With Mother’s Day around the corner, many universities are turning towards final exams and commencement season. This presents an odd series of dichotomies for law school admissions officers. On the one hand, many are in the midst of finalizing the incoming class by—still!—evaluating applications, making offers of admissions to waitlisted students, and reviewing transfer applications. On the other, the focus of the remainder of their law school community is on graduation. It is often a good reminder for admissions officers that their work has serious implications for the lives of dozens of students and an untold number of families each year. At graduation services, we see families come together to celebrate their loved ones, friendships that have been formed in the crucible of time, and even some relationships that will lead to families (and future law students) down the road. Although we have no way of knowing for certain, it’s entirely possible that Elton John and Tim Rice wrote their greatest song about this moment rather than about the interconnectedness of the African savannah.
But after waxing poetic on matters, it is time to take our usual lap through the headlines of the law school admissions world!
Waitlist Activity
With the T14’s deposit deadline now in our collective rearview mirror, we’re now starting to see a little more waitlist activity.
Michigan Law was so kind as to announce last week (scroll all the way down to the “Waitlist” section) that they had some space in their class to “make a handful of offers” to waitlist students. Elsewhere in the T14, UVA is beginning to take a few students and Georgetown’s lsd.law profile showed a bit of activity through the weekend:
Of particular note is that these admitted students have either a high LSAT or a high GPA—GULC clearly needs both at this moment.
Given GULC’s class size (i.e., one of the largest in the country), waitlist movement on their part carries a bit of weight. The students that they admit from the waitlist will likely be presently deposited at schools that are lower ranked. This then creates opportunities for waitlist admission at those schools. We’re already seeing this at places like Pepperdine, whose lsd.law profile showed a bit of activity at the end of last week:
And of note for these students is that Pepperdine still has scholarship funding available for waitlist admits, no matter whether they had a high LSAT or a high GPA.
While it would be imprudent of us to guess how long this activity will last, we’re seeing enough across the spectrum to make us think that the game is afoot!
April and June LSATs
With last week’s release of April LSAT scores, we’re starting to get some insight into the numbers and what they may mean. First, let’s take a quick look at LSAC’s LSAT Registrant and Test Taker Volumes:
Up until this week, we had registration numbers but nothing else. These final figures will continue to fluctuate a little bit in the next two weeks while students consider canceling their scores and LSAC also works out any cases of testing irregularities. But one key takeaway for the moment is the percentage of first-time test takers—56.3%. That aligns well with last year’s figure of 57.4%. If the increased number of April LSAT test takers was being driven by 2023–2024 applicants who were taking one last shot at boosting their apps, we would see that “first time” number be much lower. This lends further credence to our suspicions that apps will be up in this coming cycle.
The next bellwether in this process will be to see how much June LSAT registrations decline in the next three weeks. They reached their high-water mark last week at 36,028. Seeing an initial decline of 5% in the week after the registration deadline isn’t absurd. What would be absurd would be weekly declines of 10-15% leading into the test administration.
7Sage Events
It’s a quieter week on our events page!
For our audience who enjoys this blog but wishes it had more typos and cat photos, you may wish to check out the AMA that we did on the law school admissions sub-Reddit this past Friday. As some Redditors put it:
“Thanks so much! This is very helpful!” – taliaforester
“Cute cat” – bonafide03014
And our most recent podcast episode is up and available on your fave streaming platforms. We discuss LOCIs and the most recent US News rankings, as well as have a chat with Bailey Luber (a 7Sage LSAT tutor) about what to do in the time between taking your LSAT and getting your score back. We will have a new episode up on Monday the 13th that includes an interview with Dr. Felicia Caponigri, PhD regarding fashion law, cultural heritage, and intellectual property. Be on the lookout!