16.9% Decrease In October Test Takers(Detailed Stats Inside) Forum

[thelawyler]

Wow interesting thread...

Hopefully it will be even easier to get in the t14 by next cycle when I apply lol.

Anyone want to go "all in" and bet that this trend continues at the same or even greater rate into next cycle? Are we witnessing the beginning of a trough in law school admissions standards (I hope so). Too early to tell ofcourse.

But lets face it, if you're reading this thread then you (like me), benefit from there being less people out there with JDs.

And a 165 and 3.5 MA URM with amazing softs just may get into a school that was a considered a reach last cycle and gets bumped to a weak consider by next (as opposed to the current).

I'd really like to know if there is a particular ethnic demographic that's witnessing a drop in applicants? I would think (conjecture), that it would be the URMs who would be the most volatile segment of applicants, and therefore if the number of applicants are going down, it would be them first.


Cool thread all around. Don't know if I should feel good about there being less people applying to law schools... Oh wait ofcourse I do lol!

Well, there are fewer applicants but it seems that there will probably be the same number of JDs. Remember, the number who matriculate are much smaller than the number that applies. If anything, if all schools would reduce their class sizes by 25-35% over the next 10 years or so, that would do a lot to solve the employment problem.

[FEE]

Lets say the number of applicants falls from about 150,000 to about 130,000 people, that's about a 12% drop (a very conservative estimate judging from this year's numbers thus far.) A 12% drop means there will be 200 fewer people this year walking around with a 172+ than there were last year. 200 people! That's enough people to fill an entire class at Yale. Gone.

[caputlupinum]

Wow interesting thread...

Hopefully it will be even easier to get in the t14 by next cycle when I apply lol.

Anyone want to go "all in" and bet that this trend continues at the same or even greater rate into next cycle? Are we witnessing the beginning of a trough in law school admissions standards (I hope so). Too early to tell ofcourse.

But lets face it, if you're reading this thread then you (like me), benefit from there being less people out there with JDs.

And a 165 and 3.5 MA URM with amazing softs just may get into a school that was a considered a reach last cycle and gets bumped to a weak consider by next (as opposed to the current).

I'd really like to know if there is a particular ethnic demographic that's witnessing a drop in applicants? I would think (conjecture), that it would be the URMs who would be the most volatile segment of applicants, and therefore if the number of applicants are going down, it would be them first.


Cool thread all around. Don't know if I should feel good about there being less people applying to law schools... Oh wait ofcourse I do lol!

Well, there are fewer applicants but it seems that there will probably be the same number of JDs. Remember, the number who matriculate are much smaller than the number that applies. If anything, if all schools would reduce their class sizes by 25-35% over the next 10 years or so, that would do a lot to solve the employment problem.

awesome tar

[hyakku]

Has anyone asked any schools? Maybe I missed it going through the thread, but i mean I can't imagine they'd be angry, although I'm not really trying to bother the adcomms at the schools I'm applying too while my apps are in, but it would be interesting to gear some information straight from the source.

[FEE]

I'm not so sure this will make a big difference for splitters. I think it will benefit retakers more than anybody else. Because of the dearth of top scores, schools won't have the luxury of turning away top scorers simply because they have a worse score on their file. Moral of the story: if you feel like you underperformed, take it again.

[hooma]

Has anyone asked any schools? Maybe I missed it going through the thread, but i mean I can't imagine they'd be angry, although I'm not really trying to bother the adcomms at the schools I'm applying too while my apps are in, but it would be interesting to gear some information straight from the source.

A friend is a 2L working in the admissions department at their T2 and brought up that there was a drop in the number of test takers before I did - their admissions department is paying attention to it.

[suspicious android]

Has anyone asked any schools? Maybe I missed it going through the thread, but i mean I can't imagine they'd be angry, although I'm not really trying to bother the adcomms at the schools I'm applying too while my apps are in, but it would be interesting to gear some information straight from the source.

In general, I think adcomms are not really great sources of information on stuff like this. They're essentially salesmen who are lawyers, so you get all the hedging and equivocation typical of lawyers, plus all the quasi-truths and positive-spin of salesmen.

Or, to put it another way, do you think an adcomm would ever, ever say "Things are actually way down this year, we're kind of screwed unless we drop our medians, maybe start admitting some marginal candidates."

