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18 ¦ APRIL 12, 2021 NEWS

Admitted Students Get Shut Out at Notre
Dame Law School Amid Deposit Frenzy

By Karen Sloan

University of Notre Dame Law School. (Wikimedia)

Notre Dame Law School is facing criticism when law schools nationwide are facing a surge
from would-be law students and admissions of applications. The total number of applicants to
experts after it waitlisted people who were American Bar Association-accredited law schools
previously offered admission when they didn’t pay is up nearly 21% compared to a year ago, accord-
deposits quickly enough this week. ing to data from the Law School Admission Council.
Admissions experts say that shutting out admit- That increase has made it trickier for schools to de-
ted students ahead of the school’s April 15 deposit termine how many people to admit and the yield of
deadline because more people than expected were admitted students who are likely to enroll. Admis-
accepting those offers is unprecedented, and that the sions departments rely on formulas based on his-
high-pressure, time-compressed tactics the school torical patterns, and the unusual nature of this year’s
used were outside the norm. admissions cycle is complicating those calculations.
“I’ve never seen this Thunderdome-type competi- According to a statement from Notre Dame Law,
tion of, ‘Whoever gets their seat deposit in first gets this marks the second admissions cycle in which
to come to our law school,’” said law school admis- South Bend, Indiana, school has had a rolling non-
sions consultant Mike Spivey, who has 21 years of refundable $600 seat deposit deadline of April 15 or
experience in the field, on an April 7 podcast on the whenever the school reaches its maximum deposit
Notre Dame situation. “That’s unprecedented.” figure. It adopted that approach during the 2020 ad-
Notre Dame’s admissions furor comes at a time missions cycle after an unexpectedly high number

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