It s Never Been Harder to Get Into Law School

This is the hardest it has ever been to get into law school, and I can prove it in two numbers most people never put together. Number one, in two years, applications to law school jumped 37 percent. Applicant numbers are up 30 percent. This past cycle alone, nearly 79,000 people apply. So more people are fighting for a receipt than at almost any point in the last decade. Number two, and this is the one that nobody really talks about, at the exact same time, the bar to get in jumped higher than it ever has. I pulled every law school's admissions data myself, school by school, and I've never seen scores move the way they moved this cycle. And so you've got the most competition you've faced in a decade walking into the highest bar there's ever been at the same time. And almost nobody applying to law school right now even knows they're standing in it. Two years ago, a 166L sat in a 3.7 GPA gets you into a solid school with money comfortably. But last cycle, that same student with the exact same numbers gets waitlisted, then rejected. They didn't get worse, of course, but something moved underneath them while they were studying and nobody warned it was coming. So I'm going to show you today exactly what moved, and by the end I'll show you what move you've got to make to take it back. Let's start with the crowd of applicants because that's the part you can feel you can see it in the data. Applications up 37% in two years, applicants up 30%, nearly 79,000 this past cycle, and that's all across the country. It's the entire map. But that count alone can't tell you how hard it is to get in because a flood of people who all scored a 150 won't threaten you if you got a 165. So what actually decides your odds is two things. First, how much competition sits right at your score band, and then how many seats exist to put people in. Both of those factors moved against the average applicant, and the first one's the one that's a bit more concerning. Every law school has to report the scores of the class it admits. This is part of the 509 disclosure required by the American Bar Association. I pull that data for every school every single year. Now, this year the average LSAT median across every accredited law school in the country went up 1.79 points in one year. That's across all law schools on average. Out of nearly 200 ABA-approved law schools, only three of them lowered their medians. The other 190-plus raised their medians or kept them the same, but in most cases they were raised. And so a school that wanted a 164 last year now wants a 166. Of course, if you got a 164, your score didn't change, but its value did. It's like inflation. It's worth less than it was last year. So you get knocked down a tier without doing anything wrong. And that's for the GPA as well. Over the last 10 years, every single law school in the country has raised its GPA median every single one. And so the floor has been climbing under applicants on both numbers at once over the past decade plus. Compared till 10 years ago, almost every law school pushed up its LSAT median by an average of five full points. And so the bar got higher on everything. And you would at least hope they would open up more seats. And they did add a few. First-year enrollment actually ticked up a little bit this year to about 42,800 seats. But the flood that hit in terms of applications was enormous and the schools cracked the door open maybe eight percent. So they let in a little trickle more people while a tidal wave showed up at the gates. Now total enrollment is still down almost 19 percent from where it peaked back in 2010. So the schools are nowhere near the size they used to be. They just nudged up slightly to skim the very top of the flood, but the room barely grew while the crowd of applicants surged. So you've got a massive crowd pouring into a room that barely grew on top of a bar that jumped up almost two points. Now if you look at the highest band of applicants, those who got LSAT scores in the 175 to 180 range, two years ago you had about 1,400 applicants scoring that high. This cycle over 2,400 with scores in that band. That's more than a 70 percent increase. The band right below it, applicants with LSAT scores in the 170 to 174 range, they are up 60 percent. And so the people scoring at the very top the exact people you're fighting for the best seats at the best law schools and the scholarship money, there are way more of them than there used to be. Nearly double. So you've got a higher bar, the room is barely bigger, and the crowd that got dramatically stronger right where it hurts you, that's the trap in three different spots. So the question of course is why? Why this exact moment? And people love to give you a laundry list of 10 different reasons. It's simpler than that though. It's one major engine with a few extra things bolted on. The engine I think is politics. When law becomes the main topic of the news, applications spike. And this is the biggest wave yet. According to one survey of law school admissions officers, a combined 56 percent named the political climate as the major factor or the main factor behind the surge in applications. The courts are deciding enormous questions every single week, and a lot of smart fired up people want a seat in the room where it happens. They want to change the system given what's going on. Then there are accelerants pouring on top of that. For example, the entry level job market's pretty shaky these days, so people are running towards grad school. AI is scaring people towards a law license, which they think is harder to automate with perhaps good reason. And you've got people reapplying as well year after year. So that's the whole machine as I see it here. Now of course, I know somebody out there who's been studying the data is going to bring up 2004. That's the year that over 100,000 people applied to law school, the most ever counted. People call that the real peak. And if you count bodies alone, sure, there were technically more people applying to law school in 2004 than today, the nearly 79,000 we saw this cycle. But the question that really matters is, was it harder to get in back then? In 2004, the medians were way lower. The top of the scoring range wasn't bubbled up the way it is now. And back then, the system was growing. You had schools climbing toward that 2010 peak, adding seats every single year. So today, you technically have fewer people applying than in 2004. That's true. But today, the bar is higher. We've got a top end stuffed with high scorers and a system that shrank by nearly a fifth and never really came back. So today, technically fewer applicants, but fewer seats available than before, and the medians have risen. And so if you're walking in with any given LSAT score, it's harder than it ever has been to get in with it, hardest cycle ever. And so the question everybody's asking you is, will it get better? What's going to happen next cycle? And my honest read is that it's not going to get significantly easier. I don't think it'll get worse. If anything, maybe it'll be at least as competitive, maybe slightly less. According to that survey of admissions officers, 90% expect the cycle to be at least competitive as the last cycle. And so the early numbers back them up. If you look at the number of people taking the LSAT right now, it's not going down. So that is a leading indicator of applicant numbers because, of course, you take the LSAT before you apply to law school. And so what do you do? As a law school, the trick is you keep your class seats tight. If you do that, your medians are going to go up because you could be more selective. And so the smartest move for a law school is to stay small on purpose and then turn away qualified people even when demand is pounding at the door. So the squeeze, the limitation of seats is a strategy for law schools to keep their medians up. Why would they do that? Because it will help them maintain and raise their standing in the US News rankings. If they open up seats, if they're less selective, they can technically make more tuition money in the short term, but they're going to reduce their medians as a result if they're less selective, and they're going to drop in the rankings, which will then harm their ability to get applicants in future years. And so if a law school can afford to be selective, if they can afford to turn away some tuition dollars, they can maintain their selectivity and maintain their rankings. That's the game they're playing here. And of course, if things continue to be politically heated, you won't see a decline in applicants and law schools will still be able to maintain their selectivity given the large number of people applying with high scores. So my prediction is next cycle will be maybe slightly easier, if anything, but not significantly easier. The next one will also still be hard because politics and the economy determine interest in law school. And things are not declining in terms of political engagement. The economy is not getting better anytime soon, as I can see it anyway. And so when the entry-level job market is not great, when AI is impacting things, when politics is still pretty heated, more people go to law school, all reasons for that. Now, of course, regardless of what happens here, your move remains the same. Get the highest LSAT score you possibly can given the rising LSAT medians, given the selectivity. If you can apply with a better LSAT score, you're going to get into better law schools, you're going to get more scholarship money. And if you want my help getting that LSAT score up, I'm happy to help you out. I'm offering free LSAT tutoring lessons for everybody watching this now or later. The link to book that free tutoring lesson with me personally is unpluggedprep.com. The link is below the video on YouTube, pinned in the chat on YouTube, in my bio on TikTok and IG as well.