What Triggers Admit Waves?

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike talks about the different factors that precipitate waves of law school admissions decisions being released, especially late in the cycle/during waitlist season.

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.

Welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. Today we're going to be talking on the admissions side about waves, a favorite topic for many. And particularly it's good for applicants to understand this, but what triggers waves. I could be missing something of course, but particularly later in the cycle, you stop seeing waves and you start seeing ripples, for lack of a better word. But when you're talking about waves, these big waves, these weeks where you see A after A after A, it's really under the auspices of sort of three areas. It would be the need of the school, so let me be clear, not financial need. It would be the applicant pool, the data in waves and early admits. And by early admits, I mean earlier in the cycle, including in January and February, are data driven.

And then let me double click on that point for a second, because I think people keep asking, how does rolling admissions work. Well, it doesn't work the way a lot of people think it works. It's not that most law schools admit based on when your application is date stamped complete, they sort by strength or need. And people have asked what could they possibly sort by other than LSAT and GPA. They could sort by diversity or gender or other variables too. But you're right, they're not reading your file and then sorting, which would be an ultimate waste of time on their end. They might as well read your file and admit you because you have a kick-ass application.

So I just wanted to sort of get off track a little bit and get rid of that misnomer and mythology. Basically waves come out, not always, but they come out more often than not as As, admits. And then later Ws, waitlist, and then later denials, Ds. I think what people are most interested in, understandably so, is what would trigger the admit waves, and we're going to see more coming.

So the first thing is the applicant pool itself and the dynamics, the atmospheric variables around the applicant pool. If it's a small pool and things are looking bleak and LSAT scores are looking down, then you might see way early waves because the school might say, “oh my god, this is going to be a down cycle. We better gobble up these people now in hopes of getting them to visit the school and matriculate.” Why didn't that happen this year? Well, to begin with, the applicant pool isn't down that much and it's not down very much at all if you started looking about three, four, five years ago. It is down relative to these two years of a huge spike, but it's down a tiny bit versus last year. But the LSAT scores 170 to 180 are not down, and class sizes are incredibly likely going to be smaller. You don't have this huge pressure on admissions officers even in a normal year to hurry with their admits.

Number two, this is the furthest from a normal year I've ever seen because of the U.S. News withdrawal. So U.S. News obviously is still going to rank schools, that's their profit center. But what they haven't said is they can't rank a lot of schools based on private data, because 26 schools and counting and growing have said they're not submitting their private data anymore. That's a good thing, by the way, for you all. It's – you want more transparent data. But they are going to rank on public data that goes through the ABA, also a good thing because that can be third party audited. Schools are much less likely to fudge the numbers if it goes through the ABA than if it goes straight to U.S. News & World Report. But we don't know, and by we, I mean no one on the planet knows how much they're going to weight the metrics, hence the slowness.

Hate me for saying this, but if you are a Dean of Admission, you would probably think the same way I'm thinking. You can see a scenario where your job is dependent on bringing in strong classes and you don't know what a strong class is anymore because you don't – the LSAT could be 0% weight or it could go up to 12.5% weight. I've seen, and we've run many different simulations, I could do an entirely different podcast based on these simulations because I – well I'm not going to say them publicly. It would drive a lot of traffic to our website, but we're guessing just as much as anyone. What's fascinating about the simulations to me is we know the metrics, as much as we play with the different possible weights any given school doesn't bounce around that much.

So a school might drop from like 18 to 25 and I'm just making this up, but then when we start playing with the simulations, that 25, if we run it 10 times in 10 different weighted simulations, it might be a high of 20 and a low of 30. So there's not that much variation. I could go on about wonky admission stuff forever. Let me get back to the topic at hand.

So it's been slow for understandable reasons. The pool has made it a little bit slow. The incredible abrupt change this cycle and methodology has made it slow. But the nice thing about slow cycles is when you can get past the waiting, and we have a beautiful podcast with Dr. Guy Winch on how to handle the waiting.

