With Thanksgiving in the past, law school admissions officers are hoping that their blood sugar stabilizes in time for the influx of end-of-the-semester and pre-holiday get-togethers that characterize December in higher ed. But while they may make time for a brief holiday merriment, because

December is a complex month for AdComms.

• Although December has 31 days, it is actually the briefest of all work months because of the holidays at the end. Perhaps as many as half of all universities will be closed for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Even those that remain open will operate with skeleton staff due to vacation requests.
• And although we used the mention of holiday parties as our standard “seasonal observation that serves as an entrée into the news,” there will also be time taken away from work for end-of-the-semester and end-of-the-season festivities. A more stringent boss would keep their file readers’ noses to the grindstone

but most deans and directors of admission are kind souls who don’t need to be visited by three ghosts in order to learn how to properly treat their staff.

• But despite that lost staff time, many law schools want to begin (or continue, if they’ve already been at it) admitting applicants prior to the holidays. That requires the coordination of so many moving parts (committees to assemble, decision letters to proofread, websites to update before you direct the admitted students to them, etc.) that even an orchestra conductor would get a bit nervous.

Put simply, there’s a lot to be done and there’s not much time to do it!

So while AdComm friends balance the twin desires to “sprint through file reading” and “pause to appreciate what should be a lovely time of year,” let’s check in on the news and happenings that have occurred in the world of law school admissions since our last blog post two weeks ago!

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National LSAT Numbers

And since that last blog, the results from the November LSAT have finally arrived! According to LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report, we can officially confirm that it was a doozy.

That was a 15% increase in test takers over the November 2024 exam. While we’ve seen bigger percentage increases when comparing LSATs between this cycle and last (i.e., the 25.4% increase in September 2025 test takers versus September 2024), it’s worth pointing out that this was a 15% increase over the biggest LSAT from last cycle. It also makes it the biggest LSAT since December 2017, which was so long ago that LSAC only offered the LSAT four times a year and all in person. What a time!

We may break our hot streak in January, though. The registration deadline passed last week and we’re currently at 36,930 registrations. If we have a regular rate of decline (a few percentage points in the next two weeks, as much as 5‒10% in the two weeks leading up to the test), we could end up pretty close to last year’s registration figures once test day hits.

The only counterbalance to that theory is a practical reality—the January LSAT truly is the last-ditch play for many applicants.

If you’re scheduled for the August LSAT and aren’t prepared, you can always reschedule for October.

And then if you get sick just before the October LSAT, you know that November is just a month away.

But the January LSAT is the last LSAT of the admissions cycle that all schools are willing to consider for admission. This is it! As such, we sometimes see a higher percentage of January registrants stick it out to the bitter end.

In the meantime though, we have something else to consider from the November LSAT numbers …

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Current Volumes Summary

While we here at 7Sage Law School Admissions Blog HQ recognize that we are but simple internet auteurs, we do occasionally get things right and take small victory laps.

We’ve long wondered if the combination of an increased number of November LSAT takers and the timing of the November LSAT’s score release (i.e., the Wednesday before Thanksgiving) would mean a surge of apps over the holiday weekend. Per LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report, we can confirm a surge that perhaps wasn’t a “tidal wave,” but it was definitely something

Cue the numbers!

When we last checked in two weeks ago, we had been seeing a steady deceleration of national applications. While we were still ahead of last year’s pace, we were losing one or two percentage points every week and were “only” at +19.7% in applications. While bumping that back up to 22.4% may not seem huge, this lends further evidence that this is unlikely to be a cycle that starts fast and then evens out over time.

The next big “benchmark” check-in will be after the holidays. One of the biggest annual surges in applications happens in late-December through early-January when current college students are home between academic terms.

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National Decision Trends

But meanwhile, law schools have definitely been busy issuing decisions over the past two weeks, per the “Recent Decisions” page of lawschooldata.org. If we filter for the past two weeks and then organize the data by the number of decisions received by lsd.law users

we find that Cornell woke up on December 3rd and chose violence.

But more importantly, we can affirm that—at least for now—many schools are focusing their attention on admitting students with stats over last year’s medians.

Whether that’s Illinois College of Law, whose median LSAT was a 166 this year, but is starting to set up a line at a 167 LSAT

or Minnesota Law, which was at a 171 LSAT this year and currently seems focused on a 172 target

or—and this is the craziest of the bunch—Boston University Law, which was at a 170 LSAT and 3.88 GPA this year and has chosen “hyperdrive” for a theme by focusing exclusively on applicants above both of those stats.

Here’s a dramatic reenactment of what BU Law is trying to achieve thus far

Although it’s all fun and GIFs to this point, we also want to emphasize that it’s very early. The easiest applicants to admit in November and December are those with both stellar statistical profiles and application materials (i.e., résumés, personal statements, etc.). These are slam dunks and require little discussion for many admissions committees. But that doesn’t mean that these statistical thresholds will stay high throughout the cycle. We’ll have more information once we get past the holiday season. Not only will more schools have admitted their first wave of applicants, but we may also start to see scholarship awards from a handful of top schools.

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7Sage Events

Our next Admissions AMA will be on December 10th. Stop on by and ask whatever law school admissions questions are on your mind!

Our most recent podcast dropped on Monday and features a recording of our November Deans’ Panel. This month, the deans focused their energy on questions related to optional and required statements. How “optional” is optional? Is it just a soft requirement? And even if something is required … is it really? Be sure to check it out on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!

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Thanks for reading! You can learn more about 7Sage Admissions Consulting’s services here, and if you’d like help deciding which service is right for you, you can book a free consultation here.