With the calendars turning to April, law school admissions officers are in their final sprint of hosting admitted students and reviewing files (STILL!) before deposit deadlines hit. With these deposit deadlines, schools hit one of their key benchmark dates and can hopefully begin to wrap up their classes with a little waitlist activity. For students, these dates also serve their own mental benchmark—the end of being a possible law student and the beginning of being a real law student complete with a student ID, email address, and an application for football season tickets. This is the real deal!
But without waxing poetic too much further, let’s jump into matters! As we wrote in last week’s edition—AdComms are people, too—you know who else are people? Blog writers whose children are on spring break and are running wild through the house. So enough chitchat and let’s take our weekly lap around the world of law admissions before a small child sets something on fire.
Where We Last Left Off
After taking some time in the past few weeks to recap the basic trends of this past year’s application cycle, we want to take a little time to look ahead to this coming year. While we don’t have access to a crystal ball, we already are aware of a few issues that will shape the parameters of next year’s applicant pool. And it may lead the veterans of the 2023–2024 cycle to shake their heads and be thankful that they’re done with all of this!
LSAT Registrations and Reapplicants
The best predictor of applicants for the upcoming admissions cycle is always LSAT test takers in the preceding cycle. We see a shift in the test-taking population beginning each year in April. The January exam typically sees the highest percentage of students who are repeat test takers. The percentage of “newbies” rises in February, but is still less than 50% of total test takers. But April? Just like spring, April is a time of new birth, new hope, and new law school applicants. Per information from LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report, April is when we see the test-taking population flip towards a majority of first-time takers:
For the upcoming cycle, the key numbers to examine for now are registration figures for April and June 2024. April registrations are still up 70% versus last year’s exam. Since the test is next week, those numbers are likely to come down a little further, but it stands to reason that we’re looking at a minimum registration increase of at least 50%. Meanwhile, June registrations are nearly on par with last year and we’re still a few weeks away from the registration deadline. This makes it seem like apps are going to be up next year.
An additional wild card in this matter—and one that we won’t know the full effects of until we see if schools admit a number of students from their respective waitlists—is if we’re going to have a higher than usual number of reapplicant candidates from this past cycle. Test takers in October, November, January, and February were higher than in 2022–2023. The majority of those students were repeat test takers. It stands to reason that those students applied during this cycle. But if they were taking an LSAT at that juncture AND applying this cycle (which has been particularly slow), there’s a good chance that they’re still waiting to hear decisions from schools and/or are on a few waitlists. Those candidates may have applied late enough in the cycle to have maximized their chances of admission and scholarship—this is why they tend to be candidates to reapply in the following cycle. Their numbers, however, can be mitigated a bit through a robust waitlist season. So if the 2024–2025 applicants out there want to say a few prayers for their 2023–2024 brethren, it would be mutually beneficial—the former can get in off waitlists this year and clear the path for the latter in next year’s cycle.
Changes to the LSAT
And if we haven’t focused enough on the LSAT—wait, there’s more!
Two big format changes are coming to the exam starting in August.
No more Logic Games! LSAC confirmed in October 2023 what everyone had been speculating about on the best law admissions message board for even a year before that. The bane of many law applicants’ existence is finally going away. We’ve yet to hear from someone mourning this section’s demise, but kudos to you if you’re out there!
A bit more surprising was LSAC’s announcement last month regarding changes to the Writing section. Gone will be the old standard “Do you think that this Person should choose A or B?” prompts. In their place will be a more open-ended writing prompt that asks test takers to create an argument from various statements. In some ways, it will feel like a throwback for anyone who took the AP US History exam and handled document-based questions. Ironically, given LSAC’s sample prompt, this is a task that seems like it should be right up the alley of liberal arts majors and graduates. Students whose majors were in the STEM fields or in business may need to refresh themselves on this style of writing.
We’ve already received a number of questions from upcoming applicants who are wondering what they should do. The two biggies are:
- Will admissions officers prefer the old exam with Logic Games?
- Will they value the new Writing section more than the old one?
While acknowledging that we (both us and our friends still working in admissions offices) are going to need to see these changes in action before making any judgments:
- We’ve seen changes to the LSAT before. The most drastic example in the recent past was when LSAC had to quickly pivot from in-person exams to the online LSAT-Flex after COVID hit in March 2020. The Flex was not only online, it was also a shorter exam. In the immediate aftermath, it was not odd for AdComms to see score variances that were greater than usual. This wasn’t because the Flex was “easier” per se. Much like some runners are better at sprints versus endurance runs, some test takers were better at shorter exams (i.e., sprints) and some were better at longer exams (i.e., endurance runs). From the AdComm perspective, we all recognized two key things. First, regardless of our feelings regarding the previous exam or the Flex, we were bound by American Bar Association regulations to report students’ highest scores. Second, it was our job to use the rest of the application (transcripts, résumés, and written pieces) to determine if we would want to admit those students who scored drastically higher on the Flex. I imagine the same thing will occur after Logic Games falls by the wayside.
- The changes to the Writing section will hopefully serve to make that portion of the exam more useful than it presently stands. At the moment, students can study for the LSAT Writing section because the format is so standard from one exam to the next. Sure, one prompt may ask if we believe the Middle School science class should go to the arboretum or the planetarium while another prompt may ask whether the Town Manager should use the extra tax money to build a skate park or a teen center … but these prompts are always about a person or group having to make a choice between two flawed options. This new format will be more challenging, but it should also give a greater glimpse into the analytical writing abilities of law school applicants. Put another way, it should actually be worth reading!
At 7Sage HQ, we’ll keep tracking these changes in the coming months so that we can provide assistance accordingly. Stay tuned!
7Sage Events and Blogs
And speaking of staying tuned, some quick reminders regarding some new features on our blog page!
- Be sure to check out Tajira McCoy and Sam Riley’s latest “Dear AO” column!
- For the readers looking ahead to next year’s applications, a reminder to check out the posts from Ethan Madore and Lulu Dewey. Lulu’s most recent post goes over how to define target, reach, and safety schools. We also have a guest blog from Aaron Thier about the transfer process.
- And for those grizzled veterans of the 2023–2024 admissions process, a heads-up that our final podcast of our How to Get into Law School series is all about letters of continued interest. Teaser alert—we have a new admissions podcast beginning in the next week+ and we’ll have some content for both the newbies and the vets. More details to come next week!
