With June quickly wrapping up and temporary fireworks stores springing up like dandelions across swaths of America,

law school admissions officers continue to enjoy their slow part of the year (some waitlist activity, some transfer activity, some prep work for the coming year) while waiting for the real work to pick up shortly. How “shortly” do we mean? Well, the June LSAT results come back on Wednesday and schools are due to submit their applications to LSAC for debugging and uploading in the next few weeks (more on that below). The wheels are certainly beginning to turn. So as our AdComm friends get things in motion, let’s take a look at the headlines from around the world of law school admission.

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National LSAT Figures

We have some “quiet before the storm” action this week on LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report:

In regard to the June LSAT, LSAC will begin posting results on Wednesday the 25th. What we’ll keep an eye on in next week’s blog post will be not only the number of test takers but also the percentage of first-time test takers. If it’s at or above the usual 55% mark, then we’ll know that these are “fresh” test takers who are looking ahead to the 2025–2026 admissions cycle, rather than applicants from this past cycle who are trying to boost their odds of admission from the waitlist with one last exam.

We’re also keeping our eye on the August test. The registration deadline is June 26th. Registrations have increased by about 4,500 (or 24%) in the past week. But that has also just nudged us over last year’s final registration figure. We’re going to have to see a significant wave of last-minute registrants to assure us that the August 2025 exam will have more test takers than the August 2024 version.

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This Week in The Shifting Landscape of Higher Education

It’s been a few weeks since we last checked in on this recurring feature. But we had breaking news this week that’s a real “monkey’s paw” situation.

On the one hand, the State Department announced last week that it would resume processing visa applications for international students. That’s a clear “YAY!”

But there’s a catch….

As noted in the linked NPR article, all applicants need to set their social media profiles to “public” so that the State Department can monitor those feeds as part of their vetting process. And that’s an “Oof….”

Putting aside the rationale for screening social media, the mere act of doing so for each and every visa applicant will add another administrative hurdle to the process for international law students. It’s unlikely that this will make the visa process any quicker.

As such, our advice for our international audience is to be patient and—if possible—give yourself plenty of time for this process. Additionally, reviewing and scrubbing your social media profiles would be prudent.

In related news, a U.S. District Judge issued an injunction against the Trump administration’s plans to prevent foreign nationals from enrolling at Harvard for the coming year. This will be welcome news for any incoming law students who were concerned that they may have to postpone their enrollment plans by a year.

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Application Instruction Updates

Tis the season for building apps!

In order to have applications ready for publication on their website beginning September 1st, LSAC requires law schools to submit their applications by the end of June. Once schools submit their apps, we may begin to see a few update their websites with new application instructions. As per usual, Michigan Law is one of the first out the door! There are two things that stand out when reviewing their updated prompts:

• Stability. For the most part, Michigan’s prompts have remained unchanged from last year. There has been some debate and discussion in AdComm professional circles regarding whether or not to change prompts—especially for diversity statements—in light of the current administration’s views of DEI measures. In the case of Michigan Law, they have not changed any of their supplemental prompts that may be construed as diversity statements. This is good news for applicants as they use the summer to prepare their application materials—you can start to feel comfortable that prompts won’t change radically.
• AI. Michigan Law has had warnings in past applications about using generative AI to produce written materials. They have gone a little further out of their way to clarify their policy this year that “applicants are not to use ChatGPT or other generative artificial intelligence tools as part of their drafting process.” But there is one exception—they have created a new supplemental prompt and have specifically asked applicants to use generative AI when answering it: “TO BE ANSWERED USING GENERATIVE AI: How much do you use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT right now? What’s your prediction for how much you will use them by the time you graduate from law school? Why?” While we still believe that answering prompts for Essay One (“Why Michigan Law”) or one of the diversity statement prompts is likely to provide greater depth and understanding of an applicant’s background and fit at the school, we encourage applicants “to thine own self be true” (which AI is reminding us was spoken by Polonius rather than Hamlet … so AI certainly has its uses). If you believe that this is the topic that would give the Michigan Law admissions team the greatest insight into who you are as a person and into your interest in law school, it could be an interesting road to venture down.

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7Sage Events

With the June LSAT results coming back, it’s a busy week at 7Sage HQ!

Our next Admissions AMA class is on the 25th wherein we’ll be happy to answer all your admissions questions! We will also have several “What Does My Score Mean?” sessions to help contextualize your LSAT within the rest of your law school application.

As a reminder that you can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.

The most recent episode of the 7Sage Admissions Podcast dropped last week and features a conversation with one of our 7Sage LSAT tutors about how to balance LSAT prep and your application process (spoiler—it is possible!). Our next episode is coming up on Monday and will be a recording of the June Deans’ Roundtable webinar. The podcasts are available on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!