The November LSAT Took It Personal
With October beginning, we hit one of the periodic moments in the admissions calendar when we reflect on the quick passage of time.
Weren’t we all enjoying the 4th of July just a few weeks ago?
Wasn’t it that same week that we were all commenting on how the June LSAT numbers went down a touch?
Why, I seem to remember those olden days when there weren’t 40,000+ people registered for an LSAT!
Ah, yes! The good ol’ days of early July!
We noted in last week’s blog entry that we were about to get a great deal of clarity on how the 2025‒2026 cycle will shape up. And—oh, man!—did we ever get that clarity.
So let’s cut to the chase, dive into the numbers and headlines from around the world of law school admissions, and get ready for the upcoming tidal wave of applications.
National LSAT Numbers
Dear Readers—we’re not going to sugarcoat things for you.
You’re about to see some big numbers.
Just stick with us past the following chart from LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report. We’re all in this together.
In related news, here’s a sped-up GIF of the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption.
We’ll work our way up the ladder from the least to the most eye-catching numbers from the past few days.
Coming in third place—the September LSAT. With test results coming back and the numbers almost finalized (there can always be a bit of adjustments from LSAC after the results come back…), the main things for us to file away are:
- A 25% increase in test takers versus the September 2024 edition.
- The percentage of first-time test takers declined to 50.2% from 55.1% in September 2024. We’ve long assumed that there would be far more reapplicants in this year’s pool than usual. Why? Because last year’s national app increase was so drastic that there surely would be more people than usual in last year’s pool who would be unhappy enough with their admissions results that they would forgo enrolling at any law school and would simply reapply this year. And there they were, right in that drop in the percentage of first-time test takers.
Coming in second place and surely upset that we’re not talking more about it—the October LSAT. After weeks and weeks of the registration numbers not budging more than a percentage point, we finally saw a bit of a drop in registrations (8%) as we approach the eve of the exam … but it’s still not as much as we sometimes see. While it’s no longer likely that we’ll see the October LSAT top 30,000 test takers, it’s entirely possible that we may see another 25% increase like we just saw on the September LSAT.
And that brings us to this week’s headliner—the November LSAT. The registration deadline for the November LSAT came and went this past week. In last week’s blog, we noted that the “biggest surge in registrations for any LSAT administration happens in the days just before the registration deadline. We sometimes see surges of as much as 30‒40% during this window.”
The November LSAT heard that challenge, channeled its inner Michael Jordan
and increased its registration numbers by 83.8% in just a few days.
Let’s offer our standard caveats that we extend after every LSAT registration deadline surge—this is the highest the numbers can be, they can only go down, they always go down, and the numbers may drop by 10% each week in the two weeks leading up to test day.
That’s all true.
But on the other hand:
- The August (18%) and September (25%) LSATs just saw big year-over-year increases,
- The October LSAT may also have a 25% year-over-year increase,
- If the November LSAT can stay over 34,500, it would be the biggest test since the November 2018 administration. That was the first year that LSAC offered the LSAT more than four times each year—it was offered six times that cycle. We now live in a world with eight LSATs per year. For any LSAT administration to come close to the old numbers is amazing.
What does this all mean for the 2025‒2026 applicant pool? It almost certainly will increase over last year, and that increase may be somewhere between “oh no!” and “I can’t count that high!” While it seems illogical and nigh impossible to have two consecutive national application increases of over 20%, that possibility is on the table.
And what does this mean for you, a hopeful applicant for the 2025‒2026 admissions cycle? The main takeaways are:
- Be realistic about your admissions goals. This is a year when it’s probably better to apply to a few more target and safety schools rather than a few more reach schools.
- If law schools receive enough applications to be assured of hitting their goals for enrollment and LSAT/GPA medians, then the other factors in an application will take on more weight. These include an applicant’s fit for that particular law school, the strength of their résumé, and the unique personal and professional experiences that this applicant can bring to the law school community. To put this another way—be sure to work on your personal statement and to do your research so that you can write a genuine Why School X statement for your top schools.
- Remember that it’s rolling admission. You should absolutely apply when you feel you can submit your strongest application. But you should also remember that admissions officers will start reviewing applications at the end of October and most will start issuing decisions in December (and—heck!—a handful have already been making offers of admission per lawschooldata.org).
- Be patient after you submit your apps. Admissions offices are about to get slammed—again—with a wave of applications. As last year’s applicants can tell you, it can take admissions officers a very long time to get through all the apps and make decisions. So pick up a new hobby while you’re awaiting your decisions—may we suggest “meditative breathing”?
National Recruitment Events
And in the meantime, law school AdComms are prepping for file reading by traveling to law fairs from coast to coast … but mostly in the Rust Belt and Rust Belt-adjacent regions! This is one of the busiest weeks of the year for admissions officers:
- Thursday, October 2nd: the Cal State-Long Beach Graduate and Professional Schools Fair
- Friday, October 3rd: Notre Dame Law School Connections Day
- Saturday, October 4th: Chicago LSAC Forum
- Monday, October 6th: Ohio University Law Fair, the University of Dayton Law Fair, and the University of Rochester Law and Grad School Fair
- Tuesday, October 7th: Cornell University Law Fair, the Syracuse University Grad and Law School Fair, the Ohio State Law Fair, the Penn State Law School Day, and the Vancouver Law Fair
- Wednesday, October 8th: University of Michigan Law Day, the Miami (OH) University Law Fair, the University of Cincinnati Law School Fair, and the Binghamton University Law School Admissions Fair
- Thursday, October 9th: Bucknell University Pre-Professional Fair and the University of Detroit Mercy Law Day
- Friday, October 10th: University of Albany Law School Fair
This is definitely one of “those weeks” when admissions offices are stretched to the limit. You have to send someone to the Chicago Forum … but do you send them out a day early to go to Notre Dame, too? And then do you send someone to Ohio or to New York? Both? But if “both,” then who is to attend the event at Michigan? The answer—as always—is to be sure to pack your trusty Time-Turner so that you can be in two places at one “time.”
7Sage Events
Our next Admissions AMA will be on October 1st, with another session on the 8th. Stop on by and ask whatever law school admissions questions are on your mind!
Our most recent law school admissions podcast dropped last week and is a recording of a mock admissions committee meeting from earlier in September. What are the things that admissions officers notice when reviewing applications? How do they talk to each other to decide which applicants are admitted, offered a spot on the waitlist, or denied admission? Members of our 7Sage team break down a few mock applications so that you—our audience—can hopefully file away a few useful nuggets such as “make sure your résumé is clean and easy to review.” Be sure to check it out on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!
Thanks for reading! You can learn more about 7Sage Admissions Consulting’s services here, and if you’d like help deciding which service is right for you, you can book a free consultation here.