When my law school accepted a $30 million gift in spring 2016 conditioned on renaming the law school in honor of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, some predicted gloom and doom, that in today’s environment naming a law school after an unreconstructed conservative jurist would drive away potential students. I didn’t believe it, but the proof in the pudding is in the eating, as they say.
Our last entering class before the gift in fall 2015 had 159 matriculants, with a median LSAT of 161 and a median undergraduate GPA of 3.59.
Our entering class this year has 151 matriculants, a median LSAT of 164 and a median undergraduate GPA of 3.78.
There has been about a 15% increase in law school applications, so that helps. But the most telling and objective metric is how we are doing relative to local competitors. Our esteemed fellow state law school, William and Mary, reports that its entering class has a median LSAT of 163 and a median GPA of 3.6. Washington & Lee, another excellent law school out in Lexington, Va., reports a median LSAT of 163 and a median GPA of 3.63.
(Note that all these statistics are as of the beginning of the school year. Final numbers are not reported to the ABA until a bit later.)
