ADMISSION TO LAW SCHOOL IS BECOMING THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM--LSAT NEEDED FOR TOP SCHOOLS IS AT LEAST 169, GPA, AT LEAST 3.8:
Law school admission gets harder as applications approach all-time high
by TOM MCCANN
Michael Congiu had good grades, a decent LSAT score, solid work experience in a prosecutor's office and perhaps the world's worst timing. Like thousands of other hopefuls, Congiu didn't count on applying to law school during what could be the single most competitive year in U.S. history.
"It was the roughest, most personally unsatisfying process I've ever had to go through," said Congiu, who had hoped to attend the University of Wisconsin Law School this fall so he could return to his alma mater and be close to his girlfriend. Instead, he has started class at Chicago-Kent College of Law, the only school out of the seven he applied to that accepted him.
"I'm happy with where I'm at, but I thought I could easily get into all those schools," Congiu said. He was also captain of the University of Wisconsin soccer team and had done aid work in Central America.
"At the University of Wisconsin, I supposedly had an 80 percent chance with my scores. But I think that was a different era. The scores that would have gotten you in a few years ago just don't cut it now."
The past year has been a particularly bruising one for the nation's law school applicants. Safety schools have turned a little less safe, while the dream schools for many have become more like pipe dreams. Law school admissions officials say the coming year isn't likely to be much better.
As of July, 98,461 people had applied to attend U.S. law schools for fall 2003, the largest number since 1991. However, with so many late applications still coming in, this year is well on its way to setting an all-time record, according to the Law School Admission Council, which has been recording admissions statistics since 1948.
"The explosion in applications has been pretty amazing. Applicants have gone up 29 percent in the last two years, and it's showing no signs of stopping," said LSAC spokesman Edward Haggerty. "The record in 1991 was 99,327 applicants, but that isn't likely to stand much longer," he predicted.
Not only are more people applying, Haggerty said, but they're also applying to more schools. While the number of applicants increased 29 percent since 2001, the number of applications has gone up more than 47 percent, Haggerty said.
"That's a double whammy. More students applying to more schools means its twice as hard to set yourself apart from that pile of applications on the school's desk," he said. "People are being turned down a lot more than usual."
At the nine law schools in Illinois, applications have been skyrocketing, and median GPAs and LSAT scores for the students accepted are significantly higher than a few years ago, according to admissions officials.
Local law schools cite a three-fold reason why the competition is so fierce. The prime cause is still the stagnant economy, which is attracting many victims of the recent layoff boom to try out a law degree while also prompting younger students to stay in school rather than face the job market.
The economic slump also comes at a time when a small population surge is now reaching law school age, admissions officials said. Researchers have been calling it the "Baby Boom Echo," made up of the grown children of the nation's 76 million baby boomers.
On top of that, a higher than ever percentage of the nation's students are deciding to go on to college and grad school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
"Regardless of the ups and downs of the economy, there are simply more people trying to get in. The number of 22-year-old college grads has ballooned, the bad economy is adding many more, but the number of available law school seats is still the same," said Pamela A. Bloomquist, assistant dean of admission and financial assistance at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. "It's not the best of environments to be applying to law school."
Loyola's application statistics went down a bit this year, but for Fall 2002, the school saw 1,000 more applications flood their offices than the year before, Bloomquist said. In 1999, the school received 2,164 applications. This year it took in 3,200, an increase of more than 50 percent.
Northern Illinois University College of Law took in 1,415 applications this year, an increase of 69 percent since 1999. The John Marshall Law School received 2,600 applications, an increase of almost 70 percent since 1999. And Chicago-Kent went from 1,662 applications in 1999 to 2,923 in 2003, up almost 76 percent.
"We'd like to think that more people are getting to know our institution, our affordability and our special clinical programs," said NIU admissions director Judith Malen. "But we know the economy has something to do with it, too."
