As this blog comes back to action from its own vacation, law school admissions officers are largely doing the same. Since their professional calendar is tied to the academic calendar, summer is really the only time to escape the office for a bit. And an “admissions summer” is a bit more brief than a regular “academic summer”—we’re coming up to the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision which required many an AdComm to put down their poolside beverage, run back to their hotel room, and start changing their applications immediately! But even in a “normal year”—i.e., one in which the highest court in the land doesn’t throw a wrench into your admissions processes at a critical time of year—there tends to be a lull period between the second deposit deadline and the first big law fair of the season in mid-July. So we have a bit of news to catch up on from the past two weeks, but we—like AdComms—are really beginning to look ahead to the coming cycle. And in that spirt….

August LSAT Registrations

We may need to revitalize our running gag from a few months ago, in which our weekly check-in on the June LSAT was continually compared to atomic bombs and volcanic explosions! In the case of the August LSAT, a zoomed-in view of LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report is showing strong numbers with just a week to go before the registration deadline:

We’ve already crossed last year’s numbers and the biggest surge of registrations tends to happen just before the deadline. That deserves some sort of explosive gif:

We’ve long been wondering whether the June LSAT’s numbers were “artificially” high due to a large proportion of test takers wanting to get one last round of Logic Games under their belts. The counterargument to that point has always been “Well, let’s see how the August numbers look.” We’ll keep an eye on things in the coming weeks but the data is pointing to an increased number of national apps for this coming admissions cycle. So if you’re already done with the LSAT and you know that you’re going to apply to law school this year, now is a great time to get started on your core application documents like your personal statement!

Changes to the LSAT Writing Section

And speaking of the August LSAT, this is also a reminder that the removal of Logic Games isn’t the only change—the new Writing section will be making its grand debut!

To this point, the LSAT Writing section has been a bit of a mixed bag from the AdComm vantage. On the one hand, it gave admissions officers a writing sample for all applicants that was produced in a timed and controlled environment. There was a certain amount of equity baked into the process. But on the other hand, the writing section really didn’t ask a great deal of candidates. While the prompts changed with every test, the key question was usually the same:

  • Here is a person or an organization.
  • They have to make a choice in order to achieve an objective.
  • They can choose either Option A or Option B to achieve that objective.
  • Here are a few pros and cons of both options.
  • What do you think this person/organization should do?

While the window dressing changed—sometimes the question was about a town manager who had to decide whether the village youth would prefer a skate park or a bandshell; other times it was a school teacher choosing to take their class either on a field trip to a planetarium or the zoo—the core song remained the same. As one may imagine, these pieces were rarely illuminating from an admissions perspective.

Beginning in August, test takers are going to have to be a bit nimbler. The Writing section will pivot away from a binary choice—Option A or Option B—and will instead ask students to respond to an open-ended question. LSAC will provide students with a number of “perspectives” to consider, but the student, ultimately, will have to build a broader argument. The sample that LSAC provides on their website asks students to respond to a question that they have likely pondered a great deal: “To what extent do colleges and universities serve their students’ best interests when they emphasize career preparation?”

We apologize if reading that question causes anyone to flash back to their uncle harassing them at Thanksgiving dinner by continually asking, “What’re you going to do with a degree in anthropology?!”

But back to the business at hand: the format of this exercise will be familiar to anyone who has taken an AP History exam—this is basically a document-based question. So while this will take a different skill set than the “binary argument” format, if you could write a few pages about the changing role of the U.S. government in people’s lives from 1877 to 1936 based on this picture:

then you can do the new Writing section. And your response will likely tell an admissions officer a bit more about your writing ability and logical reasoning than either the old Writing section or Logic Games. With greater freedom to provide a broader range of responses comes a greater opportunity to impress the admissions committee!

But if you looked at the Writing prompt and that picture and a cold shiver went down your spine, never fear! We at 7Sage will have a few live classes dedicated to the Writing section as the test approaches! We’ll have more information about such classes in this blog as well as on our website.

Continued WL Action

But enough material for the newbies! We have a bon mot for the grizzled vets!

As we predicted a few weeks ago, schools have gone back to their waitlists now that the second deposit deadlines have passed. Leading the way are our bellwether schools—Harvard, Georgetown, and George Washington. These schools serve as our canaries in the coal mine because of their class size (i.e., the three biggest law schools in the country in terms of 1L enrollment) and because they have a bit of a range in terms of their rankings and prestige. That’s important to consider for broader impact—Harvard is likely admitting students from their waitlist who were deposited at T14s, Georgetown is likely doing the same for students in the T30, and GW may be pulling from schools in the US News top 40-50. When these schools move, there are likely going to be some ripple effects.

And when we compare Harvard’s lsd.law chart

vs. Georgetown’s

vs. GW’s

we see a general pattern in whom the schools are targeting—high GPAs. This isn’t an uncommon practice at this time of year! Schools typically try to solidify their LSAT earlier in the waitlist season because that usually is more of a limiting factor in the national applicant pool. Once the LSAT is locked down, schools can feel a bit freer to start boosting their GPA back up.

So there’s still hope for you folks who remain on waitlists! If you haven’t submitted a LOCI in a few weeks, consider sending a quick update just to let schools know that you remain interested. And if you’re a graduating senior, be sure to send your final transcript to LSAC and update schools via a LOCI regarding your final GPA.

7Sage Events

While we were away, other members of the 7Sage team were picking up our blogging slack!

Ethan Madore has published two entries, both centered around the issue of grades and transcripts—how law school AdComms will review your transcripts and the role that your GPA will play in the admissions process.

If anyone read all of the August LSAT information and thought “… do I want to do this?”, be sure to check out our most recent admissions podcast where we talk about what to do if you get cold feet before the test.