How can you measure a law school’s worth, aside from the employment statistics and bar passage rates of its graduates? Another telling sign of its success — or lack thereof — may be its acceptance rate. Generally speaking, law schools with low acceptance rates masterfully weathered the storm over the past decade, keeping their standards high during a time when applications plummeted and entering students’ qualifications sank, while law schools with high acceptance rates fared quite poorly, admitting almost anyone who applied in an effort to keep the lights on.
But which law schools had the lowest acceptance rates and which ones had the highest acceptance rates? Thanks to the Short List blog of U.S. News, there’s a ranking for that. According to the Short List, the average acceptance rate in fall 2016 was 49.8 percent. Among the schools with the lowest acceptance rates, the rate was much, much lower, at 17.6 percent. As you may have guessed, the law schools with the lowest acceptance rates are some of the usual suspects, the elite schools found at the tippy top of the U.S. News rankings. Here they are:
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Nine of the 10 law schools with the lowest acceptance rates fall within the top 10 of the most recent U.S. News rankings, with UC Berkeley (#12) sneaking in to complete the list. Top 10 schools that didn’t make the cut here were NYU and Michigan, with acceptance rates of 29.8 percent and 23.7 percent, respectively.
What do things look like on the opposite side of the coin? For your daily dose of schadenfreude, we’ve done some research to present our readers with the top 10 law schools with the highest acceptance rates. Check them out:
| School | Full-time and part-time applicants (fall 2016) | Full-time and part-time acceptances | Acceptance rate | U.S. News rank (2018) |
| Thomas M. Cooley | 1,067 | 915 | 85.8 percent | RNP |
| Loyola New Orleans | 711 | 603 | 84.8 percent | RNP |
| Thomas Jefferson | 1,107 | 915 | 82.7 percent | RNP |
| Vermont | 647 | 524 | 81 percent | 134 (tie) |
| Capital | 528 | 418 | 79.2 percent | RNP |
| Charleston | 1,165 | 912 | 78.3 percent | RNP |
| Northern Kentucky | 420 | 327 | 77.9 percent | RNP |
| Creighton | 903 | 688 | 76.2 percent | 120 (tie) |
| Willamette | 507 | 376 | 74.2 percent | 142 (tie) |
| Mitchell Hamline | 1,033 | 750 | 72.6 percent | RNP |
Cooley no longer has to settle for being the second-best law school in the country, because the school is finally the best at something. Congratulations, Cooley! As for the rest of the law schools with the highest acceptance rates, the fact that their admissions offices have to accept so many applicants in a world where law schools are merging or closing their doors is a bit… concerning.
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Where does your law school stand when it comes to its acceptance rate? Check out your school’s most recent Standard 509 Report to find out.
10 Law Schools With the Lowest Acceptance Rates [The Short List / U.S. News]
Staci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.