Simulated Overlap Report

What's an overlap report?  It's a printout provided to each law school by Law Services. It shows the school how many people have applied to itself and other schools, their median gpa and LSAT, where they were admitted and where they enrolled. It looks kinda like the report below, from what I hear.   

Okay, our law school is Princeton.  (You know there's no such school, right?) We have a median gpa of 3.9, a median LSAT of 168, and about 5,000 applicants.  We make about 1,000 offers a year to fill 350 seats.  Here's what Law Services tell us:  

3500 people applied to our school and Yale, 4,000 applied to our school and Harvard, and 2,000 applied to our school and Stanford -- there's just not as much overlap with the west coast.  But that's 9,500 applications, and we only get 5,000!  I guess a lot of people applied to all four schools.  

Of the students we admitted, 800 were also admitted to Yale. Of these 800, 150 have paid us a seat deposit, 500 have paid Yale a seat deposit, and 150 haven't paid either of us a seat deposit. These 150 may have not paid anyone yet, or they might have paid one of the other schools; all we know is that they haven't paid either us or Yale yet.   Of the students we admitted, 200 were also admitted to Stanford.  Of these 200, 25 have paid us a seat deposit, 100 have paid Stanford a seat deposit, and 75 haven't paid either of us a seat deposit. Again, these 75 may have not paid anyone yet, or they might have paid one of the other schools; all we know is that they haven't paid either us or Stanford yet. If we don't want our law school to have a "primarily east coast" reputation, we'll have to go after the California crew more aggressively.  (That's one use of overlap reports; they're marketing tools.)   Note that it looks like we admitted 1,500 so far, but I said we only admitted 1,000.  There must be substantial overlap among the four schools.  

Of course, LSAC doesn't tell us this in a nice chatty letter; they send us a report that looks approximately like this:

As we look at schools where factors besides USNews ranking come into play, we'll see a different pattern:

Notice that we're pretty even with Georgetown; we each got 75, although We got the high grades bunch and They got the high LSAT bunch; maybe They offered scholarships.  We're hands-down winners over Boston; we're close enough to New York that They don't get a more urban crowd, and we're so far ahead of them in reputation that most people choose Us.  Who chooses Them?  Legacies, people with families routing them to Boston, and people to whom they gave a lot of money.  But what's going on with Minnesota?  How did They beat Us?  We're more prestigious, we have New York, we're even warmer!  Oh.  They're a public school; they have resident tuition.  We lose.  

Our first seat deposit is due April 15; so is the deposit at all the other schools we're considering.  We tell LSAC who paid us a deposit, and on May 1 they send us the report we started out with (minus the gpa and LSAT numbers):  

We admitted 800 people who also were admitted to Yale.  150 haven't given either of us money, so 650 have paid us or Yale -- or both.  It looks like 200 have paid both of us:  we hold a combined 850 deposits from 650 people. So only 50 of the Yale people are "solid" -- going to Princeton as of May 1.  Of that Harvard and Stanford crew, not even one is solid!  Subtract the "neither" column from the ones admitted and you get the number in the "Them" column.  Every single person on our overlap report who paid us a deposit also paid one to Harvard; the same is true for the students admitted at our school and Stanford.  So from the top three schools, we may have filled as few as 50 seats!  If we want those applicants, we'd better do something!  

From the next three schools, we've filled a few more seats.  Of the 150 who've paid us and Georgetown, 50 paid us both and 25 are solid; 20 of the ones who applied to us and BC are solid, but only 2 from Minnesota are.  But that's okay; 2 is enough to meet our demographic needs for the state.  Let's make sure we waitlist a few, or admit a few more from Carleton and U of Minnesota, just to be sure.  

So as of May 1, from those six schools, we've filled as few as 47 or as many as 795 (the total of all we've admitted).  Until the Harvard and Yale picture clarifies itself, we'd better not admit anyone else.  

Our next Overlap Report arrives June 1.  Here it is:  

Now we have 100 of the Princeton-Yale overlaps.  (800 minus 200 whom neither of us have makes 600 that one of us has; even if they keep all 500 that they have right now, we have 100.)  We still have no one definite from among the Harvard overlaps, but that big a number is a potential overenrollment problem.  Don't recruit them, and keep watching.  

We've been working on the Stanford batch, convincing them of the joys of the east coast, and we're succeeding.  Ten of the 20 are definite, with only 10 more to resolve themselves.  We've also confirmed 50 of the Georgetown group:  300 - 225 = 75 total; 25 overlap, so we have 50.  We have at least 30 from BC and 2 from Minnesota.  

So as of June 1, looking at these six schools, we have 192 solid deposits.

We may give up on the Harvard overlaps. since we got none so far.  We'll predict as many as 50 more of the Yale group, since we've done well there so far.  If we vigorously pursue the Stanford group, we may get  5 more.  We don't care if we get any more from Boston College, they probably overlap with Harvard, and we'd rather have room for geographic diversity; we'll work to keep the 2 from Minnesota.  Now what do we do about Georgetown?  

And so it goes.  

Law schools get overlap reports twice a month throughout the summer, study them to predict whether they need to admit more people, and pray they don't wind up overenrolled.  They compare the year-to-date results with previous years, overall and by school.  And if they're very good  at their jobs and there are no catastrophic events, like Hurricane Katrina or a drastic change in their US News ranking, they wind up each year within five of last year's number when the doors open in the fall.   But on June 15, a new factor comes into play!