As October proceeds onward and law school admissions officers remember what recruitment event they’re attending by the kind of foliage they see outside their hotel window (“Hmmmm, the leaves are definitely red and orange … I must be at the Detroit Mercy fair instead of the one in San Diego”), the patterns of travel season continue forward. So as we wish our AdComm friends the best in their attempts to geo-locate themselves during one of the busier weeks of the year, let’s take a more relaxed look at the news and headlines around the world of law school admissions.

LSAT Numbers

Actually, we were kidding about that “relaxed look” and we’re going to go right for the stressor!

Last week’s blog noted the extraordinarily high number of registrations for the November LSAT. One week post-registration deadline and four weeks pre-exam, our latest check on LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report shows that the November numbers didn’t budge much this week:

November registrations were at 42,743 last week and “dipped” to 42,516 this week. Suffice to say, we usually see a decline greater than 0.5% in registrations one week after the deadline.

Meanwhile, the October LSAT happened last week and our takeaways are:

  • There was a normal last-minute drop in registrations from 25,441 to the final number of 24,272. It appears that the majority of those folks simply rescheduled for January.
  • But even with that 4.5% decline in registrations just before test day, registrations still ended up 8% over last year’s mark. That’s the key here—we’ve continued our monthly increase in LSAT registrations/test takers over the same exam date in the previous year.

What this all means is that—and let’s get out our broken record—there’s likely to be an increased number of applicants to law school this year. If you aren’t one of those 42,516 hearty souls studying for the November LSAT, it’s time to get moving on applications!

Admissions Decisions

Since it’s been a few weeks since we’ve checked in on what’s happening with admissions decisions, we wanted to give folks an update … and—would you look at that—it’s another broken record!

If we head over to the Recent Decisions page of lawschooldata.org, we’re still not seeing tons of action nationally. Among the highest-ranked schools, only the University of Virginia and Wash U in St. Louis are admitting students right now. This is simply because

  • Admissions officers are still waiting for the applicant pool to set itself. Per LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries report, only 7% of national apps were submitted by October 9th last year. Most admissions offices want to receive a few more applications before deciding where to set their statistical targets for the year. In the case of Wash U, you can see from their admit chart that they’re focusing their admit offers on students who exceed either or both of their most recently published medians (3.95 GPA and 173 LSAT):
  • Most admissions officers are still focused on recruitment travel. Reading files in October is a bit like Christmas shopping in October—sure, you could do it … but there are other things to do in the meantime!

Recruitment Events

And a lot of those “other things” are happening just this week!

The NYC Forum is the biggest law fair of the entire year! We encourage you to take a quick look through our blog post from this summer about attending the forums—a few ounces of preparation can lead to a really successful event for an applicant!

7Sage Events

We’re continuing our series of weekly live classes on different components of the application process. Our session this Wednesday will be a general overview of Scholarship Negotiations. On October 16th, we’ll start the cycle all over again at the beginning—Law School Admissions 101. Registration is free but required. You can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.