When you get past the waiting, it's not a race. An admit is an admit. Waves are coming because they haven't come in these huge droves yet, and schools have to fill classes. You're not going to get paid as a Dean of Admission and Admissions Officer if you don't enroll people. So we know waves are coming and some of what triggers that again is the pool and what percentage of the pool you've admitted. If 55% of the pool has applied by today and only 20% have been rendered decisions, there's a lot of freaking decisions out there to be rendered and they're coming. So we know that, we don't know when. This is why I, I like to say on prediction posts, it seems likely based on past data and based on the applicant pool and based on how the cycle's going, that in the next two weeks we'll see a lot of waves. You never know the day, although I'll get into the psychology at the end and maybe some of you can figure out the day. You never know the day. But waves are coming because schools have been slow.

The other thing is need of that school. If that school is looking at their admit pool and they see that it's 60% male, 40% female, which incidentally would be the opposite. Back when I started 24 years ago in this, your age probably, it was the opposite. It was 60% male, 40% female. Now it's flipped. So let's say a school has admitted 60% female, 40% male, then you might see a wave triggered by need, or LSAT need, or GPA need. You have the need of the school, and that need literally may be that they're freaking out because last year they had made 1,000 admits by February, in this year they've only made 200. Why would I say 1000 admits when no law school enrolls 1000 people? The typical applicant is applying to seven, eight schools. They can only go to one. So I think this is where a lot of applicants don't understand the math of this.

For most schools, including most elite schools, unless you're sitting at the very top like Yale or Harvard or Stanford or Chicago or whomever, you're admitting like five, six, seven times as many people as you're actually matriculating because they're going to other schools for prestige purposes, job prospect purposes, merit aid purposes, etc. So schools, their yields beyond the very elite aren’t in their favor, so they have to admit more. Another reason why more waves are coming.

So you also see waves triggered around seat deposit deadlines. That's a great way for you to know when to send a letter of continued interest. Okay, seat deposit deadline is due, five days have passed, they probably didn't get as many deposits as they had admits. I in fact will all but guarantee that's never happened. No school has admitted 600 people and gotten 600 seat deposits by the first deadline. So that would trigger another wave. Keep those dates in mind. Seat deposits.

There's also the final element, which is the psychological effect. This is real. Keep in mind, and maybe it's hard as an applicant to do. I know like when I was in high school applying to colleges, I thought of admissions committees as these people with behind closed doors at this beautiful oak table with silver platters of coffee discussing my application. No, it's not like that. It's tired people, who are normal people, who do great jobs and sometimes make mistakes, who love their jobs some days and hate their jobs other days. Point being your typical Admissions Dean or Admissions Officer is no different than you or me.

And if they start seeing Harvard, if you're the Dean of Admission at a top 10, top 14 school and Harvard just made scores after scores of admits, you start getting nervous. It's just human nature. You start saying, “Where are all these people going to go? Am I going to lose all these people?” So the third variable of the triggers, waves are waves themselves. The psychological impact that waves have on other schools. So get excited when you see Yale or Stanfords are making admits. They always do it late because that's going to have other schools say, “Wow, we need to make admits too.”

So there is this domino ripple effect. So let me just summarize and underscore. There's the applicant pool, which this year is stagnant, not up, not down, a little bit in your disfavor from 170 to 180. Keeping in mind that class sizes should be smaller this year. But other than that, it's a very stable pool versus last year, other than the abrupt sort of U.S. News changes, which is why it’s been such a slow cycle. Schools don't call me and say, “hey Spivey, we need more blank LSAT scores.” But I do know the schools always have needs. We just don't know what they are. And then you have these more powerful than you realize psychological effects. So waves beget waves. I'll end that on almost like a weird biblical sounding note. I hope this was helpful sort of as just a very general macro-overlay of the land. This was Mike Spivey, of the Spivey Consulting Group.

Back to Podcasts

Latest Podcasts

LSAT

News

June 30, 2026

How the LSAT is About to Change Dramatically, with Ellen Cassidy & Graeme Blake

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike, joined by LSAT experts Graeme Blake and Ellen Cassidy, discusses the changes coming to the LSAT this August and the federal class-action lawsuit that LSAC is currently facing over CAS fees.

Graeme has been teaching the LSAT for over 15 years and is the founder of LSAT Hacks, and Ellen is the author of The Loophole in LSAT Logical Reasoning and founder of Elemental Prep.