[marlborofillet]

I'm not sure if someone has already posted this article (http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/11/more ... h-for.html), but it introduces some pertinent information. Specifically:

"The third sign is perhaps the most alarming for law schools: the yield of applicants to test takers has been falling steadily in recent years. At least since 1995 (earlier statistics are not available), between 75% and 80% of the people who take the LSAT have gone on to apply to law school. It makes sense that a high proportion of people who take the test would apply because preparing for and taking the test involves a substantial commitment of time and money. Beginning in 2000-01, however, when 80% of the people who took the test applied to law school, the yield of applicants to test-takers has declined every year but one (2003-04). In 2010 and 2011, only around 63% of the people who took the test applied to law school"

[hyakku]

Lol true suspicious. Well it seems though that at least someone got an answer though, hoomas comment appears to resolve some of the debate at least on a small level, we now know some adcomms are definitely going to be making adjustments this years for the drop, besides that, everyone might as well get their apps in and hope for the best.

[Rickjames11]

What the 16.9% drop in october test takers means for URMs discussed in the following thread:

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 9#p4949989

[john1990]

When will the December numbers be out

[thelawyler]

Uhhh wasn't the exam taken today? Then I'm guessing in about 6-8 weeks? Basically, it'll be too late for us to make speculation any fun by then (at least for us early applicants)

[asdflawyer]

Lol true suspicious. Well it seems though that at least someone got an answer though, hoomas comment appears to resolve some of the debate at least on a small level, we now know some adcomms are definitely going to be making adjustments this years for the drop, besides that, everyone might as well get their apps in and hope for the best.

If the number of test takers for December from by 10-15%, won't the majority of schools have to drop their LSAT medians by one point? It seems like there won't be enough high LSAT scores to go out this year for the higher ranked schools.

[Tiago Splitter]

Lol true suspicious. Well it seems though that at least someone got an answer though, hoomas comment appears to resolve some of the debate at least on a small level, we now know some adcomms are definitely going to be making adjustments this years for the drop, besides that, everyone might as well get their apps in and hope for the best.

If the number of test takers for December from by 10-15%, won't the majority of schools have to drop their LSAT medians by one point? It seems like there won't be enough high LSAT scores to go out this year for the higher ranked schools.

You'd do well to read the rest of the thread for discussion of this exact question. The short answer is that we can't be sure medians will drop, but schools will certainly have less latitude with numerically qualified candidates if they want to maintain medians.

[john1990]

On Nov 4th we had the news for the October 1st test, so hopefully we will have an answer to this in the first week of January

[tennisking88]

Lol true suspicious. Well it seems though that at least someone got an answer though, hoomas comment appears to resolve some of the debate at least on a small level, we now know some adcomms are definitely going to be making adjustments this years for the drop, besides that, everyone might as well get their apps in and hope for the best.

If the number of test takers for December from by 10-15%, won't the majority of schools have to drop their LSAT medians by one point? It seems like there won't be enough high LSAT scores to go out this year for the higher ranked schools.

You'd do well to read the rest of the thread for discussion of this exact question. The short answer is that we can't be sure medians will drop, but schools will certainly have less latitude with numerically qualified candidates if they want to maintain medians.

GW is waitlisting or outright rejecting people they would have accepted/waitlisted last year, even earlier in the process. This tells me that a likely scenario is that GW is planning on cutting the size of its class instead of dropping their scores. I'm not at all sure that other schools will do the same. However, even if it's just one or two more schools in the 20-25 range that do this, it could create a trickle-down effect where the schools in the 25-35 range won't have to either drop their medians or lower their class sizes.

[ThreeRivers]

Just a single personal experience, I don't think the drop is having much of an impact

167/ 3.5
My cycle decisions thus far:

Rejections:
Texas
George Washington

Acceptances:
Minnesota
Washington & Lee

Probably typical for my numbers, but I really expected at least a WL from GW, but as the above poster said it looks like they might be dropping their class size by a decent amount

[Jeffort]

It's fun to speculate about how the application cycle is going to go. However, people shouldn't get hopes up that quality law schools are going to lower admission standards out of desperation to fill classes, it isn't going to happen.

Tier 1 and tier 2 schools will not have to and aren't going to lower their numbers standards/ranges to admit and put together classes of qualified applicants. There is no shortage of applicants with qualifying numbers to fill the entering classes of the T1 and T2 schools.

