ATL reports on school application volumes Forum

[miamiman]

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most ... ols-2010-2

mich up 25%. Duke up 22%. Cornell up 50% (this we knew, granted)


Yet vandy flat. U of C up modestly. UC B modest increase as well.


How do you explain these? Illinois/indiana are obvious...the others

[T_Easy]

Every article on that website seemed to engage in lawyer-bashing.

[Shot007]

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most ... ols-2010-2

mich up 25%. Duke up 22%. Cornell up 50% (this we knew, granted)


Yet vandy flat. U of C up modestly. UC B modest increase as well.


How do you explain these? Illinois/indiana are obvious...the others

Dang, my late application to Illinois is not looking so good now

[vanwinkle]

UVA is up about 8% this year (that's above and beyond last year's 20% surge).

[im_blue]

UVA is up about 8% this year (that's above and beyond last year's 20% surge).

Which supports my belief that UVA is not, in fact, trying to raise their LSAT median to a 171. They took way too many sub-median/170 EDs to make that a realistic goal.

[Kohinoor]

UVA is up about 8% this year (that's above and beyond last year's 20% surge).

Which supports my belief that UVA is not, in fact, trying to raise their LSAT median to a 171. They took way too many sub-median/170 EDs to make that a realistic goal.

UVA isn't trying to raise their medians because more people applied?

[chadwick218]

I think that the reason has a lot to do with people applying to multiple schools and cycle becoming less predictive than before. Indeed, it is not uncommon for someone to target 75% of the T20.

Interestingly enough, the # of applicants to NU has declined in recent years. I think that the reason is pretty self-explanatory though ...

[rayiner]

I think that the reason has a lot to do with people applying to multiple schools and cycle becoming less predictive than before. Indeed, it is not uncommon for someone to target 75% of the T20.

Interestingly enough, the # of applicants to NU has declined in recent years. I think that the reason is pretty self-explanatory though ...

?

[joshhoward]

Interestingly enough, the # of applicants to NU has declined in recent years. I think that the reason is pretty self-explanatory though ...

...help me out. i'm slow.

[jawsthegreat]

UVA is up about 8% this year (that's above and beyond last year's 20% surge).

Which supports my belief that UVA is not, in fact, trying to raise their LSAT median to a 171. They took way too many sub-median/170 EDs to make that a realistic goal.

Lol, Wut?

[im_blue]

UVA is up about 8% this year (that's above and beyond last year's 20% surge).

Which supports my belief that UVA is not, in fact, trying to raise their LSAT median to a 171. They took way too many sub-median/170 EDs to make that a realistic goal.

UVA isn't trying to raise their medians because more people applied?

It would take a lot more than an 8% increase in applications to raise their LSAT median.

[jawsthegreat]

UVA is up about 8% this year (that's above and beyond last year's 20% surge).

Which supports my belief that UVA is not, in fact, trying to raise their LSAT median to a 171. They took way too many sub-median/170 EDs to make that a realistic goal.

UVA isn't trying to raise their medians because more people applied?

It would take a lot more than an 8% increase in applications to raise their LSAT median.

8% is about 650 more applications. That is not insignificant. For you to make a statement like that you would need to know how close UVA was to a 171 median last year. What if they were only 5 171s away?

Your statement cannot be proven to be true without knowing how close they were last year.

[chadwick218]

Interestingly enough, the # of applicants to NU has declined in recent years. I think that the reason is pretty self-explanatory though ...

...help me out. i'm slow.

-steep application fee + implicit work-experience requirements (IMO, has deterred many otherwise would-be applicants)

[im_blue]

8% is about 650 more applications. That is not insignificant. For you to make a statement like that you would need to know how close UVA was to a 171 median last year. What if they were only 5 171s away?

Your statement cannot be proven to be true without knowing how close they were last year.

Sure, my statement cannot be proven true, but I'm saying it seems likely given an 8% increase, and the fact that they accepted many 3.85+/169- and 3.84-/170 applicants this cycle, which forms a very similar wall as the last cycle.

Also, if UVA had maximized their class numbers efficiently last year (a reasonable assumption), they wouldn't be a few 171s away from bumping up their LSAT median. They would have decided to stick to the 170 median and then raise the GPA median as high as possible given that constraint. Put another way, if they had a lot of extra 171s, they should have traded them in for high GPAs to get a 3.86 or 3.87 median GPA (it would take about 13 high-GPA students to move the GPA median by 0.01). Given that 3.85/169-'s were taken ED this year, I strongly suspect that UVA's medians will stay put this year.

Consider CCN, which all have LSAT medians 1-2 points higher than UVA but lower GPA medians, which is not a coincidence. They've decided to stick to a 171-172 median and then maximize GPA based on that constraint, and the best they could do is a 3.7ish. A 171 LSAT median would instantly vault UVA to the 3rd best numbers behind HY, and that's just not happening with an 8% increase in applications.

[Doodsmack]

The number of applicants this cycle has only increased 1.5%. That, in my view, makes the figures showing increases in applications insignificant.

But I'm interested to see how the increase in applications at top schools affects waitlist activity.

[DukeHopeful]

Interestingly enough, the # of applicants to NU has declined in recent years. I think that the reason is pretty self-explanatory though ...

...help me out. i'm slow.

-steep application fee + implicit work-experience requirements (IMO, has deterred many otherwise would-be applicants)

This is true, I didn't bother applying specifically because of that. Although, I also didn't apply to UofC. Maybe I just don't want to go to school in the Windy City.

