Will Law Schools Be Able to Maintain Their Medi...

In this episode, Mike predicts whether law schools will be able to maintain their high medians from last year, and how we expect that to play out across the course of the cycle. He also discusses how this will impact splitters and reverse splitters.

You can find the spreadsheet Mike mentions in this podcast with schools' medians from the 2020-2021 cycle here.

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

Welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school — today, we're going to focus entirely on law school admissions in this current 2021-2022 cycle, based on a question from Reddit. My favorite question was, “I would like a prediction on my exact admissions results and decision dates from every school.” Someone else wanted the same thing, but for them, but since those weren't the most upvoted, I'm going to go to the most upvoted question, which was, “Splitters — are class size is going to shrink this year to retain medians? How ambitious are T14 LSAT targets this cycle, given the data?”

Well, I have a good sense for how ambitious schools are, but it's not so much based on the current data, but just knowing people and knowing the thought processes of these. I'll also talk about reverse splitters.

So let's first talk about the cycle. As of yesterday, 11/9/2021, applications are up 2.7% versus the previous cycle. That's going to come down. By the end of this cycle, that's going to be a negative number, I would bet — I mean, obviously I don't know for a fact, but I would bet a lot of money that this cycle will be down in number of applications.

But what I think people are really clicking on is when you look at the bandwidths. The bandwidth, already, 175 to 180 is down 21.5% per LSAC. Spivey Consulting calculates these a little differently, and I'm not going to go into the nuances, but at this point it's very similar. The bandwidth 170 to 174 is down 4.4%, 165 to 169 down 2.6%. And you even see 160 to 164, it's only up 3%. These have all been dropping since the start of the cycle.

The reason why I all but know that 2.7% increase in applicants is going to turn into a negative is because this was a very front-loaded cycle. A lot of people who didn't get the results in last cycle, the hardest, most difficult cycle in the history of law school admissions, reapplied this cycle. A lot of people who were going to apply last cycle who were a little bit later in the process said, “Wow, this thing is looking like a disaster. We're going to wait it out.” So there were a lot of applications at the front end, yet we're still down 165 to 180 in those LSAT bandwidths.

Okay, I'm going to slow down for a second. What does this all mean for all of you all? Let me first touch on the splitter side of the equation. Last year not only was historic in respect to the number of people applying — which wasn't a historic, actually, that was not a historic high, but it was historic in respect to the distribution of the LSAT at the top — what that also produced very predictably was the historic returns for law schools. So you can see on our spreadsheet, if you go to our blog, Spivey Consulting Blog. If you go through our several pages, we have linked a spreadsheet to the school-reported medians. These will be double checked and verified when 509s come out in a month. But just about every school is either up or flat. I think there's only one school which is down.

So the range, which incidentally I predicted so this sounds immodest, but I'm a little bit happy right now. The range was -1 to +4, which I think this summer I predicted on a podcast, but what I couldn't have predicted is there's only one -1, and there's not that many zeros in most schools. So, you know, I would have been wrong if someone had started asking me follow-up questions. Most schools are a +1/+2, and there's a number of schools +3/+4, which you never really see. There's two schools in the top 20 that are +3 LSAT, which you know, again, is just unprecedented, once in a lifetime, I would guess, once in my lifetime. You all are going to live a lot longer, you might see it one more time.

So I think people are asking the right question, and I think people on Reddit are smart. What I think people were wondering is, “Okay, these schools went up to 174 median LSAT, or they went up from 169 to 172, 173 or whatever, aren't they going to want to keep those?” This is where things get a little bit nuanced. From a psychological perspective the answer is yes, of course. If you're a Dean of Admission or a Dean of a law school and all of a sudden you had a 169 LSAT and you have a 172 LSAT, of course, you're going to want to keep that. It looks good. It looks like improvement. Improvement for your school gets alumni with giving potential excited. It moves you up in the rankings, and when you move in the rankings, things just get a little bit easier. I mean, I hate to say it like that, but it's true. It's still difficult running a law school. It's just easier when you're moving up versus moving back. So yes, they're going to want to keep their medians.

So then the question becomes, “Okay, well, Spivey, okay, we get it. They want to. Can they?” The only way they're going to be able to keep them is if they by and large reduce class sizes. There will not be the raw numbers at the top end to keep these one-cycle changes unless they reduce class sizes.

So then the question becomes, can they reduce class sizes? I would argue that a number of schools in the top 30 to 50 might have another year or two of redline budget revenue versus expenses, keeping in mind that almost every law school dean came from the academic world. They're not business people, they don't have shareholders. And lots of deans of law schools over my 22 years are comfortable with coming in in the red, not in the black, in terms of finances.

What's going to happen in a few years — this won't relate to anyone listening to this, unless you're oddly listening to this three years from now, which means you must be a huge fan of wonky data — three or four years from now, all of this is going to change because of the demographic cliff and a number of colleges going under and a number of colleges with law school severely struggling financially. But I don't think that will psychologically impact law schools this year that much.

So, yes, I think that schools — again, that have money to spend, that aren’t entirely tuition-driven and can afford to be in the red with their provost and their chancellor or president — I think they're going to reduce class sizes. And what's going to be interesting to follow out, I can't give anyone an answer here, but what's going to be fascinating to follow is, does that ability to reduce class sizes stay in symmetry with these falling LSAT numbers at the top? And my best guess, and here's the best news of this entire mealy-mouthed podcast, is “no.” The LSAT scores are going to fall more so than the ability of schools to reduce class sizes. By and large. Not every school. And again, I can't speak to individual schools. I wish I could, but I can't.

