The Coming Law School Admissions Cycle — Brief ...

In this podcast, Mike provides a brief recap of the historic last cycle (2020–2021) as well as the short version of our best predictions for what's to come this cycle (2021–2022). If you'd like a longer and more in-depth discussion of these topics, please listen to our full podcast on these topics, "Recapping the 2020-2021 Law School Admissions Cycle & Predicting the Upcoming Cycle" (featuring Spivey Consulting's data wonk Justin Kane and PowerScore CEO Dave Killoran).

You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.

Hi. It is Wednesday, August 18th, and this is Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, admissions. We’re particularly going to focus on admissions in this podcast. I’m going to try and keep it brief, six to ten minutes, and do a general overview of the cycle to come. But, of course, we can’t talk about this coming cycle without talking about last year’s historic cycle.

[00:37] So, what happened last year is, of course, we had COVID, and LSAC, the organization that administers LSAT had to, in an incredibly short amount of time, and kudos to them, it was amazing to watch. Taken historically in-person tests and moving online so that you could take it in your bedroom, living room, wherever. So, that happened and it was miraculous to watch. But, whenever you see amazing things happen in short amount of times, there’s historic precedent for this, there are second generational problems. So, the second generational problems with taking a five section, in-person test and turning it into a three section, online test, was that there were a lot of vectors that went into different test-taking ability that LSAC didn’t account for when they gave a curve. Each test has a curve. It’s negative nine, which means you can get nine wrong to get a 170. Or negative twelve, or negative thirteen. So, the curve, by our estimation in the data experts that I surround myself with was too loose. And it’s not just by anyone’s estimation. You can see that the curve changed. Particularly, at 165 and above. But particularly, particularly from 170 to 180. From 175 to 180, LSAT scores were up 103%. They’re up 57% from 170 to 174. So, you have this massive spike at the top that no one was able, pre-cycle, to account for. I mean, not us, not LSAC, not law schools.

[02:24] So what happened? Law schools generally base admit patterns on historic data. So, they were chugging away, admitting away (most law schools, not all) and all the sudden their classes filled up very early with high scores. We’ll get back to that because that caused over enrollment even at some of the highest ranked schools that hardly ever have faced over enrollment before. And that’s going to impact this cycle. Applications last cycle were up, I believe, 12.6% so that also created to a more difficult cycle. But basically, last year what you saw was a seller’s market. Schools did incredibly well, and you’re starting to see that. And it’s going to get worse. We work with a number of schools and we talk to a number of schools. And, you know, I’m bound by confidentiality. But when more and more of these medians come out, you’re going to see plus two, plus three. You’ll see, I believe, some plus threes in the top twenty which is just unheard of. So last cycle was a once in a lifetime difficult cycle. I hope once in a lifetime.

[03:32] Let’s talk about this cycle. So, you have those overenrolled schools and what a lot of them did, and bears noting, is they offered scholarship incentives to decrease the class size and defer people to this cycle. So, generally every cycle you have some deferrals. But this cycle, you’re going to have, let’s say a school normally starts off the cycle with ten deferrals. They’re ten yards ahead on the track. They may have thirty or forty deferrals this cycle. So now they’re going to be forty yards ahead on the track and the race hasn’t even started yet. That’s not good news, obviously. But I’ll get to the good news. The other piece of bad news is, I posted on our Twitter account. I did a week of free phone calls. The number of people I talked to with 165s and above or 170 and above who were 0 for 8, or 0 for 12, or 1 for 14, that was essentially my entire week. Well, what are those people going to do? They’re going to reapply this cycle. So, early on this cycle, you have the schools with the larger number of deferrals and you have a lot of strong reapplicants. Or people who took the LSAT FLEX last cycle and scored better because people who took the LSAT FLEX scored better in general. Not every single person, but in general, they scored better. So, early on, schools are going to try and maintain these strong medians that are coming in. And you’re going to see a slow pattern of that. Slow pattern because schools are hurt last year that admitted too early, so they’re going to pump the breaks. So slowly and mindfully they’re going to admit people with strong numbers.

