Applications to the Duke School of Law reached a new high this year with more than 6,300 applications, said Bill Hoye, associate dean for admissions and financial aid.
The number of applications received was 4 percent higher than last year, making this year's applicant class the largest in history for the law school, Hoye said. In 2008, the School of Law received 6,069 applications, only 200 of which were accepted. The deadline for applications this year was Feb. 15.
The exact number of applications will be available by the end of the month once mailed applications are received, Hoye said. The number of online applications is tracked through the Law School Admission Council, which handles the law school version of the Common Application, Hoye added.
Although LSAC has not finished counting all the applications, LSAC's Director of Communications Wendy Margolis said the national pool of applicants has increased by less than 1 percent. By contrast, the national pool saw a 17.6 percent jump for the class that matriculated in Fall of 2002, potentially resulting from the 2001 recession, she added.
The average number of applications per student nationwide rose from five to seven over the past seven years, Margolis said.
Hoye said the economic crisis could have an effect on the application numbers, but the nature of the effect is unclear. Hoye told The Chronicle in October that he believes the downturn would result in a spike in applications.
"Often in times of economic downturn there may be an increase [in applications], but there may be a lag-time between when people are getting really concerned [about the market] and when they're going to apply to law school or not," Margolis said.
Hoye said discovering trends in law school applications proves to be a difficult task for the admissions office and analysts.
"Every year those of us who do [admissions] work and the media speculate why applicants are applying in greater numbers or less numbers," he said. "It's curious because you might express similar kinds of trends about graduate programs, and you usually don't see that."
Whether this year's applicant pool will experience a larger spike as more applications come in remains unknown, Margolis noted.
"There's nothing really conclusive at this point," she said. "They're not going down. [The pool size] is pretty level, and later figures may show a difference and next year may show a difference or not, but we don't know."
She added that to her knowledge no professional school is witnessing a sudden increase in applications.
Smaller financial aid packages offered by many schools may also be keeping the applicant pool from experiencing a big jump, she added.
The School of Law evaluates applications on a rolling basis between September and the February deadline. The office has extended approximately half the admission offers and will send out its final acceptances by the end of April, Hoye said.
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