Law schools admit more students than there are seats for? Forum

bdm261 · Post by **bdm261** » Sat Nov 03, 2012 11:26 am

Maybe this is a dumb question but if my law school gets 1600 apps for 150 seats and they admit 600 students, how does that work out? Naturally, many students will probably choose other schools they were accepted to or defer this admission, but what if more than 150 decide they want to attend?

JamMasterJ · Post by **JamMasterJ** » Sat Nov 03, 2012 11:37 am

They offer a bunch of scholarships to people if they can get them to defer for a year. Otherwise, they have to take them. They will sometimes try to make up for this by taking a smaller class the following year.

jkpolk · Post by **jkpolk** » Sat Nov 03, 2012 11:39 am

bdm261 wrote:Maybe this is a dumb question but if my law school gets 1600 apps for 150 seats and they admit 600 students, how does that work out? Naturally, many students will probably choose other schools they were accepted to or defer this admission, but what if more than 150 decide they want to attend?

Admissions has a fairly good idea what their yield (attending/admitted) will be from previous years, but beyond that- it's not like all 600 people are admitted at once. Admissions can track how many people have committed to matriculate throughout the cycle and admit more or fewer people to compensate.

florida1949 · Post by **florida1949** » Sat Nov 03, 2012 7:15 pm

JamMasterJ wrote:They offer a bunch of scholarships to people if they can get them to defer for a year. Otherwise, they have to take them.

lol, this is actually a thing? how bittersweet that would be

Nova · Post by **Nova** » Sat Nov 03, 2012 7:36 pm

This year, it appears W&L underestemated how much their USNWRanking jump would affect their yeild.

Their class size jumped 55%.

W&L (#24): 164 (0), 3.62 (-.03), 188 (+67, +55.37%)

jkpolk · Post by **jkpolk** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 2:43 am

Nova wrote:This year, it appears W&L underestemated how much their USNWRanking jump would affect their yeild.

Their class size jumped 55%.
W&L (#24): 164 (0), 3.62 (-.03), 188 (+67, +55.37%)

maybe they're just broke as fuck

dingbat · Post by **dingbat** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 8:13 am

St Louis got fucked last cycle when too many people accepted scholarship offers - nearly 3 times as many as they'd budgeted.
This happens every so often and schools just find a way to deal with it. One way or another they take a huge financial hit, but they try to minimize the reputational fallout of backpedalling.

presh · Post by **presh** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 9:02 am

justonemoregame · Post by **justonemoregame** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 10:27 am

I was hoping the case of Washington & Lee was an indication that applicants were being more sensitive to price. But their profile didn't really increase IIRC, so maybe we are still as foolish as ever.

Trout et al · Post by **Trout et al** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 11:13 am

Post by **vanwinkle** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 11:31 am

Trout et al wrote:
JamMasterJ wrote:They offer a bunch of scholarships to people if they can get them to defer for a year. Otherwise, they have to take them. They will sometimes try to make up for this by taking a smaller class the following year.
Do you know of any t-14 schools that are known to do this? And how big are the scholarships? Any idea who they are asking? (borderline applicants or people who already have scholarships)

UVA did this not that long ago. There were a couple years in a row when they ended up overenrolled by about 10-20 students, and they offered scholarships to some students to get a deferral from them.

From what I remember from TLSers, the scholarship sizes varied, but those that got deferral offers were typically potential K-JDs who were told a deferral year would give them time to get work experience.

VasaVasori · Post by **VasaVasori** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 11:46 am

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VasaVasori · Post by **VasaVasori** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 11:48 am

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Post by **vanwinkle** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 11:52 am

VasaVasori wrote:This is also a good strategy on their part, considering the decrease in applicants, I think. Though UVA seems to be pretty solid with its medians given its splitter strategy, this gives them a bit more leeway. Do you know if they did this for the more recent cycle (2011-2012), too?

Well, when they were doing this was back in 2008-2010 or so, when applicant volumes were still increasing. It let them hold onto above-median applicants that would've gone to peer schools and boosted their medians, while ensuring they would have a head start on hitting their median targets for the following year.

I didn't pay attention to the recent admission cycles to know if they're still doing this.

JamMasterJ · Post by **JamMasterJ** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 12:28 pm

vanwinkle wrote:
Trout et al wrote:
JamMasterJ wrote:They offer a bunch of scholarships to people if they can get them to defer for a year. Otherwise, they have to take them. They will sometimes try to make up for this by taking a smaller class the following year.
Do you know of any t-14 schools that are known to do this? And how big are the scholarships? Any idea who they are asking? (borderline applicants or people who already have scholarships)
UVA did this not that long ago. There were a couple years in a row when they ended up overenrolled by about 10-20 students, and they offered scholarships to some students to get a deferral from them.

From what I remember from TLSers, the scholarship sizes varied, but those that got deferral offers were typically potential K-JDs who were told a deferral year would give them time to get work experience.

yeah, UVA was the big one I was thinking of. I also know Northwestern gave out some deferrals this past cycle, though I don't know if that was for the same reason. The fact that they let in a significant amount of people in May and later makes me think it was unrelated.

presh · Post by **presh** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 4:04 pm

dingbat · Post by **dingbat** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 4:48 pm

presh wrote:
VasaVasori wrote:
presh wrote: And that was after getting approximately 70 people to defer.
Whoa, what?

W&L's previous class size was 121, then went up to 188. If seventy people deferred, that already fills up 70 spots in a 121 person class, leaving 50 more spots. They had nearly seventy "extra" people in last year's class.

Assuming they want to go back to the original size of 121, they'll supposedly need to be very selective this year. What are they going to do? Accept like 10 people? It seems like a good chance to jump in the rankings, at least in the median category.
Yes. They supposedly had around 260 people accept and were desperately trying to get it down to a reasonable number. It was a pretty open "secret" for those who studied for the bar in Lex, and gossip travels fast in the W&L community. My guess is that they will have leeway to be much more selective, but I also think that W&L will probably drop in the rankings this year, which may mean that not all of the 70 or so deferrals come back for class of 2016. I think it is probably going to be a very difficult year for them to figure out exactly how many and what numbers to admit.

Assuming all 70 were offered big scholarships, and knowing that W&L doesn't have that much scholly money to go around (if I remember correctly) there will be very few schollys available this cycle, if any