[05:11] Here comes the good news. And this happens every year. Every year schools gun for high LSAT scores early and then sort of start losing some of that battle. Last year it didn’t happen because even if they lost high LSAT scores, they had other high LSAT scores to replace them with. So, this year, come around February, March, April, May, June, July, August, if you’re an applicant and you have a 172 and you apply to twelve schools, in that month bandwidth I told you about, you’re going to have to tell eleven schools “no.” And now multiply that by 5,000 other people in the 170 to 180 range or whatever. 3,000 other people telling eleven schools “no”. So those schools have to start going to other people to admit. Well, again, last cycle they had other people in this stable of high scores to admit but I don’t see that happening this cycle because I think that LSAC, a learning organization, is going to start accounting for the vectors of taking a test at home versus in person. The test questions were no less rigorous and that’s LSAC’s amazing ability to put together very consistent test questions was almost their crux last cycle because they just factored in that it’s the same caliber of tests. And I think this cycle, they’re going to be factoring in more study time, less anxiety, state dependent learning. All of those psychometric, psychological factors that led to the LSAT FLEX test takers in general scoring better. I’ve seen the scaling data. I can’t talk about it, but they scored better. I think LSAC is going to control for that and tighten up the curve. So, later this cycle, we’ll call it past January, schools will start losing people. And then they’ll really start losing people come seat deposit deadlines. That’s when you see them shifting targets from where their current medians are, which is again daunting, I get that. I think they’re going to have to shift down one, two and in some cases three LSAT points to new, lower LSAT points because they’re going to run out of numbers. To be determined because they can also decrease class sizes. Obviously if your class size is 200, and your dean says, “Okay, well we can make it 100,” it’s a lot easier to bring in high numbers. But I don’t think many schools will have the ability to do that financially. They need the revenue. So, I think if they maintain class sizes around normal levels, the LSAT medians and maybe to a slightly lesser extent, GPA medians, but mostly LSAT medians, are going to come down a point or two from what you’re seeing posted online. On our blog, we are posting these scores online. So, it’s going to be a slow cycle, don’t get me wrong. But this cycle is going to favor those who proactively, professionally wait. And what I mean by that is, if you’re waitlisted at a school, or if you applied in September and it’s February and you haven’t heard from a school, you are so far from dead in the water. In fact, you might be in a great way once these numbers start coming down.

[08:29] I hope this was helpful. We’ll do many more of these, so feel free to subscribe. I think there’s a button on our YouTube channel. This was Mike Spivey of the Spivey Consulting Group.

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Admissions

Employment

November 11, 2025

GW Law Dean Dayna Matthew on Law School Admissions, Employment, & the Future of Legal Education

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Dayna Bowen Matthew, Dean of the George Washington University Law School, where she has led the law school since 2020. Prior to her time at GW, she was a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, the University of Colorado Law School, and the University of Kentucky College of Law, and she has served as a Senior Advisor to the Office of Civil Rights of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She is a graduate of Harvard University (AB), the University of Virginia School of Law (JD), and the University of Colorado (PhD).

Mike and Dean Matthew discuss the increase in law school applicants this cycle (7:42 and 18:11), advice for applying during a competitive cycle (12:16), how the large firm hiring process in law school has changed into something that "bears no resemblance" to how it worked for decades (5:11), how the public interest and government hiring process has changed as well (6:27), how AI could impact legal employment in the future (24:10), why she chose the law school where she attended (2:33), what she would do differently if she were applying today (3:36), how to assess law schools' varying "personalities" (13:22), the fungibility of a JD (16:45), advice for law students (18:53), and what it's like being a law school dean in 2025 (28:53).

You can read more about Dean Matthew here.

We discussed two additional podcast interviews in this episode:

Note: Due to an unexpected technical issue during recording, Mike's audio quality decreases from 7:35 onward. Apologies for any difficulties this may cause, and please note that we have a full transcript of the episode below.

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠. You can read a full transcript with timestamps below.

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Correction: Dean Matthew's family reminded her that she actually applied to three law schools rather than two, including Harvard Law, where she received a denial.

As Emmy-winning news anchor Elizabeth Vargas stated in one of our recent episodes, "There is nobody out there who is at the top of their field, in any field, who has not been told 'no.'"

