A forecasting error in law school admissions. Could this have been avoided?

Allan Cousins writes:

Thought you might be interested in this as a cool example of misestimation that has led to many law schools becoming overenrolled for next year. I wondered if you had any thoughts on how they could have better modeled yield rates in the given environment? According to my back of the envelope math the yield rate at some schools has increased approximately 40% year-over-year, and while it’s hard to say if such a jump is unprecedented (given our lack of data) it sure seems like it might be.

Here’s the background:

A good number of law schools in the US, as well as in Canada have experienced a massive increase in the number of applications for next years’ class. This is partially due to Covid and partially due to the LSAT changing format (offered many more times per year + at home test taking). But the issue hasn’t just been that there was an increase in applications but also that the yield has increased tremendously as well! More students than ever have accepted offers. A bunch of schools (including Berkeley) now find them in a position where they have more students accepting their offers than they have physical room to be able to teach!

It’s so bad that in the US schools like Columbia are offering $30,000 for students to defer. And in Canada, TRU has simply decided to say “we messed up” to 26 students without much in the way of compensation.

This would be a great example to discuss in class—I think it would really interest the students!

Regarding what the UC Berkeley law school should do: That’s easy. Just have Prof. Yoo explain to the incoming class why it’s perfectly legal to crush the testicles of their children. In his unforgettable words, “I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.” A few speeches like that should cut down on the yield, no?

16 thoughts on “A forecasting error in law school admissions. Could this have been avoided?

  1. Here is the 2010 link regarding John Yoo’s immortal words regarding child care and the Socratic Method:

    https://truthout.org/articles/john-yoo-renews-claim-that-presidents-authority-to-torture-depends-on-what-is-necessary/

    Here is an excerpt that shows 2005 was not the good old days before Covid:

    “As reports emerge that a long awaited Justice Department ethics investigation is likely to clear Yoo of any wrongdoing, Yoo exhibited an air of confidence and assurance throughout his remarks, indicating that he was in no mood to apologize for what he said in 2005. Indeed, he began his talk by describing how he ‘beat’ Jon Stewart during his recent appearance on “The Daily Show.” After subjecting Stewart to two or three minutes of the Socratic Method,” Yoo proudly declared, ‘he was mine.’”

  2. Academic careers are interesting. Alex Jones and Steve Bannon are in the news at the moment. The former seems to have dropped out of a community college and the latter has an MBA from Harvard. John Yoo has an A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. He is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.
    Hmm, Harvard and Berkeley, institutions often flagged/flogged in this blog. The only things missing are Stanford and its Hoover Institution.

    • Paul:

      This sort of thing comes up all the time when considering representation of different political views in academia, law enforcement, the judiciary, etc.

      Some large minority of American believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. What’s the appropriate percentage of people who believe this lie among professors, police officers, judges, etc.? The ideal percentage would be something close to zero—not exactly zero, I guess, as there should be room for some small representation of all sorts of wacky views—but close. On the other hand, what’s the ideal percentage, given that this view is held by something like 25% of the population? The believers have to be somewhere, right?

      Similarly with Yoo. We can only assume that some reasonably-sized minority of Americans are cool with crushing the testicles of the children of suspected terrorists. So, on one hand, it should be no surprise that many graduates of elite universities hold this view, and it should be no surprise that some people with this view manage to find themselves in elite positions. To ask that this proportion be zero . . . that would just be too much to ask. It’s not like there’s a question on the job application form, “Do you approve of crushing the testicles of the children of suspected terrorists?” I guess that the most we could hope for is that people with this sort of view would be embarrassed enough to keep it to themselves.

      • No, this is not about Yoo’s beliefs. It’s about his actions.

        If you or I believe in crushing testicles, well, that’s fine because, in the end, it matters to nobody what we think about that. For that matter, I agree that it is OK for Stanford and other places to hire people with those beliefs, and even teach them in classes where it is content-appropriate, as could be the case in a law school.

        But John Yoo was a high government official who authorized and caused others to act on that belief. The man is a war criminal and should not be breathing free air. He should be incarcerated for the rest of his life.

        • While I have no love lost for John Yoo,
          I feel like he is an odd scapegoat for all this.

          Among all the decision making that led to the US’s torture of prisoners,
          I don’t think ‘department of Justice said it is not illegal’ should be that important.
          There are so many things that are not illegal that the US should not do.

          In other words, when you are down to the Justice Dept. as the last line of defense between a country engaging in torture or not, the battle is already lost.

        • Clyde:

          Good point. Except that I don’t believe in incarceration. I think there are more appropriate punishments such as community service, house arrest, freedom restricted by electronic ankle monitor, etc.

  3. A bunch of eggheads in Law school admissions screwed up, so let’s rant about John Yoo (who does, in fact, have connections to Hoover).

