Law School Applicants by Degrees: A Per Capita Analysis of the Top Feeder Schools
16 Pages Posted: 25 Apr 2018
Date Written: April 25, 2018
Abstract
Each year, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) publishes its Top 240 Feeder Schools for ABA Applicants list. The colleges and universities appearing on the list produce the most applicants to law schools accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA). These feeder schools often account for the majority of applicants to law school in a given year – about 61 percent in 2016.1 Thus, the list provides an interesting glimpse into application trends and the popularity of legal education overall. The list also tells us something about the types of students who are interested in earning law degrees.
This report expands upon the feeder school list by exploring “applicant concentration”—the number of law school applicants relative to the size of the institution. We calculate applicant concentration by dividing the number of applicants from a particular institution by the number of bachelor’s degree recipients at that institution in the same year. The resulting “per-capita” figures help contextualize the feeder school trends.
Keywords: law school, legal education, graduate and professional school, higher education, admissions
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