Northwestern University School of Law's applications have gone up 27 percent since 1999, from 4,103 applications to 5,222 this year, said Don Rebstock, the school's associate dean of enrollment. Across town at University of Chicago Law School, applications have more than doubled since 1998, going from 2,100 applicants to 5,067 this year, all competing for just 195 seats.
"There has just been an increase of interest in law school," said Ann K. Perry, the U of C Law School's assistant dean of admissions. "It's certainly a function of the economy, but that's just one of many reasons."
Good luck getting in
Responding to the glut in applications, the admissions bar is being raised at many schools. Since 1999, the median GPA at Chicago-Kent has gone up from 3.15 to 3.36 and the median LSAT has gone from 153 to 158. At John Marshall, the median LSAT has increased from 150 to 154, although GPA is roughly the same.
Loyola's median LSAT for the incoming class went from 158 in 1999 to 160 now and its median GPA from 3.3 to 3.36. Meanwhile, Northwestern has gone from a 167 median LSAT and a 3.5 GPA to a 169 LSAT and 3.6 GPA during that time.
Northwestern Law Dean David Van Zandt said that with such a large influx of applicants, it makes the always hard job of picking and choosing the best candidates even tougher. To solve that, Northwestern tries to place a large emphasis on work experience and to use personal interviews to help them make admissions decisions, he said.
"The LSATs, the GPAs are all going up. It's far more competitive in terms of raw numbers. But at this point, there are so many people with the same scores that you have to go a step further," Van Zandt said. "We're the only major school that interviews, but we think it's a good way to get that unique type of student who has real world experience, can communicate well and brings more focus into what they want to get out of law school. With the record number of applicants, those who are well rounded have the best chance."
Bloomquist, the assistant dean at Loyola, said the range of LSAT and GPA scores among applicants have gotten much narrower and harder to differentiate. Almost everyone now is a high-quality candidate, she said, which forces the school to deny many applicants it would have happily accepted a few years back.
"It leads to a lot of heart breaking decisions," Bloomquist said. "I've run across many students who are applying for the second year now. Last time around, they applied to their one dream school or to the top 10 and just got shut out.
"If you don't give yourself any other options right now, you're going to get dinged by all of them," she said.
That's what happened to Kimberly Waters. Waters, a former Andersen consultant, graduated from Northwestern University in 1998 with a 3.5 GPA and later got a 165 on the LSAT. With her work experience and summer community work in Mexico, she thought she would be a shoe-in for the nation's best law schools this year. She applied to Northwestern, U of C, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.
"I didn't bother with a safety school. I thought I didn't need one," Waters said. "Big mistake."
Waters was wait-listed or denied at all of them. She said she is looking for work and will try again next year.
"I heard that the competition to get into law school was tough, but I didn't think it applied to me. I thought my resume was better than most," she said. "I guess I was a bit arrogant. I'm going to cast a much wider net next time."
Jeff Marx thought he did cast a wide enough net, but he said he didn't find much better luck.
"I thought the whole process was going to be easy, but it turned out to be incredibly traumatic," said Marx, who decided to return to law school after 10 years producing and designing video games for PlayStation 2 and Game Cube. With a 3.81 GPA from NIU and a LSAT score of 162, he said he applied to 10 schools, including University of Chicago, Northwestern, Loyola and University of Illinois, but got wait-listed at almost all of them. He said he decided to take the Chicago-Kent offer rather than continue waiting.
"These schools really take their own sweet time making these decisions. I had some pretty big decisions to make as to where my wife and I would live this year," Marx said. "I figured I was above average for most of the schools. I thought my work experience would put me over the top at Northwestern, for instance. But the schools were very tough on me."
The panic to get into a law school by the fall has created a jump in the yield of accepted students who are taking their offers, forcing many schools to boost their enrollment to find room for them all. The trend was most noticeable last year. However, this year the schools are trying to adjust by reducing acceptances.
"It's great to have all these new people applying, but we don't want to accept more and flood the market," Bloomquist said. "That would make getting a job for our graduates even tougher."
Aylon Schulte, interim assistant dean at the University of Illinois College of Law, said the school received 2,777 applications for Fall 2003, up from 1,800 in 2001.
