Data

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Blog Posts

December 19, 2022
New Law School Data as of December 2022 ABA 509 Disclosures

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.

November 10, 2022
2022-2023 Application Cycle Update as of November 10th

We're a couple months into the application cycle and by this point we likely have around 25% of final applicant volume. To date there is an 8.5% decline in applicants compared to 2021-2022, and a 6.2% decline in applicants compared to 2020-2021. So we are down notably from the past two cycles, be we're still up quite a bit compared to the pre-COVID years. - LSAT Applicant Volume The ABA may be considering [https:/

October 24, 2022
Law School Application Volume Data Report (Oct. 24, 2022)

As of this time last cycle, 19% of applications had been submitted. Applicants are down 10.9% from last year, and applications are down 13.9%.

October 17, 2022
Law School Application Volume Data Report (Oct. 17, 2022)

As of October 16, 2022, current-cycle law school applicants are down 11.7% relative to the number of applicants who had applied by this date last cycle. The number of applications is down 16.2% vs. last year.

October 10, 2022
Law School Application Volume Data Report (Oct. 10, 2022)

As of October 10, 2022, both law school applicant and application numbers are down significantly, though there's a big asterisk to these numbers.

October 6, 2022
All the Entering Class of 2022 Data We Have So Far

This fall, as we always do, we have been aggregating preliminary data for the new entering class: LSAT/GPA medians, class sizes, and acceptance rates. Here's the early data.

August 1, 2022
The End of the 2021-2022 Law School Admissions Cycle: Data & Takeaways

As the 2021-2022 law school admissions cycle comes to a close, we looked into the data (which is interesting!) and wanted to share our thoughts on the cycle as a whole.

May 2, 2022
2021-2022 Applicant Volume Data as of May 1 vs. 2017-2021

As of May 1, applicants are down 11.6% from last year, up 6.1% from 2019-2020, up 1.6% from 2018-2019, and up 4.1% from 2017-2018.

March 11, 2022
Brief Application Cycle Update

There has been some chatter lately about the 2021-2022 application cycle, so we thought we'd provide a brief update.

Podcasts

April 13, 2021
Advice & Tips for Law School Scholarship Negotiation

In this podcast, Mike Spivey explains how the scholarship negotiation process works from the law school's perspective and gives some advice and tips for how to strategically approach increasing your merit aid offers.

You can listen to this podcast below, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Podcasts, or RadioPublic.

You may also notice our new name and new look — thanks to u/lightningmcboops from r/lawschooladmissions for the name suggestion, and thank you all for listening to the first official episode of the Status Check with Spivey!

May 16, 2021
Interview with Dr. Gabor Maté, Author of “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”

In this podcast, Mike Spivey speaks with Dr. Gabor Maté, one of the world’s leading experts on physical and mental health and author of four best-selling books including "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" and "When the Body Says No." Dr. Maté shares his thoughts and advice on self-doubt, stress, anxiety, and addiction, and offers the following insight for prospective law students (among others):

"You're going to look at all your confident classmates, and you're going to go in there with all manner of self-doubt. You're making the big mistake of comparing their outside with your inside. You have no idea what their inside is like. And believe me, you're not the only one."

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

April 28, 2021
Cycle Recap, No Rejections in the Hardest Admissions Cycle Ever

In this episode of the Status Check podcast, Mike interviews Reddit user lightningmcboops (who for the purposes of this podcast we're calling "Megan") from the law school admissions subreddit. Megan applied with a 3.9x GPA and a 172 LSAT and received zero rejections despite applying in the most difficult law school admissions cycle we've ever seen, including straight admits from the majority of the T14, including Stanford. Mike and Megan walk through her application process and each of her application components, then discuss some takeaways and advice for future applicants.

You can listen to this podcast below, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Podcasts, or RadioPublic.

June 8, 2021
Interview with Dr. Kristin Neff on How Self-Compassion Can Help You Achieve Your Goals

In this podcast, Mike Spivey has the opportunity to interview Dr. Kristin Neff, a leading researcher and advocate in the field of self-compassion, creator of the self-compassion scales, and author of two books, "Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself," and her upcoming book, "Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive," which will be released on June 15, 2021.

Mike and Dr. Neff discuss the power of self-compassion for motivation and achievement, and the research showing that, in a testing scenario, a boost to self-compassion proves a stronger motivator than a boost to self-esteem (and a far stronger motivator than self-criticism).

"There's so much pressure to achieve, to prove yourself," Dr. Neff says. "And I think people fall into the illusion of thinking, 'I need to be hard on myself, I need to drive myself so that I can get ahead in life,' where in fact, what the research shows is you're more likely to get ahead if you support yourself."

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

May 29, 2021
How Might Over-Enrollment Impact Waitlist Movement?

A very brief podcast on law schools that are over-committed on their seat deposits, and Mike's thoughts on how waitlist movement might go this summer as a result.

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