As August approaches and law school admissions officers suffer through the latest episode of everyone’s least favorite summer special—“Heat Dome, 2025”—most of their attention is turning towards preparations for the upcoming admissions cycle. We’re starting to see subtle hints of that … like seeing “2025–2026” dates on admissions office websites rather than “2024–2025.”

Admittedly, sometimes the “signs of the season” are less drastic

and more subtle

and this is one of those times!

So with AdComms scrubbing their websites of out-of-date information, let’s take our usual lap around the headlines from the world of law school admission.

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This Week in The Shifting Landscape of Higher Education

We’re shuffling up the order of our regular features because this is where the news really went down this week.

The main headline from the week was that Columbia University and the U.S. government reached a settlement over the latter’s accusations of systemic antisemitism regarding the former. The main details are beyond the purview of a humble law school admissions blog—Columbia will not admit guilt, this restores access to “some” of the $1 billion in research grants that the government had frozen, etc. If one wants to read more about the reaction on the ground at Columbia, we highly recommend this article from the Columbia Spectator. But there are a few things of note from the admissions perspective if you read the actual settlement.

• Per Section III, Paragraph 5 on page 3, the agreement says that nothing in the document should be “construed as giving the United States authority to dictate … admissions decisions.” Which sounds like good news until one keeps reading….
• Because on Section IV, Paragraph 16 on page 8, the University has been ordered to use purely “merit-based admissions policies,” defined as not giving any preference for race in the admissions process, and to not use “personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination.”
• Section IV, Paragraph 18 on the same page notes that Columbia will provide a third-party Resolution Monitor with an annual data set that will show admitted and denied applicants broken down by race, GPA, and test scores.
• And rounding out matters, Section IV, Paragraph 21 on page 9 says that the University will review its policies towards international admission, including asking questions “designed to elicit their [i.e., international applicants’] reasons for wishing to study in the United States.”

So while the government may not have any “authority” to direct admissions decisions, the agreement certainly appears to be establishing a system that would be in line with the present administration’s views on DEI and affirmative action.

And meanwhile, there are rumblings that a similar agreement may be in the works with Harvard.

We’ll continue to monitor matters, including the real bellwether—seeing what changes Columbia Law makes to their application for the upcoming admissions cycle.

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National LSAT Figures

By comparison, this week’s check on LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report seems pretty low-key!

• With just one week to go before the August LSAT, the registration numbers for that month’s exam are holding relatively steady. The numbers were at 32.549 last week, so this week’s numbers represent a decline of 3.8%. That’s a very normal decline for the period just before the exam. Now, let’s see if we have a repeat of the June test where we had a normal “one week out” decline of 3.3% in registrations, and then 21.9% decline (oof!) the week of the test.
• We passed the registration deadline for the September LSAT, and we saw a normal “deadline spike” of 26% in registrations.

All signs continue to point towards another competitive admissions cycle!

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New Application Instructions Dropping!

OK, we’re selling that just a smidge.

As we approach the most common date for applications to open—September 1st—we’ll see more and more schools update their own websites with this year’s instructions. But some of the changes are so subtle that you’d be excused for missing them.

For example, Berkeley Law is usually one of the first schools to update their website with new instructions, and they’ve been hard at work again. But how can we tell? Because the LSAT section mentions that “LSAT scores are valid for five years. If you took the LSAT between September 2020 and January 2026 [emphasis added], then you are not required to take it again….” The “2026” is the dead giveaway.

And once we establish that these are the updated instructions for the coming year, we find that the changes are very minor. For instance, they’ve changed last year’s “required” video statement into an “optional interview.” And they have changed two of their Short Answer questions—this year’s newcomers are “Tell us about a moment where laughter helped build a bridge with someone” and “Describe a time when you had to put aside personal beliefs to stand up for fairness or justice.”

The changes to the Short Answer prompts appear to be the usual refresher that AdComms put in place for each year’s application. And the switch from a required to an optional video statement is probably due more to issues of “workflow” than “evaluation”—in a world where law school applications are up 20% versus the most recent years, it probably makes sense not to give your admissions officers more things to review and consider.

So what can you do with these insights? Before you begin work on any school-specific materials, be sure that you’re working off of this year’s instructions. Double-check for mentions of “2026” or “2025–2026.” Compare this year’s application instructions with last year’s instructions on our website. When in doubt, contact the admissions office to make sure you’re responding to the correct prompts. This is one of those times when a quick five-minute phone call may save you hours of brainstorming and drafting a document for naught!

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7Sage Events

Our next Admissions AMA class is on July 30th. As a reminder that you can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.

Looking ahead to next month—because it’s never too early!—Kamil Brown will host a class on preparing for law fairs and LSAC Forums on August 21st.

Our most recent law school admissions podcast dropped on Monday and features a conversation about JD/MBA admission. Who are the candidates who should pursue a dual degree? Does applying for a dual degree make you more competitive … less competitive … or do the admissions officers even notice that you’ve applied to both programs? For answers to all those questions—and more!—be sure to check it out on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!