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The ABA just released law schools' required 509 disclosure documents for 2022, which means that we now have the complete, final, official admissions data from the 2021-2022 admissions cycle. The most interesting thing we have gleaned thus far is in the graph below—COVID-era GPA inflation is indeed real.
Some other interesting tidbits:
- 59 law schools increased both their median LSAT AND median GPA
- 142 schools increased their median GPA
- 75 schools increased their median LSAT
This year/admissions cycle should be different. (1) We expect around a 1-5% decrease in applicants, thus making things on the applicant-pool side a bit less competitive. (2) There is no way law schools, in aggregate, can keep decreasing class size. Maybe a few will, but revenue for almost all law schools is a function of tuition and enrollment. Faculty and staff have to be paid, electricity, etc. Add in the possibility of a diminishment in U.S. News (often you decrease a class size to hit target LSAT/GPA etc. numbers for U.S. News purposes), and that class size number should go up, in a smaller pool. That is a beautiful 1-2 punch if you are an applicant, and not as much if you are a dean of admissions. So we'd expect this cycle to be slow but less competitive, although the GPA inflation may very well keep GPA medians up.