T3 and lower schools might lower their standards a bit though since it appears that an increased number of people with crappy numbers since they just couldn't 'cut the mustard' on the LSAT and/or have a crappy GPA are deciding not to apply and instead deciding to do something else with their lives instead of going to law school. It's a lot of work and has become more expensive just to apply to law school, which surely deters some people from going through with applying when they realize their realistic options with their numbers as well as the debt attending will create.

[FEE]

I completely disagree. There are 200 fewer people with a 173+. That will affect the top 14 schools. How could it not? They have 200 fewer applicants to choose from. That's an entire law school class of people missing.

[Jeffort]

I completely disagree. There are 200 fewer people with a 173+. That will affect the top 14 schools. How could it not? They have 200 fewer applicants to choose from. That's an entire law school class of people missing.

You are interpreting the statistics incorrectly and just focusing on one piece of them out of full context.

[HellOnHeels]

I completely disagree. There are 200 fewer people with a 173+. That will affect the top 14 schools. How could it not? They have 200 fewer applicants to choose from. That's an entire law school class of people missing.

Yes, but what if the top schools only have enough spots for 1500 applicants, and in years past, 2000 173+ people applied. They'd be turning down 500 applicants. Fast forward to now. Still 1500 spots, and 1800 applicants with 173+. They're turning down 300 people, yet, still keeping their medians, despite a smaller pool of 173+ applicant.

I chose numbers completely at random, but hopefully, you get my point.

[minnbills]

Not every 170+ goes T14 too

[Tiago Splitter]

I completely disagree. There are 200 fewer people with a 173+. That will affect the top 14 schools. How could it not? They have 200 fewer applicants to choose from. That's an entire law school class of people missing.

Yes, but what if the top schools only have enough spots for 1500 applicants, and in years past, 2000 173+ people applied. They'd be turning down 500 applicants. Fast forward to now. Still 1500 spots, and 1800 applicants with 173+. They're turning down 300 people, yet, still keeping their medians, despite a smaller pool of 173+ applicant.

I chose numbers completely at random, but hopefully, you get my point.

Right. Schools can keep their medians in this scenario if they become even less concerned with non LSAT/GPA factors.

[AreJay711]

I completely disagree. There are 200 fewer people with a 173+. That will affect the top 14 schools. How could it not? They have 200 fewer applicants to choose from. That's an entire law school class of people missing.

You are right numerically. Edit: (though I guess if they make their decisions based on more factors than numbers then it might not change What is more likely is that spliters and reverse spliters become more valued.)

What I think will be interesting is how it would affect competitiveness. It isn't clear that it would make applications easier (though easier for any given LSAT score) because we don't know who are the people that are selecting out of taking the LSAT. It could be either people that have their shit together and would have gotten into a t14 or it could be people that would have been at TTTs. Or, obviously, it could affect all people the same. Any of those would make sense and I think that needs to be determined before we know whether it is actually easier to get into a higher ranked school. The clear winners are those people that took their exams a couple years ago and are just now applying.

[FEE]

I completely disagree. There are 200 fewer people with a 173+. That will affect the top 14 schools. How could it not? They have 200 fewer applicants to choose from. That's an entire law school class of people missing.

Yes, but what if the top schools only have enough spots for 1500 applicants, and in years past, 2000 173+ people applied. They'd be turning down 500 applicants. Fast forward to now. Still 1500 spots, and 1800 applicants with 173+. They're turning down 300 people, yet, still keeping their medians, despite a smaller pool of 173+ applicant.

I chose numbers completely at random, but hopefully, you get my point.

I do see your point. But your numbers are incorrect, which makes a big difference. Last year 150,000 people took the LSAT. So 1,500 people had a 173+. (173 is 99th percentile.) This year there are only going to be about 130,000 (and this is being conservative, I actually think there will be fewer!) people taking the LSAT. So there will only be 1,300 people with a 173+. That's two hundred people! Now consider that just HSY together take about 900 people. Throw in CCN and we're up to around 2,000 people. 200 seats starts to make a difference pretty quickly. There will only be about 2,080 people with a 170-172. Which is down from 2,400. So all in all that's about 500 fewer people this year with a 170+ than last year. 2,000 people for the top 6 schools, and 500 fewer people to fill up those seats. It's going to make a difference.