• 1L Enrollment

  Total students starting law school, whether they start in the winter, spring, summer, or fall, or attend class part time or full time.

• GPA

  You may have many GPAs to your name: undergraduate, degree, masters, PhD, etc. However, only your LSDAS GPA truly matters for law school admissions. That's the GPA that schools report to the ABA and other parties. The LSDAS GPA is calculated by LSAC using all college-level work, whether at your degree-granting institution or elsewhere, before your first undergraduate degree is granted.

• GRE

  The Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, is a standardized test administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) for prospective graduate school candidates. It's designed to assess verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing, and critical thinking skills. The test is accepted by more than 25% of law schools in the United States (as of the 2020-21 admissions cycle).

• JD Enrollment

  The total number of students enrolled at the law school pursuing a JD degree, the Juris Doctor, which is the "first degree" in law. In most jurisdictions, a JD from an accredited law school is required to sit for the bar exam and/or earn a law license to practice law.

• Key Statistical Terms

  A quartile is the result of spliting a populaion into four equal groups. The 50th percentile, or median, is the middle point between the smallest and highest value in a population. The 25th percentile is the middle point between the smallest value and the median value. The 75th percentile uses the same calculation, but with the highest value. The interquartile range is the range between the 25th and 75th percentile (inclusive). A median is a type of average; another common average is the mean.

• LSAT

  The Law School Admissions Test, or LSAT, is a standardized test administered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) for prospective law school candidates. It's designed to assess reading comprehension, logical, and verbal reasoning proficiencies. The test is an integral part of the law school admission process in the United States.

• Part-Time Program

  A part-time program allows you to complete your JD over a longer period than full-time counterparts, who usually do four or five courses per semester.

• Percent Paying Full Price

  The percentage of all enrolled students (not just 1Ls) in a given academic year that receive no tuition discount, whether need-based or not, or with strings or without.

• Percent Receiving Discount

  The percentage of all enrolled students (not just 1Ls) in a given academic year that receives some tuition discount, whether need-based or not, or with strings or without.

• Star a School to Add to Your List

  To add a law school to your list, you may star it from this page. Add a school to your list when you're interested in attending or tracking their performance. You can do many things with this list and add schools to it from all over this site.

• Tuition

  The amount (including fees) you pay a school for their educational services for a defined term, i.e. each quarter, semester, or year. Unless otherwise indicated, tuition prices we list are the sticker price. The sticker price is tuition witout any discount (or scholarship) applied. For public schools, in-state residents usually receive a lower price than non-residents.

• Tuition Discount

  Sometimes referred to as scholarships. The discount is the amount of need-based or non-need-based discount a student receives to attend the law school. These often come with strings attached. When an amount is listed, that amount is the total discount in one year.

For more definitions, view the full glossary.