LSAC gears up for the transition to the Digital LSAT

Hi. This is Susan Krinsky at LSAC with the July edition of Keeping Up To Data.

With 97% of our applicant count in, applicant volume is up 3.4% over last year, although applications are down 1.5%. 87 schools are showing application volume increases, 107 show decreases, and 8 show no change as compared to last year.

The June administration of the LSAT, the first of the 2019-20 testing year, had 18,644 registrants as of the morning of the test. Of these, 60% were first-time test takers. Although we don’t have a final test-taker number, it appears that just over 15,000 tests were administered, which is almost twice the usual last-minute drop-off of about 10%.

Scores have now been released to candidates, so we should have a final test-taker number soon. Compared to last year, when almost 22,500 individuals took the test, the June administration test-taker volume appears to be down by about 33%. On the other hand, registrants for the July test are up a whopping 75% over last July — for reasons that are probably obvious.

As you know, the July test will be administered both digitally and as a traditional paper-and-pencil test, with approximately 50% of test takers assigned to take the test each way. The test content is the same for all test takers. Test takers won’t know until they arrive at the test center whether they will take the Digital LSAT or the paper-and-pencil test.

The increase in registrants is almost certainly fueled by the fact that the July 15 administration will be the first digital administration, but even more likely because — for the July test only — all test takers, whether they take the paper version or the digital version, will get to see their scores before deciding whether to cancel them, and if they decide to cancel, they will be able to take the LSAT again, without paying an additional fee, through the April 2020 test. 65% of July registrants are first-time test takers.

But back to the June test for a moment. As you probably recall, this was the first test for which the writing sample — now known as LSAT Writing — was separated from the multiple-choice test. Candidates who took the June test were able to take LSAT Writing beginning the same afternoon and can do so for up to 12 months thereafter. At this point, of the approximately 10,000 first-time test takers — who have now received their multiple-choice scores, but who MUST take LSAT Writing before their scores can be released to schools — it appears that about 1,500 have taken LSAT Writing.

Recently, a member school mentioned that it would be very helpful to be able to compare — on a year-to-date basis — the number and quality of deposits received. As it happens, this is a feature that is available through the Statistical History Dashboard. Here’s how to get there: Start out in ACES. Go to Reports and click on Statistical History Dashboard. You’ll come to a menu, and once there, click on Decision/Current Status. On the bottom half of that page, you’ll see charts with five years of data — one shows ethnicity data, one shows gender data, and one shows the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles for both LSAT and GPA. Initially, you will see that data for your entire applicant pool.

But if you click on any Export Decision or Current Status or Decision on the top half of the page, the data in the ethnicity, gender, and LSAT/GPA boxes will change to show you the volumes for ethnicity and gender and the LSAT and GPA percentiles for that decision or status — all for each year from 2015 through 2019. If you want to choose more than one decision or status, just hold down the Control key. This is a really wonderful feature, and the graphical display shows the data very clearly. If you didn’t already know about this feature, I hope you’ll be very happy to know about it now.

As always, we’d love to hear from you with questions or suggestions. Just write to us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening. Until next time, this is Susan Krinsky at LSAC.