. But some other shenanigans would occasionally ensue.
For example, recall above how I noted that not every school would participate in the overlap reports. Why is that? Well, let’s go back to our hypothetical with RSULS. There are those eight students who are also deposited at a nearby school that’s lower-ranked. Let’s say that the rankings gap is significant enough that the majority of students admitted to both schools would choose to attend RSULS. RSULS knows this because—what are the odds?—this is another report that LSAC provides to schools. Now, let’s say—completely hypothetically—the RSULS admissions team had to admit a few students from their waitlist. They want to make sure the students have the right LSAT and/or the right GPA, but they also want students who would be most likely to enroll. And now let’s say it’s a bit later in the summer—perhaps July—when most incoming law students have already made housing plans for the coming year. It becomes a lot more challenging to enroll students from the waitlist when they have already made living arrangements elsewhere.
But what if they haven’t made living arrangements elsewhere but have made them in your market because the students are presently deposited at that lower-ranked local rival…?
Wouldn’t it be amazing to know exactly which students were deposited at your local rival…?
All you would have to do is accidentally switch a few decisions on students’ files from “Waitlist” to “Deposited” and—voila!—you have your own personalized shopping list of preferred waitlist candidates to reach out to….
We’ll stop our completely hypothetical situation here because surely no school would ever be so diabolical as to engage in such practices … but we’ll let your imaginations run wild. Suffice to say, this is why the second, or third, or fourth highest-ranked law school in various markets would not participate in the second overlap report.
So to recap—if you presently hold multiple deposits, do you need to worry that law schools will receive a roster with your name on it and the schools where you are deposited? No. That report no longer exists so you’re in the clear! On the other hand, let’s say that a school reaches out to you about a possible offer from their waitlist. It’s common for them to ask about your present deposit status. You may tell them that you’re deposited at RSULS. If they admit you and if you deposit at their school, they’ll likely run their overlap report the next day and see that they have a new overlap with RSULS—they will know that’s you. They’ll expect that you’ll contact RSULS Admissions within the day to cancel your deposit with them. And if you don’t cancel with RSULS, the other school will see that RSULS hasn’t disappeared from their overlap report … and they may get suspicious … and they may reach out to you to remind you politely that you need to cancel that other deposit. No problem at all and worse fates have happened—like being the Director of Admissions at RSULS’s local rival during the era when the second overlap report existed.