    I’ll go ahead and reset my “days since last Hoover reference” to 0.

  4. After I composed a contribution to this blog earlier today about prominent people and what universities are connected with them, I, as is my wont when the weather is nasty, went back to watching Alex Jones. One of his guests today was Steve Kirsch,
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Kirsch
    who is a double graduate of MIT and
    “In 2007, his personal fortune was estimated at $230 million.” And, “In May 2021, Kirsch posted an article online making an unfounded claim that COVID-19 vaccines affect fertility, while also underplaying the vaccines’ ability to prevent illness and death.” Unlike Steve Bannon and Alex Jones, Steve Kirsch appears as normal looking as John Yoo.

    • The “OMG they’re sterilizing us” has been simmering in the populist swamps for a while now. It ranges from the silly (“globalists wants us to like butts over breasts so we prefer non-impregnating sex practices” — trying to keep it blog friendly) to the bizarre (“Bill Gates’ vaccines will turn us gay and/or sterile”). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s often pushed by the xenophobic “X group is replacing us!” crowd, but given that the anti vax movement was initially more a lefty / environmental thing, you can color me a bit surprised at the current state of things.

      • The:

        Indeed, given that the vaccine was put together when a Republican was president, many people have been surprised that anti-vaccine attitudes have been associated with the political right rather than the left.

        This anti-vax thing appears to be a byproduct of many on the political right trying in 2020 to deny the importance of covid, leading to an opposition to medical expertise more generally. But, yeah, even if there’s some internal logic to this political development, it still seems pretty surprising, especially when you get people on the far right attacking pharmaceutical companies. Even when Trump was president, it seems that saying that covid was no big deal was a bigger applause line than saying that American ingenuity was creating a miracle vaccine.

        • Andrew –

          > This anti-vax thing appears to be a byproduct of many on the political right trying in 2020 to deny the importance of covid, leading to an opposition to medical expertise more generally.

          I think if anything, the causality is reversed. Opposition to medical expertise led to the view that COVID is a flu-like nothingburger.

          There has been a longer-term trend on the right to oppose medical “expertise,” and scientific expertise more generally, for quite a while now. IOW, medical expertise arising out of academic and/or government institutions necessarily has a left-wing bias.

          We saw an interesting pattern play out with Ebola…where oppostion to medical expertise on the right led to an exaggerated view of the threat – as opposed to a view that it was the threat that was exaggerated, with COVID.

          Trump was completely on board with questioning medical expertise on Ebola just as he was with COVID early on.

          His approach with vaccines looks like it runs contrary to that theme, but he saw vaccines as a means for personal/political gain. For him the bottom line is always personal/political gain – above any other consideration. With that in mind he can easily switch from opposing medical expertise on Ebola to generally opposing medical expertise on COVID, and even opposing medical expertise on the link between autism and vaccines, except if he thinks siding with medical expertise on vaccines will improve his popularity standing – as with COVID vaccines.

  5. Having thought some more on this I find admissions generally speaking to be a rather difficult problem. There are a number of competing interests that pull in opposite directions that seem rather hard to balance (e.g. obtaining the best class you can, not underenrolling, not overenrolling, etc). Moreover, for schools that care about their ranking – in the states most law schools certainly do – they pay strict attention to factors in the alchemy that produce the rankings; one of which is acceptance rate (defined as # applicants accepted / total # applicants). Keeping this rate low is good for one’s ranking and therefore provides incentive to not accept overly stellar candidates out of fear they will decline and attend a higher ranked school. This is the so-called yield protection. Some controversy in how much it actually impacts decisions, but still, another competing interest.

    I suspect an even greater difficulty in admissions is the impact of world affairs / attitudes. When attitudes change about professional schooling especially rapidly, what is an admissions office to do? If they even know a shift has happened at all all they can really say is their models are no longer applicable. But where does that leave them? They have to admit a class after all! If they are too restrictive in the face of uncertainty they might not fill their class with first-rate candidates; and either have to live with a smaller class or else accept people that didn’t get in elsewhere. If they don’t account for it at all then they might overenroll, and with limited physical space that’s a disaster.

    The margin for error is so small. I mean if you have a class of 110 then 130 students accepting your offer is a real problem. But schools may have to extend 200+ offers in a typical year to fill 110 spots. Doesn’t take a big yield change to take you over the limit. And on the other side, having 90 admits for a typical class of 110 is a terrible problem given that the school has a fixed amount of resources committed to this cohort over a 3-year period; and those resources now need to be spread over ~ 20% less people (could take the school from profitability to losing $$).

    And this is just dealing with acceptance rate. Nevermind how this interplays with other outcomes of interest (e.g. will those you admit do well in the real world <- also need to define "well"). Admissions is tough.

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