The number of Paul M. Hebert Law School applications has decreased, and the application deadline has been postponed as a result, following a national and regional trend.
The law school has pushed its final application deadline back from Feb. 1 to Mar. 1, allowing students taking the February Law School Admissions Test to still apply to the school, said Eric Eden, admissions director.
“We moved back the deadline because of hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” Eden said. “The number of students that sat for the October and December LSATs was way down — so people have one more chance to take the test and apply.”
The law school has space for approximately 230 first-year students and has received approximately 800 applications – compared to 1,680 applications received this time last year.
LSU is not alone – other schools in the South Central Region, which includes Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, are seeing a smaller number of students taking the LSAT and applying to law schools.
Law School Admissions Council Media Director Wendy Margolis said law school applications for the South Central Region are down 15.8 percent this year, a 5,000 person decrease. Applications across the nation are down by 10 percent, and the number of students taking the LSAT for the 2005-2006 academic year is down by 4.8 percent.
“This is a significant drop,” Margolis said.
The competition and number of people taking the LSAT and applying to law school has steadily decreased in recent years. In the past three years the number of test-takers has decreased from 148,000 test-takers to 115,000 this year – a drop of 30 percent.
While Margolis said there is a decrease in the number of people taking the LSAT and an even larger decrease in the number applying to law school, the students who are applying are sending applications to an even greater number of schools than in the past.
“The competition is still there. The good are still applying – it may just be the lower end that is falling off,” Margolis said.
Margolis said admissions are still competitive. Of the nearly 100,000 students who will apply to law school this year, only half will be accepted.
Margolis said it is unlikely the law school will see a large boost of admissions from the LSAT test this month. Of the four yearly LSAT tests, the February test date usually has less than half the number of test-takers that the October and December tests do – a number that has remained steady for many years.
“The October date usually has around 50,000 takers nationally, and the December has about 42,000. But the February has about 24,000, and the June is also small,” Margolis said.
Margolis said the February test date is small because many schools such as LSU do not typically accept this test date’s scores for fall entrance to law school.
The reasons for the decreasing number of applicants regionally and nationally are not known, but both Margolis and Eden said that some of the reasons may include the strength of the economy, popularity among careers and demographics.
“When there’s a time of more employment because the economy is doing better, there is more opportunity for good employment. So people put off graduate schools,” Margolis said. “There are swings between popularity of medical schools and business schools. So, because there’s an opportunity for technical jobs in the economy, there may be more people applying to business school.”
Although law school applications here have decreased, and the number of students taking the LSAT is much less than any other area of the country, the reasons behind these shifts are more apparent, Eden said.
“The hurricane really screwed us up timing wise,” Eden said. “At this point we don’t know if we will suffer.”
Because of the statewide effects of the hurricane, many students may have been unable to study and take the October or December LSAT or may not be graduating at the time they had originally planned before the hurricanes. Eden said she estimates the number of students taking the LSAT in Louisiana to be down by as much as 30 percent for the 2005-2006 academic year.
Other state law schools, such as Tulane University, that rely on a mainly out-of-state student body may have a harder time attracting those students, who could be hesitant of living in the state since the hurricanes, Eden said.
“We’re insulated some because we are a state school supported 85 percent by in-state students,” Eden said.
Until the February test-takers’ applications are in, LSU will be unable to tell how much, if at all, the number of applicants or average student ranking will change, Eden said.
 
Contact Rachel Flarity at rflarity@lsureveille.com