Law school applications slow, admissions steady

A recent survey shows law school admissions officers are cutting back their enrollment as the number of applications decline nationwide.

Fifty-three percent of law schools in the United States have decreased the number of students they admit, according to a press release from Kaplan Test Prep, a company which sells preparation materials for standardized tests.

But administrators say admissions to IU Maurer School of Law have remained steady.

“We are the numbers we always planned to be at,” said Frank Motley, Maurer’s dean of admissions. “We had 200 students last year, and we have 200 students this year.”

There has been a nationwide decline in law school applicants since 2010, according to the Kaplan press release.

In 2010, 602,300 applications were submitted to law schools nationwide, but that number dropped to 385,400 in 2013.

“In the bad economy, people are choosing not to go to law school because they are afraid of being in debt and not finding a job after,” Motley said.

Stake said rumors about law school debt and unemployment have scared possible applicants.

“Maybe the stories have discouraged more people than it should have,” said Jeff Stake, former law school admission chairman. “Right now is a terrific time to go to law school. Easier acceptance rates makes it easier to get support financially.”

Other schools are cutting enrollment to raise their average LSAT scores and GPAs of students to gain higher rankings in the U.S. News and World Report annual rankings.

Motley said cutting enrollment at Maurer would not pay off. Maurer was ranked 25th in the nation among graduate law schools.

“Two hundred is where we need to be to bring in the quality of students we want and to keep the tuition low for students,” Motley said.

However, Stake said the law school decided adjusting other admissions criteria would not harm their ranking.

“Our LSAT scores went from 164 to 162, but with our formula, we can see pretty accurately the difference in ranking it would make, and it wasn’t very much,” Stake said.

Despite IU’s ranking and required LSAT scores remaining stable, total applications for the law school dropped by almost 500 applicants from 2358 last year to 1851.

If Maurer does not attain its standard of about 200 first-year students, the school will keep running normally and tuition should not spike abnormally, Motley said.

“We have an endowment that will keep us running for students even if no one new shows up,” Motley said.

According to the Kaplan survey, 67 percent of admissions officers do not think the decline in admissions will reverse in the near future.

Maurer’s future is highly dependent on the values of the law school’s leadership, Motley said.

“We’re in a dean search, and the next dean might have other priorities,” Motley said. “We should have one appointed by January, and then we’ll see.”