Law School and Competition: Kinda sick

[NV53A]

According to the LSAC website, 171,514 LSATs were administered last year. Of course, a bulk of them is a retake by the same person. Assuming that same numbers are true for this cycle, let's be generous and say that only 100,000 people took the LSAT, and of those, only 60,000 will apply this year.

Top 10% = 6000 people

For T14 schools, let's be generous and say that each school has 300 seats, so in total of 4200.

So...

If T14 schools are filled with top 10%, and if the remaining students should settle for Non-T14, there are 55800 applicants trying to all squeeze into Top 100.

If the Non-T14, Top 86 schools each had on average 300 seats, that's enough space for 25800.

So...

After filling all the seats in the top 100 schools, there are still 30,000 applicants left unaccounted for.

30000 excess in law students is a lot. They will probably fall into TTT,TTTT categories while racking up the same amount of debt as HYS applicants.

Something seems really F'd up... Why is everyone trying to go to law school? It seems to me, if you can't be in the top 10% category, you are working 3 yrs of your life + spending 120000 for a piece of paper.

[vstraight]

T14 schools require a much higher score than top 10% on the LSAT.

Seriously. The lowest LSAT median at a t14 school is cornell with a 168. Even a 168 is around 97%?

And almost all other schools have LSAT median at around 170 which is even more strict.

And let's face it. A lot of people take the LSAT without prepping or even thinking that much about law school. When all you need is an undergrad degree of any kind and an LSAT score, many people who are unsure about their future just take the LSAT.

[2014]

How many people do you think actually research or care about the USNWR rankings? Probably quite a minority in my opinion.

I'm guessing a great deal of the 170+ LSAT scores out there are people who know they want to go to law school at a school and just take it because they have to in order to apply. They never even enter the t14 rat race that the majority of us are waist deep in.

Also noteworthy is the number of high LSATs that don't ever apply to law school and the extreme splitters who have no shot at T14 other than Northwestern. Overall I believe there are spots in the t14 for everyone who is numerically qualified and willing to pay sticker.

[im_blue]

If 171,514 LSATs were taken this year, that represents about 127,000 test takers since roughly 25% take it twice and 5% take it 3 times. Since the T14 schools have 4,447 1Ls in their most recent class, that represents the top 3.5% of test takers. This corresponds roughly to a 169 LSAT score.