So by and large, I don't think schools will be able to reduce class sizes enough to maintain their substantial LSAT median gains from last cycle. There's also an incredibly nuanced part to all of this, which is LSAT medians, even though they're ranked a little bit higher in U.S. News & World Report percentages metrics than GPA, they have diminishing returns unlike GPA. The higher up you get in the LSAT for your median, the less it contributes to your overall raw score.

Last year, I think around a 171, 172, you almost had no returns for LSAT scores getting higher. You saw some schools figure this out. They put a hard stop on the LSAT around a 170, 171 and they jacked up their GPA to a 3.9 or 3.93 even. That's a school that's figured out, like we have, the regression model, has reverse engineered the U.S. News & World Report regression model. And those that they're getting more bang for their buck at that level with the GPA. That's really nuanced because I don't think — we wouldn't have a whole consulting program for law schools if they all knew that. And even the schools that do know that, there's so much pressure from the external world — applicants, faculty, alums… when you go to conferences or you meet with alums no one asks you what your median GPA is, they always say, “What's the new median LSAT?”

So schools are going to try to keep median LSATs. I think by and large most won't be able to, even if they reduce class sizes. So you'll see things like 174s drop to 173s. It's going to take a little bit more time, and early on, I think schools are going to be targeting these 173s or 174s.

I think schools have probably already figured out they're not going to go higher than last year. So I think any target medians for the vast majority of schools that were above last year’s medians, you can take off the table. I think when you look at our spreadsheet or you look at it in December after the 509s come out, I think what's going to happen is around December, January, February, most schools won't even be able to keep their current gains, even with class size reductions. And now I feel like I'm a broken record because I think I've said this six or seven times. So they're going to pivot.

So what's going to happen with this pivot? More people with an LSAT point one below what they had been targeting, probably what they had last year, is going to become very attractive. So to answer the direct question — right now, high LSAT scores should be very attractive to schools because they haven't pivoted yet. I think around December, January, February, most schools will pivot, and a point lower LSAT than the school's current median is going to become very attractive. And then also all these GPAs, they're probably having really slow cycles at most schools, so now we're talking reverse splitters are going to become much more attractive too. February, March, April are going to be the months of happy GPA, people with high GPAs, reverse splitters.

I think November, December are going to be slow months, quite frankly. Obviously, there are people out there with really high GPAs and really high LSATs. So it won't feel slow to those people. But for reverse splitters and splitters, I think this is generally going to be a slow period. We're going to have to wait. We have a great podcast with Dr. Guy Winch, whose TED Talk had 25 million views, about waiting. So you can find that on our podcast. If this is helpful, you can subscribe to our podcasts of course. I think there's like a button to click. Because we're going to revisit this, and then we're going to revisit this when I think everything starts changing, which is going to be mid-December to after the holiday break. That's when I think schools pivot, that's when I think the focus is not so scrutinizingly about LSATs, and then later in the cycle, I think there's going to be a lot of happy high GPA people.

I do want to bring up one negative, which is as follows. If a school wants to keep their median LSAT from last year or just lose one point, which is the more likely scenario, this actually makes the summer a more difficult summer to get off the waitlist if you're two points below that LSAT. You still can. But last summer was interesting because schools were so locked in with their high LSAT scores, that late in the summer they were able to take people off the waitlist who they just loved their applications, and we saw that time and time again. As long as they weren't oversubscribed — which was, to be frank, a decent number of schools — schools that needed people off the waitlist had a lot of liberty to take people who they just really liked. And we have so many blogs and podcasts on how to do your application to be really likable.

I think you're going to see a little bit less of that this summer, because I don't think schools are going to want to lose more than one median LSAT point that they gained last year. They gained two or three. They're only going to want to lose one. So there's always going to be waitlist movement every cycle, including last cycle.

I think that the waitlist movement is going to be a little bit buffered by what people were asking, and I'll end on this note, people were asking, “Are schools going to be even more compelled to look at LSAT scores?” The answer is yes. That also leads to the notion of you can apply late with a strong LSAT score. I know some firm posted a blog and did a podcast and this hit Reddit and they said, “If you don't apply in September, it's not worth applying.” That is categorically, I can't stress this enough, harmful advice. Applying in December or November with a strong LSAT score will have no different — and GPA — impact on your admit/deny decision or your merit aid decision than applying only in September. But it would, if you waited and listened to that advice, it would dramatically impact your starting salary of 150,000 or whatever, if you go to big law, 190,000 — I'm talking about the time value of money. It could very dramatically impact your psychological wellbeing. So please be very wary of online advice. Be wary about it for me! Triangulate, if I'm saying something. Listen to what Deans of Admissions are saying, but they say things wrong too or they have their own spins, understandably. So just because a Dean of Admission says, “We weigh GRE the same as LSAT,” it doesn't mean they actually do. So please, please try to triangulate every piece of advice people say online. I just see it hurting people over every cycle, and it really almost like, pains me to see people getting hurt with bad advice. I hope this podcast was good advice. I hope it answered the question. We'll do more. We'll do more of the questions in that Reddit thread.

I like very much hearing what people are curious or anxious about. I think we'll do another one on interviewing, or we might have some Dean of Admissions ask me like the most difficult admissions questions, interview questions they can and do a mock interview. So more coming. I hope this was helpful. This was Mike Spivey with 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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Will Law Schools Be Able to Maintain Their Medians This Cycle?

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