"Typically we aim for a class of 200 to 220 students," she said. But last year the high yield rates left them with an unexpectedly large class of 239.
"The classrooms were more crowded, but we were able to accommodate those students," Schulte said. This year, she said, the school sent acceptance letters to only 591 students, down from last year's 613.
For DePaul University College of Law, the incoming class was usually 255 people, said Dean Glen Weissenberger. Now it's as high as 320.
"Last fall it was high, but this year is unbelievably high," Weissenberger said. "We've had to add more class sections and hire additional visiting professors and at least one other writing instructor. Through creative scheduling and squeezing into rooms outside the law school, we've been able to handle everybody."
Chicago-Kent, on the other hand, has decided to become more selective, said Dean Harold Krent. Despite having a thousand more applications this year, the school sent out just 813 acceptance letters, compared to the 1,089 letters it sent out in 1999. Four years ago, the school accepted 66 percent of its applicants. Now it accepts 28 percent.
"It is a good time now to make the school more competitive and increase the teacher-to-student ratio," Krent said. "The caliber of students we've been getting recently is really a boon for the school."
John Marshall had to make a similar downward adjustment so the class size would be more manageable.
"The sheer volume of applications has strained all parts of the law school. That's 1,000 more applications for a staff of two people. We've had to hire temps to handle the extra volume," said William B. Powers, John Marshall's assistant dean for admission and student affairs. "With the increased competition and the bigger law schools rejecting more people, a lot more are accepting our offers, which we're just fine with."
Powers said law schools always get more business during an economic downturn.
"Law school is a very malleable degree that's an open option to a lot of people," Powers said. "It doesn't require the same technical preparation like med school. Any major can apply, so you can decide late in your undergrad career that law school is for you. Of all the grad schools, we're often the most desirable at times like this because we attract people from all disciplines."
Powers said the increased interest is largely being driven by people just coming out of college, but many others are applying because they have lost their jobs and are looking for a new career.
"Law school is a safe harbor, a holding strategy right now," Krent said. "There's not a sufficient number of jobs to attract them to the work force, so they want to tool up and get an additional degree and be ready to go when the economy picks up."
The application boom has also led to some unexpected consequences at various schools.
Krent said that while the Chicago-Kent's applications overall have gone up 23 percent since last year, applications to its part-time evening program have decreased more than 11 percent.
"There's less interest in the evening program because there are less people employed," Krent said. "People are telling me either that they've been laid off, so they're applying for the full-time program or that they can't afford to compromise their job to spend their after hours studying."
Meanwhile, Southern Illinois University School of Law has also experienced a decent jump in applications. The school received 797 applications as of July, compared to 670 in 1999, said admissions director Mike Ruiz. However, the hefty increase has led inexplicably to a higher dropout rate.
Many are opting for the law school because they're having trouble finding jobs because of the bad economy, Ruiz said. However, "Once they get that job, they drop out. Our dropout rate for the first semester last year was double or triple what it normally was.
"We're starting to assume with the next entering class that we're getting people for whom law school wasn't necessarily the dream," Ruiz said. "People are being more practical."
However, law school officials said the current climate is both good and bad. While the downturn is making it harder to get into law school, it is also making it much harder for their graduates to find good legal jobs.
"It's a really tough time for both incoming and outgoing law students. Things are tough at both ends of the pipeline, although law is one of the professions that does well in good and bad times," Bloomquist said. "There are hints and little signs that the economy is getting better, but I think we have a long way to go. The driving force is still the economy."
Jill Smith, who is starting her first year at John Marshall, said that the application process did beat her up, but she's happy to be studying at a good school and hopes the skies will brighten three years from now.
"Did I think I'd be at John Marshall this time last year? Well, no," said Smith, who hopes to be a public-interest lawyer and stay in Chicago. "But John Marshall is really a great school, and I'm studying law like I always dreamed of doing. And I'm still optimistic. In fact, I think now is the best time to go to law school, because I would rather do this than be in the job
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