With the final week of January here and February now on the horizon, law school admissions officers are continuing to do their best to read, evaluate, discuss, and provide admissions decisions on the national surge in applications.
Sure, there are fun moments! Schools are continuing to admit students and we’re also getting closer to mass waves of scholarship decisions as mentioned in our blog post from two weeks ago. There are going to be some good moments!
But when applications are up and schools aren’t trying to enroll more students for the coming year, we’re also going to see schools bust out their demolition crews on the lawschooldata.org “Recent Decisions” page:
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Oof!
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Ouch!
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Gah!
And then here comes UChicago to finish the job.
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But it’s important to note that green line sandwiched between the Deny and Waitlist carnage. Again, schools are going to make admit offers. It may not seem like it because lawschooldata and the law school admissions sub-Reddit will be awash in “red” and “yellow,” but that’s just because of the increased application numbers.
So chins up, remember that the days are getting longer and good news is coming, and let’s take our weekly lap around the news and headlines from the world of law school admissions.
National Application Trends
Numbers are holding steady on the LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries report this week:
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For the past few weeks, the percent increase for both national applicants and applications has slowly trickled down. That trend continues this week for applications—last week’s check-in had us at +28.7% for applications. But the percent increase in applicants went up a touch—from +23.0% last week to +23.3%. What could be happening is the front end of a possible surge from the January LSAT (more on that below).
And just as important for national trends as applicant and application numbers is the fact that the increase is still largely concentrated among the highest LSAT score bands per LSAC’s information:
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So all the Reddit questions about what’s happening out there, and how applicants with great stats are being waitlisted, and questioning the inherent fairness of the universe all come back to this:
- If there are more people,
- Competing for the same number of admit offers as in years past (i.e., it’s a limited resource),
- And more of those people have high statistical profiles, then
- Schools can’t admit all of them.
And speaking of a possible further increase in apps….
LSAT Registrations
Here’s what we know!
The January LSAT happened last week and the numbers—per LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report—were significant:
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This was the second biggest LSAT in the past five years based on registration numbers. We won’t know the actual “test taking” numbers until scores are released on February 5th, but we know that that figure is usually within a few percentage points of the final registration figure. We can assume that at least 26,500 people took the LSAT. And we know that the January LSAT is—historically speaking—the administration that has the lowest percentage of first-time test takers.
Add this all together, and it’s likely we’ll see increased percentages of applicants and applications over the next few weeks when we check in on the LSAC Current Volume Summaries report. That’s our money-back guarantee!
(Note: Guarantee is void on the internet or wherever you read this blog post.)
Holds
And on the note of “increased apps,” “limited number of seats,” “schools issuing decisions,” and “general craziness,” a number of schools have provided applicants with “Hold” messages over the past few weeks.
A Hold message is one where an admissions office lets you know that they’ve received your application, they are considering your application, everything is fine with your application (promise!), but that your file is still under review. This can be a bit confusing for applicants because they naturally intuit receiving a message with an actual update—like being admitted, waitlisted, or (sigh) denied admission. But an update that’s not really an update … what’s up with that?
Schools may send these kinds of messages to applicants to assuage concerns that something is awry in years when delays arise. Going back to the national increase in applications—Again! We appreciate your patience in continuing to read this information in this blog!—admissions offices face a great number of challenges in simply processing all of those applications.
It’s not possible to read applications quicker, nor is that really fair to the applicants who have put so much effort into their personal statement and other materials. And there are only so many hours in a day that one can spend reading applications before their brain turns to mush. And the final issue is that most admissions offices (and we’re being generous there … the reality is that we should say “all” but we’re being polite) simply don’t have the ability to hire more staff in years when applications surge. So it’s the same number of staff, working the same hours, and trying to handle 30% more work.
But meanwhile, many admissions offices inform their applicants that they should expect a decision within a certain timeframe—perhaps within six weeks of applying, or two months after their application is complete.
And when the irresistible force of increased applications meets the immovable object of decision timelines, some schools believe that it’s best to at least let applicants know that everything is alright and that the school is just taking a bit longer to review applications than usual. That’s where the Hold comes into play.
How do you know if you’ve just received a Hold message? The text will likely note that “they are reviewing an abnormally high number of applications this year” and/or that “their office has encountered delays when processing this year’s applications” and that they wanted to provide you with a quick update to let you know that your application is still under consideration. But the real giveaway is what isn’t said—there will not be a clear decision provided to you. No “Congratulations on your offer of admission” or “We would like to offer you a place on our waitlist” or “We are sorry to inform you…” (and we won’t finish that last one!).
And what can you do if you receive a Hold message? If a school wishes to receive more information from you, they will say so in the email they send you. If they say nothing, interpret that as meaning that nothing else is necessary from you. A Hold message is not a subtle way for admissions officers to test your desire, so don’t feel like you have to respond. And let’s simply be practical—if a school is so overtaxed that they felt compelled to send you (and others!) a Hold, they don’t need more work in the form of receiving tons of email updates and letters of continued interest from applicants.
But schools also understand the stress of waiting for a decision—this is why they sent you the Hold in the first place. So if a school is one of your top choices and if you have clear reasons for that interest, a brief email or letter that outlines your desire to attend won’t be a problem at all. Just be sure to keep it succinct and on point—don’t add more than you have to (e.g., like the final clause of this sentence).
7Sage Events
We’re taking a brief break from our weekly admissions classes, but these will resume in March or April when next year’s applicants are going to start their process (and we can’t believe it’s that close to the 2025–2026 cycle beginning). But a reminder that you can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.
We’ll also be hosting our next AMA-style live class January 30th. Our admissions consultants will give a brief overview of where we’re at in the admissions process and will then open the floor to questions.
The latest episode of our admissions podcast features a conversation with Dr. Sam Riley—7Sage admissions consultant extraordinaire and former Senior Director of Admissions Programs at the University of Texas-Austin Law—on the ins and outs of being in state versus out of state in the admissions process. Our next episode will drop on Monday and will include a recording of this past month’s Law School Deans’ Roundtable. Be sure to tune in on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!