Offer rates at top law schools are better than at some elite kindergartens, blogger observes
Getting into a top law school is easier than getting into kindergarten at a private school in New York City, according to a legal blogger.
On average, 23 percent of the applicants to the nation’s top 25 law schools are offered admission, Bloomberg Law reports in its analysis of data for the entering class of 2012. The Careerist likes those odds.
“I wouldn’t be at all discouraged by that overall acceptance rate,” the Careerist says. “That’s almost a one-in-four chance of getting into a top school, which, in my book, is quite decent.” The blog notes a story about Trinity School, which admitted only 8.2 percent of its applicants for kindergarten.
The lowest offer rates are at Yale (8 percent), Stanford (10 percent) and the University of California at Berkeley (12 percent), according to Bloomberg Law. Yale also has the nation’s highest GPA and LSAT scores. The median for its entering class was a 3.9 GPA and a 173 LSAT score.
But it’s quite a bit easier to gain admission at these three law schools with the highest offer rates: New England Law School (88 percent), Phoenix School of Law (86 percent) and Vermont Law School (83 percent.) The Careerist dubs these the “law schools where your pet poodle can probably get in.”
Bloomberg Law developed its findings from information released by the ABA and the Law School Admission Council. Other findings by Bloomberg:
• Cornell had the biggest drop in applications among the nation’s elite schools. Applications were down 27 percent for the 2012 entering class after applicant spikes in 2010 and 2011. School spokeswoman Kathleen Corcoran tells the publications that the number of 2012 applications was in line with its historical average and applications are up slightly for 2013.
• The biggest drops in applications were at La Verne (down 79 percent), Arkansas at Little Rock (40 percent) and Hawaii (38 percent).
• Schools cut the size of their 2012 entering classes by about 9 percent overall, though 45 schools expanded their entering classes. The biggest increases were at Washington and Lee (55 percent), North Carolina Central (53 percent) and California at Irvine (34 percent).