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Scholarships

October 28, 2025

Financial Aid & Student Loans After the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with Sydney Montgomery & Kristin Shea

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Spivey consultant and former admissions dean Nikki Laubenstein discusses the financial aid and student loan considerations that prospective law students should be thinking about post-“Big Beautiful Bill,” joined by Sydney Montgomery, who is the Executive Director & Founder of Barrier Breakers, and Kristin Shea, who has led the law school financial aid office at Syracuse University for almost a decade as a part of a 20-year career in legal education.

Nikki, Sydney, and Kristen talk about the changes to student loans and student loan caps resulting from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (9:53), the changes to repayment plans (36:08), who those changes apply to (5:31), the differences between undergraduate financial aid/scholarships and law school financial aid/scholarships (21:02), understanding tuition vs. total cost of attendance and how that relates to scholarship reconsideration and student loan caps (24:27), possible ways schools could help fill the gap especially for students targeting public interest jobs (38:31), advice for those planning to work while in law school (41:10), why prospective law students should start thinking about financial aid earlier on in the admissions process than most do (30:57), and more.

Barrier Breakers is a nonprofit that has worked with 7,000+ first-generation and other marginalized students on the college and law school application process. Sydney Montgomery, the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant mother and military parents, was the first person from her high school to go to Princeton University and then later Harvard Law School. She has dedicated her life and career to supporting first-generation students and has a particular passion for financial aid. She is a member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council and has been featured in Inc., Forbes, FastCompany, Medium, CNBC, and others.

Kristin Shea is a higher education professional with twenty years of experience, including law school enrollment management, recruitment, and financial aid; alumni, donor, and employer relations; and marketing and communications. The last decade of her career has been dedicated to financial aid, and she is passionate about helping law students make smart, thoughtful financial plans for their education. She holds a bachelor's degree in biology and psychology and an MBA from Le Moyne College.

We hope to do a follow-up episode in the spring with more information on how law schools are addressing these changes. We also encourage you to reach out to the financial aid offices of schools you're considering once admitted to learn about any programs they may offer and any assistance they can provide. As Kristin says in this episode, "The map may have some alternative directions, but you can still reach your destination, and there are many people who want to help." We have also linked a number of financial aid resources below.

Financial Aid & Student Loan Resources

Federal Student Aid:

AccessLex Institute Resources:

Student Loan Calculator | AccessLex
Student Aid Policy and Action Center | AccessLex
Paying for Law School | AccessLex
Guide to Private Student Loans | AccessLex
Scholarship Databank | AccessLex – includes more than 800 law scholarship and writing competitions (totaling more than $3M).

Free Credit Report:
Annual Credit Report.com - Home Page

Equal Justice Works – LRAP FAQ
Important Questions to Ask About Any LRAP - Equal Justice Works

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You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠. You can read a full transcript with timestamps below.

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Well-Being

Motivation

October 14, 2025

Emmy-Winning News Anchor Elizabeth Vargas on Overcoming Professional Setbacks and Anxiety

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews Elizabeth Vargas, journalist and television news anchor, on her journey to learning how to cope healthily with lifelong anxiety and panic attacks, on overcoming professional setbacks, and on advice for young people facing the stresses of the LSAT, law school admissions, law school, and finding legal employment.

Elizabeth Vargas anchors “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” (weeknights, 7 p.m. ET), an hour-long weekday news program that debuted April 3, 2023 on NewsNation. Vargas has traveled the world covering breaking news stories, reporting in-depth investigations, and conducting newsmaker interviews. She previously hosted the hit newsmagazine show “20/20” on ABC for 15 years, served as Co-Anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, and was a news anchor and frequent host of “Good Morning America.” She also hosted A&E Investigates, a series of documentaries that still air on Hulu.

In 2016, Vargas released her memoir, Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction, which spent several weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won numerous awards. Vargas is a member of the board of directors for the non-profit Partnership to End Addiction and hosts “Heart of the Matter,” a podcast focused on addiction, recovery, and the stigma so many face in their effort to heal.

Vargas mentions and recommends writer Mary Karr's books, The Liars' Club and Lit, in this episode.

Mike also discusses our interview with Justin Ishbia, who was the last person admitted to Vanderbilt Law from the waitlist when he applied and now owns the Phoenix Suns.

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠. You can read a full transcript with timestamps below.

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The Coming Law School Admissions Cycle: Brief Thoughts

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The Coming Law School Admissions Cycle: Brief Thoughts

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