What Applicants Actually Do
In the 2026 admission cycle, LSAC counted 82,487 applicants and 579,839 applications — an average of 7.0 applications per person (LSAC). Medical applicants, by comparison, average 19.5 applications per person — see how many medical schools to apply to.
The average is a reasonable floor, not a target. It includes people with strong numbers applying to a handful of schools and people who applied before the 2025 surge. For the class entering in fall 2025, applications to ABA schools rose 22% while offers rose about 2% — see is law school harder to get into now? A list that was safe two years ago is thinner today.
Why the Mix Matters More Than the Count
Your chance of at least one acceptance is one minus the chance that every school says no. That makes the number of likely admits on your list far more important than its length. The illustration below assumes each school decides independently — reaches at a 10% chance, targets at 40%, safeties at 80%:
| A 10-school list | Chance of at least one admit (illustrative) |
|---|---|
| 10 reaches | 65.1% |
| 8 reaches + 2 targets | 84.5% |
| 8 reaches + 1 target + 1 safety | 94.8% |
| 4 reaches + 4 targets + 2 safeties | 99.7% |
These figures are arithmetic on assumed odds, not data. Real decisions are correlated — the same LSAT, GPA and essays are read at every school — so true odds of at least one admit are lower than the independent math suggests, especially for lists full of reaches. The ranking of the four lists holds either way.
Swapping a single target for a safety moves the illustrative odds from 84.5% to 94.8%. No amount of additional reaches does that.
Your Safety Pool Depends on Your LSAT
Where you can find safeties depends almost entirely on your score. This table counts the 196 ABA schools by where a given LSAT falls against each school's 2025 admitted class:
| Your LSAT | At or above 75th percentile | Median to 75th | 25th to median | Below 25th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 150 | 3 | 11 | 23 | 159 |
| 155 | 23 | 42 | 34 | 97 |
| 160 | 87 | 25 | 36 | 48 |
| 165 | 137 | 16 | 22 | 21 |
| 170 | 172 | 7 | 13 | 4 |
At a 160, safeties are plentiful and the list-building question is which ones you would actually attend. At a 150, only three schools have a 75th-percentile LSAT at or below your score, so applying more widely within the band where you are near the median is how you protect yourself. These counts use the LSAT alone; your GPA moves every school up or down. AdmitBase's law match score weighs LSAT at 60% and GPA at 40% against each school's quartiles.
See your chance of at least one acceptance.
Run your LSAT and GPA through the calculator, save the schools you like, and AdmitBase's list-balance card shows your chance of at least one admit across your whole list — and how much adding a well-placed safety or target would raise it.
Start building my list →A Simple Structure
- Two or three safeties — schools where your LSAT and GPA are both at or above the 75th percentile, that you would genuinely attend.
- Four or five targets — schools where you are near the median on both numbers.
- Three or four reaches — schools where you are between the 25th percentile and the median, or below it on one number.
Go above twelve when your outcome is harder to predict: splitters, applicants applying after January, and anyone who plans to negotiate merit aid, where competing offers are the leverage (law school scholarships). Each application carries its own fees and essays, so the extra schools should be ones you would attend. For the full process, see how to build a law school list.