TL;DR – A Harder Year, Plain and Simple
This is a tougher law school admissions year. Applications are up, strong applicants are applying earlier, and schools have more flexibility to wait and be selective. Numbers alone are not carrying files the way they might have in an easier cycle. Clear narrative, timing, and judgment matter more than usual. A waitlist or slower response is not a personal signal. It is the market. Baseline, people are still going to law school this fall. It just takes a more intentional approach.
What’s happening with Law School admissions this year?
Every admissions cycle feels intense when you are inside it. But some years are objectively harder than others, regardless of how calm or anxious applicants feel. The February 2, 2026 LSAC Current Volume Summary makes clear that this is not just a tougher year than last year. It is dramatically tougher than the last two.
Start with the headline numbers. As compared to one year ago, current year applicants are up 20.4 percent. As compared to two years ago, current year applicants are up 42.7 percent. That means nearly half again as many people are applying to law school now as were applying at the same point two cycles ago.
The application numbers are even starker. As compared to one year ago, current year applications are up 23.1 percent. As compared to two years ago, current year applications are up 51.6 percent. In plain terms, admissions offices are processing more than half again as many applications as they were two years ago, at the same point in the cycle.
Those are not incremental shifts. They are market-changing numbers.
Why the gap between applicants and applications matters
The fact that applications are growing faster than applicants is not a technical footnote. It tells us something essential about applicant behavior. The average applicant is applying to more schools than they were last year, and far more than they were two years ago.
That compounds pressure everywhere. Each seat now attracts more applicants, and each applicant occupies more space in the system. Schools are not just reading more files. They are managing more uncertainty per applicant, more overlap between candidates, and more yield risk.
This is why so many applicants feel like decisions are slower, messier, or less predictable than they expected. Schools have the luxury of waiting because they have options.
This is not evenly distributed pressure.
The increase isn’t limited to elite schools.
Another important piece of context is how widespread this increase is. According to LSAC, 188 law schools are seeing an increase in application volume, while only 6 are seeing a decrease and 2 are flat. This is not a phenomenon isolated to a handful of elite schools. It is happening almost everywhere.
Many schools are not just up slightly. A meaningful number are seeing increases of 30 percent, 40 percent, or more compared to last year. That matters because even schools that are not usually thought of as hyper competitive now have more leverage than they did two years ago.
The result is a tighter cycle across the board. Fewer easy admits. More holds. More waitlists used as a primary management tool rather than a fallback.
Pressure at the top has not eased.
One of the persistent myths about recent cycles is that the surge in high LSAT scores has finally leveled off. The data does not support that conclusion.
Applicants scoring between 170 and 174 are up 20.1 percent compared to last year. Applicants scoring between 175 and 180 are up 19.5 percent.
That is not a collapse at the top. It is sustained growth.
More important, this growth is layered on top of increases from prior cycles. Compared to two years ago, the number of applicants in these top score bands is dramatically higher. That means schools that rely heavily on those bands to shape their entering classes have even more choice and even less urgency.
This is why strong applicants are often surprised by slower movement. It’s not that they are weaker than they think; it’s that they are less scarce than they used to be.
Timing now does real work.
Another quiet but crucial detail in the report is this: At this point last year, LSAC had already captured 63 percent of the final applicant count and 65 percent of the final application count. In other words, much of the pool is already visible.
That has consequences. Admissions offices are not guessing about what might be coming later. They already have a clear sense of the shape of the cycle. When that happens, early applications benefit from a less congested decision environment, while later applications are evaluated in a denser and more comparative context.
This does not mean applying later is fatal. It does mean that late applications must be especially clear and especially polished.
Ambiguity costs more when volume is high.
Why this feels worse than last year, not just different
While it’s tempting to frame this cycle as a modest escalation from last year, the numbers don’t support that. Last year was already competitive. This year builds on that competitiveness rather than stabilizing.
Compared to last year, one out of every five applicants is new. Compared to two years ago, nearly half of today’s applicant pool did not exist. That level of growth changes institutional behavior whether admissions offices want it to or not.
Schools can afford to wait. They can afford to compare. They can afford to protect yield aggressively. Applicants experience that as silence, delay, or ambiguity.
What applicants should actually take from this
The correct response to this data isn’t panic, it’s recalibration:
First, applicants need to understand that this is not the year to rely on numbers alone. Strong credentials still matter, but they are less decisive when the pool is this large.
Second, narrative discipline matters more than ever. Admissions officers are reading more files than they were two years ago. Clear motivation, clean structure, and restraint stand out because they reduce cognitive load.
Third, outcomes must be interpreted in context. A waitlist this year often reflects abundance, not doubt. A slower response is frequently about leverage, not hesitation.
The baseline still holds.
Here is the grounding truth beneath all of this: People are still going to law school this fall. They are doing so in a cycle that is materially harder than last year and dramatically harder than two years ago.
This is not a year for shortcuts or assumptions. It’s a year for judgment.
What’s Next?
The law school application process is intimidating, confusing, and at times scary. We at What’s Next? law school advising can use our expertise to demystify this process. We want it to be more exciting than it is scary. We can help you find the right fit. It’s out there.
What’s Next? is grounded in deep experience and honest guidance. We’ve helped applicants navigate this journey before — and we’re ready to help you do the same.