Books / Anyone Can Beat the Law School Collapse / Appendix A. The Applicant Stress-Test Scorecard

Appendix A. The Applicant Stress-Test Scorecard

Anyone Can Beat the Law School Collapse  ·  From the back of the book  ·  2 min read  ·  by Steve Schwartz
This appendix is a 6-line scorecard for stress-testing any law school before you commit, scored green, yellow, or red on each line. It runs through your true 3-year cost against the $200,000 federal borrowing cap, the school's real employment rate from its 509 filing, its 3-year bar-passage trend, the fine print on your scholarship's renewal conditions, how the school answers a direct question about a 20 percent enrollment drop, and whether it's carrying new construction debt with a rising discount rate. The book's instruction is simple: your worst score on any line is your real risk, not the average across all 6.

Run this on any school before you sign anything. Pull the 3 numbers from Chapter 17 and the outcome data from the 509. Score each line green (go), yellow (ask hard questions), or red (walk unless something changes). Your worst score is your real risk.

  1. Total 3-year cost under the new caps. Add tuition, fees, and living costs for all 3 years. Subtract your scholarship. Compare what’s left to the $200,000 federal borrowing cap for professional students, effective July 1, 2026. If there’s a gap, you fill it with private credit, which depends on the school’s outcomes, not your income. Green: federal loans cover it. Yellow: a small gap at a school with strong outcomes. Red: a big gap at a school with weak outcomes.

  2. The 509 employment read. Find the percent of graduates in full-time, long-term, bar-required jobs 10 months out. Green: clearly above the schools you’re comparing. Yellow: middling, or propped up by school-funded jobs. Red: a real share unemployed or working jobs that don’t need a law degree.

  3. The 3-year bar-passage trend. 1 year is noise. Look at the direction over 3 years. Green: stable or rising. Yellow: choppy. Red: sliding, especially toward a state’s minimum.

  4. Scholarship renewal conditions. Read the fine print on your offer. Green: guaranteed for all 3 years. Yellow: renews above a GPA most students hit. Red: a condition that quietly drops part of the class to full price after year 1.

  5. The minus-20-percent answer. Ask an administrator what happens to your aid, and to the school, if enrollment drops 20 percent. Green: a specific, credible answer. Yellow: a vague reassurance. Red: they won’t engage.

  6. The financial-stability flag. Did the school build or borrow heavily in the last 10 years? Is its discount rate, the share of tuition it gives back as scholarships, climbing year over year? Green: no new debt, steady discounting. Yellow: some debt, rising discounting. Red: big recent construction debt plus a fast-rising discount rate.

A free, fillable version of this scorecard is at unpluggedprep.com/cheatsheet.

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Steve Schwartz, LSAT coach
This chapter is from Anyone Can Beat the Law School Collapse by Steve Schwartz, LSAT Coach and Founder of LSAT Unplugged. I've been coaching the LSAT since 2005.
Published July 28, 2026.