High LSAT Scorers Are Back, And They're Dominating The Law School Applicant Pool

2018 may be the year that applicants finally return, and recovery for law schools truly begins.

‘Yesssss! Our LSAT scores are so high!’

There may be a law school brain drain going on, in that students from top undergraduate institutions are doing their best to stay far, far away from law school, but that certainly hasn’t stopped other students from applying. In fact, not only has the number of law school applicants increased by more than 8 percent over last year, but the number of applicants with high LSAT scores has exploded.

Law.com has the details on the surge in well-qualified law school applicants:

The council reported this week that the number of applicants with LSAT scores of 160 or higher is up by 2,804, or 21 percent, over this time last year. (LSAT scores range from a high of 180 to a low of 120.) The very highest score band reported by the council, 175 to 180, saw the single largest increase, at 70 percent. However, those high scorers represent the smallest cohort of law applicants. Thus far, 682 people with those high scores have applied, up from 401 at this point last year. Conversely, the number of applicants with LSAT scores of 144 or below declined slightly.

The increase in high scorers on the LSAT must be particularly exciting for law school administrators who have been criticized for years on end over the fact that, in an effort to keep the lights on, they’ve admitted and enrolled students with LSAT scores so low that they may not be able to graduate or pass the bar exam.

On top of more test-takers scoring well on the LSAT, especially in the highest score band, the current application cycle may see more than 59,000 applications across the country. Save for a 1.5 percent increase last year, the number of applicants has fallen each year since 2011, but according to LSAC president Kellye Testy, 2018 may be the year that applicants finally return, and recovery for law schools truly begins. (Thanks, Trump bump!) “I know this is good news for all of us who had become concerned that some very talented students were choosing not to pursue legal education,” Testy wrote in a message to law school admissions officials.

What’s the lesson to be learned here? If you’re considering applying to law school and your score is on the lower end of the spectrum, you may have missed out on your opportunity to attend a number of law schools that would have accepted you without much hesitation just a year or two ago. Unfortunately, those with high LSAT scores have returned to the applicant pool and may have ruined your chances to attend a higher-ranked school. Best of luck, because now you may need it.

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Law School Applications Are Up, Especially Among High LSAT Scorers [Law.com]


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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