Huge Application Rise Beleaguers Law School

The Law School is being buried beneath an avalanche of applications this year.

Already the Admissions Office has received 2550 applications--250 more than last year--and it expects a total of 2700 before the May 1 deadline. That figure would represent more than a 17 per cent jump over '63. In addition, the rise is likely to continue to about 3800 by 1966, Louis A. Toepfer, director of admissions, has estimated.

Because the Law School uses a "rolling" admissions policy, a three-man faculty committee has been rejecting and admitting applicants for the past several months. Approximately 700 have already been accepted for a class of about 530 with another 100 to be admitted before the end of June.

The operation of the "rolling" procedure is to have the faculty committee act on applications as soon as they are received, accepting clearly desirable candidates, rejecting those that are not, and withholding action until May or June on a large body of questionable candidates.

With the new influx of applications, however, this procedure has already caused a thorny administration problem and may give rise in the future to a serious flaw in the entire administration procedure.

On the administrative, side, "the present staff and facilities of the Admissions Office just aren't large enough to handle the new applications under the present procedure," according to Mrs. Edith D. Oliver, assistant director of admissions.

Considered more serious is the possibility that with more applications, the admissions committee might have to refuse highly desirable late applicants because it had admitted too many candidates during the early months of the selections.

"No one will suffer this year because of a late application." Richard H. Field, head of the faculty admissions committee said yesterday. Although Field said that he felt the committee had correctly estimated the size and quality of this year's applications, he conceded that early misinterpretation of these factors could lead to inequities.