some random thoughts on the increase in law school apps

LOWERCASE EVERYTHING

i read a lot of posts lately about the unusually high number of apps this year (followed by tons of other discussions explaining why). although there may be a lot of different reasons for this, there seems to be a theory that the apps are up high because of covid-19 and that more people are looking at graduate school, law school not being an exception.

what does this mean for us? well, the first thought i had of was, of course, the more competitive application pool, which kinda gives a gloomy sentiment. but 2020 is already bad as is, so i wanted to bring up a crazy prediction: the application pool may in fact turn out to be "less competitive" than before! here are two reasons why:

1. it takes a long time to score high on the lsat for most people.
   most people who are suddenly into law school because of covid-19 will not be adequately prepared for the lsat, compared to people who had been considering law school even before covid and had been preparing for this exam for a long time. as a result, there would be more numbers of lower lsat scores (which doesn't contradict the statistic that there are way more +165 scorers applying this year)

2. acceptance rate is one of the indicators that determines law school rankings, along with median lsat and gpa.
   if there are way more applicants, there will be way more rejections. law schools would have an extra cushion to fall back on, and so they might be a bit more liberal in admitting people with lower stats than they were in the previous cycles.

obviously, i'm not accounting for countless other facts or factors that play a role. well, i'm no fortune-teller and this post was not meant to start a debate. just wanted to diversify the predictions for fun.

good luck everyone whether you are studying for the lsat or are in the waiting game after submitting apps!
covid sucked and still does, but the sun always shines after a storm!

learn2skipQs

#1 especially but both excellent points

noonawoon

Yeah and to add

1) We don't know there will be more overall applicants. We know applications are up earlier in the cycle compared to the same time last year - could just be people submitting their apps sooner because had more time to work on them because of covid
2) There wasn't an August LSAT last year, there was an end of September LSAT. So less people would be ready to submit in mid to late September, naturally. This can account for some of the early applicant volume increase
3) It's possible we are seeing an increase in the % of 175+ scorers because people just took their LSAT earlier in the cycle because they have nothing else to do (internships cancelled, can't go outside, etc). That might be more plausible than covid made a lot of really smart people decide to go to law school on a whim and then they happened to score 175+. Maybe in a previous cycle these people would have taken the LSAT in November/December

Either way, all we can do is speculate. There are so many factors that could account for the increase in applicants so far that don't necessarily point to this wild crazy competitive cycle that people are jumping to conclusions about