The Daily Pennsylvanian
Penn's Law School has reported a 12 percent decline in its overall application rate for the upcoming academic year after applications had soared the previous year.
Though the Law School's regular application deadline is on Feb. 15 and the admissions department is still receiving applications, there was a similar drop in applicants to its non-binding early notification process, which had its deadline in November. The school admits students on a rolling basis.
Last year, Penn Law received a total of 1,703 early notification applications, whereas this year early applications dropped to 1,455.
Of the applicants, 270, or 16 percent, were accepted in 2005. However, this year the early acceptance rate went up to 22 percent, or 325 acceptances.
Penn Law's admissions office has already reviewed 3,250 regular notification applications as of Jan. 25 -- a drop from last year's 3,700 applications received by the same date.
Derek Meeker, associate dean for admissions and financial aid, said that this decline in the application rate is a trend not specific to Penn Law, which is ranked seventh in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.
According to the Law School Admission Council's Web site, there was a national decrease of about 5 percent in the number of law school applicants in 2005. Meeker attributed the decrease to the "improving economy and increased job opportunities for college graduates and young professionals," which might encourage college graduates to get jobs instead of seeking more education.
"I think that it has also been more competitive than ever before. ... We were way against the trend" last year, Meeker said. "We didn't expect to see an increase this year."
Meeker said that though it's too early to release the scores, the average applicant's LSAT score and undergraduate GPA have gone up.
"This year's pool was much more competitive than last year's," he said.
He also noted that, whereas in 2002 an applicant applied to an average of 4.8 schools, this year, the number of applications has gone up to 6.1 schools per applicant.
Because of the increased competition, "students are wisely casting the net a little wider," he said.
The number of minority applicants to Penn Law has been relatively steady. Meeker noted that nationally there was a slight drop in the number of black and Latino applicants to law schools this year.
However, he didn't notice this trend at Penn. He said that, as usual, about a third of the applicants were from minority groups.
As of last week, 405 admission offers had been made. For the past three years, Penn Law has admitted around 800 applicants, with around 250 applicants accepting the offer each year.
