Top Law Schools

http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/ ... ministered

Just did a post about it on my site, too.

I think prospective students have gotten wise and are retaking for scholarship money. I would love to see how many of these are retakers.

Last year in Feb the numbers were up as well, right?

smh...

Fuck

Post removed...

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Still the lowest number of takers in any year since at least 1987.

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Soo...have we done a good enough job in telling people that retake is TCR?

LawsRUs wrote:Soo...have we done a good enough job in telling people that retake is TCR?

Obviously our plan has backfired and we must now tell everyone that the LSAT doesn't matter and all law schools, including Cooley, guarantee 160k a year salary in an exciting Suits-like work environment. It's us or them, guys.

Is this really that surprising? Schools have started accepting February LSATs more, so doesn't it make sense that more people would take the February LSAT? It could be retakers, but it could also be that schools' efforts to get people who otherwise wouldn't apply (or would apply next cycle) is working.

stoopkid13 wrote:Is this really that surprising? Schools have started accepting February LSATs more, so doesn't it make sense that more people would take the February LSAT. It could be retakers, but it could also be that schools' efforts to get people who otherwise wouldn't apply (or would apply next cycle) is working.

I agree. This slight increase is pretty meaningless in the big picture for trying to predict whether overall test taker and applicant volume is going to increase significantly anytime soon or not. At best, this could mark the beginning of the ongoing decrease finally leveling off and stopping. Like the stock market, it takes time for big market mega-variables influenced things like this to level off before any significant lasting increases begin.

IMO, the most likely explanation for this slight increase is re-takers plus people that took it because many schools decided to change their policies and accept applications based on February scores this cycle due to low applicant volume. Steve, I think you went way out on a frail logical limb with your explanation/guess/predictions in your blog article about it. There are unsupported and I believe unwarranted assumptions and flaws in your reasoning, although I do appreciate your optimism!

Hopefully this testing year will show test taker volume leveling off to finally put an end to the continuing steady decline that's been going continuously for five years now. That has to happen before any significant increase can or will begin, any sudden/near future significant rebound is highly improbable IMO, but I'm hopeful that this is part of the beginning of the post-declining volume era. Crap, if it isn't, a bunch of schools are going to go broke and/or have to dig deep into their endowment$$ to keep handing out the amounts of scholly$ they're giving out this and last cycle for another few cycles to try to keep their stats up and a bunch of crappy schools are going to go broke. I do like the lots of bottom feeding TTT and TTTT LSs going out of business possibility though, hmm.

To be clear, I do think that the increase in LSATs administered this past February is partially due to an increase in retaking. This may be because more law schools are accepting (and promoting that fact that they are accepting) February LSAT scores.

However, I also think the increase may indicate that "we’ve kind of reached the bottom or that we’re somewhere in that neighborhood," as I said in the following article, which came out today:

http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/ ... curindex=0

LSAT Blog wrote:To be clear, I do think that the increase in LSATs administered this past February is partially due to an increase in retaking. This may be because more law schools are accepting (and promoting that fact that they are accepting) February LSAT scores.

However, I also think the increase may indicate that "we’ve kind of reached the bottom or that we’re somewhere in that neighborhood," as I said in the following article, which came out today:

http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/ ... curindex=0

Ok, but how do you reconcile your statements in today's NLJ article:

“I don’t suspect that this recent increase will indicate that we’re going to have a turnaround of any sort,” said Steve Schwartz, a tutor who blogs about the exam. “I think it represents that we’ve kind of reached the bottom or that we’re somewhere in that neighborhood.”

with your contradictory cause and effect 'guess' positions/argument/conclusions/speculation you posted in your blog article on Friday?
(some of your significant cause and effect statements and conclusions bolded below)

http://lsatblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/nu ... -2015.html

Many prospective law school applicants have been dissuaded over the past few years by news about changing prospects in the legal market. Three years ago, the number of LSAT test-takers actually hit a 10-year-low.

Now, suddenly, things appear to be moving in the opposite direction - at least to some extent.

Why?

My guess is that many prospective applicants now believe that it will be easier to get into law school because it is less attractive to others. In other words, the decline in law school applications (and news about this decline) has actually led to an increase in the number of LSAT-takers (and may eventually lead to an increase in the number of law school applicants.

I believe that, by now, most LSAT-takers and law school applicants applicants are aware of the risks involved in taking on law school debt, given the current employment landscape. However, some may believe they are exceptions to the rule, and/or that the decline in applicants will make it easier to get into a higher-ranked law school.

For many recent college graduates (especially those majoring in the humanities), there still aren't a lot of great employment options. Given the ease of securing government loans for higher education, the number of law school applicants may actually rebound as people knowingly go to law school, despite awareness of the risks involved.

What changed over the weekend that got you to pretty much reverse your position from Friday? You're sounding like a flip flopping politician that's mainly posting and getting interviewed and quoted by media sources to get your name and public statements in 'news' articles for name recognition building, popularity and marketing purposes.

I have no issue with you trying to get your name out there to drum up LSAT tutoring clients for your business. However, I do find it problematic that you're marketing yourself as an LSAT expert (and charging extremely high hourly $$rates for tutoring) while simultaneously putting forth arguments/reasoning and conclusions that commit several of the common bread and butter flawed methods of reasoning that permeate LSAT LR sections to support your positions. As an LSAT teacher/tutor, I think you should know better since an LSAT tutor/teachers job is to teach students about the various common flawed methods of reasoning, how to spot flawed reasoning and unwarranted assumptions, how to strengthen and weaken flawed arguments, how to reason logically/recognize logically sound arguments and valid methods of reasoning, etc.

I'm curious to know what's your evidential basis for your statements and beliefs about what 'Most' LSAT test-takers and LS applicants know, believe and are thinking these days that's driving their decision making regarding taking the LSAT and applying to law school. If it's what I suspect it is, your impressions and speculation/generalizations from peoples posts on this forum and other LSAT and law school related internet sites, then, well, major rookie move basic logic failure!



As you should be aware, generalizing from unrepresentative samples (like self selecting samples that all LSAT/LS related posts here and on other LSAT/LS related websites are!) is one of the first most basic flawed methods of reasoning taught to LSAT students by good LSAT teachers/tutors/classes/prep books!

Anyway, I had to bust your balls on this Steve since this forum is supposed to be for helping people learn how to think and reason more critically and logically in order to improve their LSAT scores and your blog article is filled with bad logic of the same types that are heavily tested in the LSAT LR sections on every test!

I appreciate the exuberance in the above post, as demonstrated by the amount of exclamation marks used.

(feel free to break down, analyse, bold the cause & effect/logical fallacy found above -- but only if you also finish with an exclamation mark)

Jeffort, posts like this are why I like you.

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Mixture of both IMO- yes the efforts of schools to promote they are accepted the February LSAT to appear to have paid off

Changing Dynamics in the Law School Admissions Cycle - Retakers is a bit simple to say because ever since the ABA changes its rules a few years back , the highest LSAT is the one that is really considered ( outside of maybe Y and S) ...and this policy has been around even when apps were at high levels in 2010 for example.....They key is when people retake their LSAT......In this cycle for example we already saw this....The December 2014 LSAT saw a slight increase in test takers from December 2013......but at same time during the 2013-2014 year more LSATs were administered from June to December than the number of LSAT takers from June to December of 2014-2015.

I think there has been a shift..... in the past years retakers - would originally plan on taking it in Sept/Oct with a backup plan being December.
Now you in this cycle you have some people waiting to take it for the first time in December with a backup plan of February

I think any signs towards a shift will be better seen this July after June scores come out