After a holiday weekend followed by their biggest professional conference of the year, law school admissions officers are back at their schools and hoping that someone was able to water all the plants while they were away.
And they have to jump right back into the thick of it:
- Second deposit deadlines,
- Assessing if they need to pursue any waitlist activity,
- Heck … still reading applications submitted back in January or February,
- Reviewing files from transfer applicants,
- And starting to make plans for the coming admissions cycle.
We hope they enjoyed their break!
And much like our AdComm friends jumping back into that breach, let’s jump into the week in headlines from the world of law school admissions!
National LSAT Figures
Can you feel that buzz in the air? It’s time for the June LSAT!
While it still looks like it’ll be a doozy, our check on LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report shows that it may not be as doozy-rific as it was looking just a few weeks ago.
Registrations dropped 8.5% in the past week—oof! A lot of registrants got cold feet at the last minute! This brings us below our long-stated “best guess” prediction of 29,000 test takers for the exam.
Regardless of the drop, we’re almost assuredly going to see an increase of 10%+ in test takers over the June 2024 exam. This is important since the June, April, and August LSATs historically see the largest percentage of first-time test takers. That lays the foundation for the coming admissions cycle. If the numbers for those tests are up, apps will likely be up in the coming cycle.
And speaking of the August LSAT, LSAC is now publishing registration numbers for the coming test year. We’re three weeks away from the August registration deadline and there are already over 12,000 registrants for that test. That’s 75% of the final total from last August … and the biggest surge of registrations is yet to come!
All in all, the conditions keep pointing to another ultra-competitive applicant pool in the coming admissions cycle. This year’s 23% increase in national applications doesn’t appear to be going away.
Waitlist Activity
And speaking of this year’s ultra-competitive applicant pool, we’ve been seeing a little more waitlist activity pop in the past week+ now that second deposit deadlines are upon us. Harvard has been sending out admit offers the past few Tuesdays/Wednesdays per their profile page on lawschooldata.org.
Harvard’s medians for last year’s incoming class were a 3.95 and 174. All but two of the candidates check off at least one of those two statistical boxes. But the bigger giveaway is that all were interviewed a week or two before receiving an admit offer.
Meanwhile, Cornell and Northwestern admitted a few high students off their respective waitlists just before the Memorial Day weekend. In Cornell’s case, they also still had some scholarship money to offer them:
While it appears that Northwestern may be tapped out of funding:
And we’ll also note the one high-GPA student that Northwestern admitted. This would indicate that Northwestern currently has a preference off their waitlist for high LSATs, but that they have to pay at least some mind to their GPA median, too.
Notre Dame Law School admitted one high-GPA and a few high-LSAT students from their waitlist
but the key to understanding where NDLS is in their process is in the other admits—these were applicants who hadn’t yet received an admissions decision. As such, hope is still alive for the applicants still awaiting a decision from Notre Dame.
And we’re glad that we made one last check of the r/LSA thread before writing this week’s post because it sure appears that NYU has been busy today!
This is good news for everyone, not just candidates who are on the waitlists at the aforementioned schools. Waitlist activity has a direct “trickle-down” effect. If the schools at the top of the rankings admit from their waitlist, they’re usually admitting students who are currently deposited at schools ranked a bit lower. For example, a good number of those Harvard waitlist admits were likely deposited at other T14 schools. When Harvard admitted those students and the students accepted Harvard’s offer, the students then canceled their deposits at their previous school. This then opens up a seat at that previous school for them to admit someone from their own waitlist.
And in the case of Harvard and NYU, they have two of the largest incoming class sizes of any law school in the country. Waitlist activity there can have a big downstream effect on the broader market.
So what can you do with this information? First, now is a good time to send another letter of continued interest if you haven’t done so in a few weeks. Even if you don’t have any further updates to share, simply sharing that you remain interested in attending the school and would immediately accept an offer of admission is a good thing to share again.
Second, be mindful of who the schools are admitting at this time of year and set your expectations accordingly. Let’s go back to the example of Cornell:
Cornell’s medians for last year’s incoming class were a 3.89 GPA and 173 LSAT. While this table on lawschooldata is sparse, it’s worth noting that all three admitted students had a 173+ LSAT. One of them also had a high GPA, but it’s just that one. So our takeaway from this is that Cornell likely feels like they have to solidify their LSAT median. If you’re on the Cornell waitlist and have a high GPA but a low LSAT, it’s okay to send a LOCI and keep your hopes up … but it’s also okay to look at the most recent data and be realistic about matters.
This Week in The Shifting Landscape of Higher Education
And speaking of things that change quickly and require our ability to set reasonable expectations, let’s check on this week’s higher ed headlines.
In our last post, we mentioned that the State Department had paused scheduling visa interviews for incoming international students. That was taken a step further later on May 28th when Secretary of State Rubio announced that the federal government would “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students currently enrolled at American colleges, with a particular emphasis on those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in “critical fields.” Regarding the latter, his comments appear focused on various science and tech fields that could in some way be connected to broader military technology … an academic area that “law school” very famously does not occupy. But the former category is a bit stickier. Many young Chinese nationals join the CCP more out of an interest in possible career advancement rather than because of any ideological connections to the party. As such, we will be interested to see what “ties” mean to the State Department. Meanwhile, President Trump also commented that he would like to cap the number of international students that could enroll at Harvard.
Putting matters all together, it means another week of uncertainty for international law students—both those attempting to enroll at law school for the coming academic year and those applying to schools for the 2026–2027 academic year. For the former group, we continue to advise being in close contact with the officer or administrators at your law school who are responsible for processing visa paperwork. And if you haven’t started your I-20 process … there’s no time like the present! Make sure to get moving since—by all indications—visas may take longer to process this year than in a regular year.
7Sage Events
We’re hosting the next in our series of AMA-style classes on June 4th wherein we’ll be happy to answer all your admissions questions! Looking ahead a few weeks, we’ll have a wave of “What Does My Score Mean?” sessions after the June LSAT results come back. Also, a reminder that you can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.
The most recent episode of the 7Sage Admissions Podcast dropped on Monday and is a “season recap” where we talk about the twists and turns from the past admissions year. It’s available on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!