Illinois apps up ~50%
Iowa apps up ~50%
WUSTL apps up ~20%
Alabama apps up 70% or so? can't specifically remember this one.
...and who knows who else is up.
Yet the total number of applicants are only up 4% or so. So more people are applying to many more schools. Some people still haven't gone complete at Cornell because they are so far behind. WUSTL has dozens of people on their "hold list" that were almost auto-admit last year, and they STILL seem to be over-deposited (although it's refundable for another week and a half). Iowa's given out so many full scholarships that they may not even have any money at all for partial scholarships, and people with awesome numbers who applied late are getting waitlisted. Illinois says they will have their best class ever, as does every single other school out there. Yet there really isn't that many more applicants.
So what is it? What's the deal? Are people really applying to every T30 school they can? Are there a lot of people that have T14 numbers applying to tons of safeties or seeking out full scholarships because this is the year of debt aversion? Where are all these hoards of well-qualified applicants coming from? Are a ton more people taking advantage of LSAT retakes?
The bottom line is that it's got to be one of two things: either well-qualified applicants applied everywhere this year, or there's simply more well-qualified applicants out there (without there being a huge increase in the total number of applicants). Likely, it's a little of both. Just browsing LSN seems to suggest that there's a ton of people that have applied to 20 or more schools, and many people on TLS speak of being double deposited. I'm instituting a poll to try and figure this out.
And please, share your own stories about this madness.