[vanwinkle]

The number of applicants this cycle has only increased 1.5%. That, in my view, makes the figures showing increases in applications insignificant.

But I'm interested to see how the increase in applications at top schools affects waitlist activity.

But an increase in applications still makes the cycle more competitive. Having a larger applicant pool gives top schools greater ability to cherry-pick the best applicants, who might otherwise have only applied to a local school and not been as competitive. It used to be that a lot of people would just apply to the schools in the state they wanted to practice, no matter how good their numbers were. Now a lot of people are applying to all the top schools to see what will happen, and that's giving those top schools more people to cherry-pick from and fight with each other over, which helps raise medians and shut out lesser candidates even further.

In essence, the cream rises to the top, at the expense of the rest of us.

[SandyC877]

The number of applicants this cycle has only increased 1.5%. That, in my view, makes the figures showing increases in applications insignificant.

But I'm interested to see how the increase in applications at top schools affects waitlist activity.

But an increase in applications still makes the cycle more competitive. Having a larger applicant pool gives top schools greater ability to cherry-pick the best applicants, who might otherwise have only applied to a local school and not been as competitive. It used to be that a lot of people would just apply to the schools in the state they wanted to practice, no matter how good their numbers were. Now a lot of people are applying to all the top schools to see what will happen, and that's giving those top schools more people to cherry-pick from and fight with each other over, which helps raise medians and shut out lesser candidates even further.

In essence, the cream rises to the top, at the expense of the rest of us.

but there are still limited number of students and there is also no significant increase in the actual bodies that will take the seats. It might get more competitive at top tier schools, but I don't think it's as bad as you think.

[jelizabeth88]

Interestingly enough, the # of applicants to NU has declined in recent years. I think that the reason is pretty self-explanatory though ...

...help me out. i'm slow.

-steep application fee + implicit work-experience requirements (IMO, has deterred many otherwise would-be applicants)

+1 Deterred me for sure.

Also my chances of getting into duke are looking even dimmer with that 22% increase in applications. oh well.

[General Tso]

Every article on that website seemed to engage in lawyer-bashing.

the guy who runs ATL - Elie Mystal is a disenchanted former biglaw associate. basically he went to Harvard, ran up a ton of debt, got a biglaw job, and only then realized that he didnt want to be a lawyer. He made a big mistake and now he runs a blog dedicated to letting the world know of his mistake.

[tallboone]

Why are applications at some top schools up in the single digits (berkeley, ucla, georgetown) and others up 20-50% (Mich, Duke, Cornell)? And what does that mean for Mich, Duke, Cornell/any other top schools that didn't report but have had the increase?

[vanwinkle]

but there are still limited number of students and there is also no significant increase in the actual bodies that will take the seats. It might get more competitive at top tier schools, but I don't think it's as bad as you think.

The quality of applicants is increasing, though. With the 20% increase in LSAT takers this year there were (assuming this year's tests followed statistical models) enough 170+s given out this year that, for the first time, the T14 could all fill their classes entirely with 170+ students if they wanted.

They don't do this in part because they also greatly value high GPAs and not too many people have both; they also don't do this in part because some cash those 170+ scores in for $$$ at lower-ranked schools. But even if the number of applicants is staying relatively constant, there's a growing number of people who are qualified for seats at the top schools, and combining that with the increased number of applications means that those top schools can easily cherry-pick the best classes possible.

Look at what's happening this year. A whole slew of 170+ splitters started getting WL'd or dinged at UVA after applying ED. In prior years that was almost a guaranteed acceptance, but this year they got so many that they finally had the luxury of turning a bunch of them away.

[monkeyboy]

The number of applicants this cycle has only increased 1.5%. That, in my view, makes the figures showing increases in applications insignificant.

But I'm interested to see how the increase in applications at top schools affects waitlist activity.

What do you make of the theory that this will result in a game of musical chairs whereby being waitlisted is not a death sentence, but rather a truly wait and see proposition? With top applicants applying to many T20-T30 schools as "safety schools" it would seem that acceptances given those people will result in the wait listing of many otherwise likely admits. Is it likely that schools in the 20-30 range will see a rather high percentage of their top candidates simply attend higher ranked schools, leaving them scrambling to admit waitlisted applicants?

That is not my theory, obviously. Somebody else mentioned the possibility of that happening, and you may have been alluding to that with the above comment, Doodsmack. What do you guys think?

[joshhoward]

Interestingly enough, the # of applicants to NU has declined in recent years. I think that the reason is pretty self-explanatory though ...

...help me out. i'm slow.

-steep application fee + implicit work-experience requirements (IMO, has deterred many otherwise would-be applicants)

+2. i applied to every t14 except for Northwestern, but in order for that to be the reason for a decline, it has to be the case that those requirement have gotten tougher over the last few years/their fee has gone up (more than others). perhaps you know that to be so, but you have not made that claim.

[Kohinoor]

Interestingly enough, the # of applicants to NU has declined in recent years. I think that the reason is pretty self-explanatory though ...

...help me out. i'm slow.

-steep application fee + implicit work-experience requirements (IMO, has deterred many otherwise would-be applicants)

+2. i applied to every t14 except for Northwestern, but in order for that to be the reason for a decline, it has to be the case that those requirement have gotten tougher over the last few years/their fee has gone up (more than others). perhaps you know that to be so, but you have not made that claim.

Or they're becoming more and more known for being the school that emphasizes experience.