Understanding the crash in law school applicants and enrollment
By We’re now three quarters of the way through the current law school application cycle, and it’s possible to make a pretty accurate estimate of how many people will apply, how many will be accepted, and how many will enroll.
How many will apply?
As of the last day of February, 39,334 people had applied to at least one school. Last year 75% of all applicants had applied by this point in the cycle, which extrapolates to a final total of 52,400 applicants this year (Last year schools pulled out all the stops late in the cycle, extending application deadlines, and offering applicants various goodies, from i-tune cards, to help with moving expenses, to free Bass-o-Matic blenders, so it’s unlikely that the percentage of people who apply after February 28 will increase this year).
How many will be accepted to at least one school?
This is a bit more speculative. In response to a moderate drop in applicants between 2004 and 2007 (from 100,600 to 84,000) law schools maintained their enrollments by slashing admissions standards fairly dramatically. 55.6% of applicants were admitted to at least one school in 2004; by 2007 this percentage had increased by 19%, to 66.1%. Applicant totals were fairly stable over the next few years, and admission percentages crept up only slightly, as law schools hit an all-time high first-year enrollment of 52,500 in 2010, up from 48,200 six years earlier, when the applicant total had been 13% higher.
Over the last three years, schools have slashed standards yet again, in response to a far steeper applicant drop. Acceptance percentages climbed from 68.7% in 2010 to 76.9% in 2013. This means that law school applicants were 38% more likely to be accepted to at least one law school in 2013 than they were in 2004. How much more are schools willing to cut their admissions standards? This of course will vary greatly between schools. Some bottom tier-schools now have something like open admission standards already, accepting just about anybody with an undergrad degree and an LSAT score, while perhaps making exceptions for people with the sorts of personal histories that would subject the school to tort liability if the admit were to harm fellow students or law school employees.
Still, the percentage of applicants admitted could continue to rise if some higher-ranked schools cut what standards they do maintain. Many applicants will not apply to schools below a certain level, so the fact that some schools already have constructive open admissions policies hasn’t been relevant to the chances for admission of such applicants to this point.
I’m guesstimating that the percentage of applicants admitted to at least one school will continue its rapid ascent for at least another year, and that 79% of applicants will get in to at least one of the schools to which they apply in this cycle.
How many admitted applicants will end up enrolling somewhere?
This is easy to estimate, since for some reason this percentage has remained very stable, at between 86% and 88% every year for the last decade.
Crunching the numbers, that means we’re looking at just about exactly 36,000 matrics this fall.
One feature of the law school crash that’s somewhat under-appreciated is how it works like a series of waves, pounding on law school finances with increasing intensity each year. This is because there’s a three-year lag between a class’s enrollment and graduation (ignoring for the sake of simplicity the relatively small percentage of part-time students). This in turn means that each first year class replaces the class which entered three years earlier.
Because law schools slashed admission standards in 2011, the 2011 entering class was almost exactly the same size as the 2008 entering class it replaced, despite the fact that applicant totals began to plunge that year. But that strategy worked only once.
Speaking of waves, let’s call the present admissions cycle and its two predecessors the Three Sisters:
2009: 51,600 matrics
replaced by
2012: 44,500 matrics
13.8% decrease
2010: 52,500 matrics
replaced by
2013: 39,700 matrics
24.4% decrease
2011: 48,700 matrics
replaced by
2014: 36,000 matrics (estimated)
26.1% decrease
In nautical terms, some waves can end up being non-negotiable.