The group discusses the specific changes that are being made to the LSAT starting with the August 2026 administration (2:09), whether the changes will result in fewer high scores and a leftward shifting of the LSAT score bell curve (8:26), what you should know about the changes being made to the LSAT test-taking interface (16:48), tips for individually customizing the new interface (25:01), the most difficult part of the modern LSAT (29:06), the questions of whether the Logical Reasoning section has gotten harder since the Logic Games section was removed (27:44) and whether the LSAT is getting harder in general (29:06), hopes for the future of the LSAT (31:52), and a discussion of the federal class-action lawsuit that LSAC is currently facing over CAS fees (38:04)—plus, the LSAT score threshold where you should probably stop retaking (14:30).

There have been two highly relevant updates since we recorded this episode:

First, the final changes to the new LSAT user interface were completed earlier this month. LSAC expects no further changes to be made this cycle.

Second, LSAC’s motion to dismiss the federal class-action lawsuit being brought against them in Risner v. Law School Admission Council, Inc. was denied, and the case will now move forward to discovery.

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

Listen

Admissions

Advice

June 16, 2026

Legal Education Access Pipeline (LEAP) Founder Cindy Lopez on Admissions, Mentorship, & Diversity

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Legal Education Access Pipeline (LEAP) Founder & CEO, Cindy Lopez, joins us for a conversation with Paula Gluzman, Spivey’s Director of Diversity & Inclusion and a J.D. Admissions Consultant. Cindy is a retired career Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, served as Board President of a college access nonprofit for underserved young women, and founded LEAP in 2019. Paula is a former admissions officer at UCLA Law and the University of Washington Law, a former attorney, former law school career services professional, and has been an integral advisor for LEAP since its inception.

Cindy and Paula discuss LEAP, what it offers, and how it originated (2:35); Cindy’s story from applying to law school without help to a career as a California Deputy Attorney General to founding LEAP (12:59); advice for how to find a mentor (17:13), Cindy’s top three tips for how to be a good mentee (19:37), and the one question Paula always tells people to ask their mentors (21:15); how Cindy has seen admissions change in the wake of the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard (22:42); the funding challenges that LEAP is facing under the new administration in a changing political climate (28:40); what gives Cindy hope in a time when diversity efforts in higher education are under attack (30:50); Cindy’s best advice for prospective law students today (35:00); and the importance of having fun and celebrating your wins (37:18).

You can find more information about LEAP, including eligibility criteria, application information, and volunteer opportunities, here.

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

Listen

Advice

Employment

Law School Preparation

June 2, 2026

Renowned Stanford Law Professor Orin Kerr: What Professors Are Really Thinking

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Orin Kerr, a prominent law professor and legal academic who currently serves as a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In his 25+ years as a law school faculty member, Professor Kerr has written 75+ law review articles, authored casebooks, and been cited in 4,500+ academic articles and 500+ judicial decisions, including several U.S. Supreme Court opinions. He has held tenured positions at Stanford Law, GW Law, USC Law, and UC Berkeley Law, and he has been a visiting professor at UChicago Law, Penn Law, and Yale Law.

In addition to his career in academia, Professor Kerr completed two clerkships, including a Supreme Court clerkship with Justice Anthony Kennedy, argued before the Supreme Court, and practiced law for a number of years, including as a trial attorney for the Department of Justice in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. He has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University, a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Professor Kerr discusses how law schools try to balance preparing students to be practice-ready with teaching how to think like a lawyer (5:49), what Professor Kerr sees as the “ideal” legal training (11:27), what professors actually think when someone messes up a cold call (37:58), how and when he knew he wanted to become a law professor (1:47), the “old way” and the “new way” that law schools hire faculty (3:41), advice for prospective law students who want to become law professors (12:32), the different types of law professors (12:51), every professor’s least favorite part of the job (23:12), the built-in advantages that some students enter law school already having (32:48), Professor Kerr’s most-read law review article (33:50), and more.

They also discuss a video that Professor Kerr recorded last year, “So You’re About To Start Law School: A Law Student’s Guide with Stanford Law Professor Orin Kerr.” You can watch that video for free on YouTube here.

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

Listen

Mike Spivey

Latest Podcasts

Have questions? Get in touch with us

About

For Prospective Students

For Schools

Follow Us

What Triggers Admit Waves?

Podcast Transcript

Mike Spivey

Latest Podcasts

Have questions? Get in touch with us

Stay Updated!

About

For Prospective Students

For Schools

Follow Us