College admissions is competitive not only for undergraduates, but also for prospective graduate students. Getting into a top law school, for instance, typically requires a high GPA and a competitive LSAT score, among other factors.
With an acceptance rate of 5.25%, Yale Law School in Connecticut was the most difficult law school in the U.S. to be admitted into in fall 2024, according to American Bar Association data collected by U.S. News. Of 4,358 applicants to Yale Law, 229 were accepted.
At the combined 20 law schools with the lowest acceptance rates, about 13.2% of applicants were admitted. By comparison, the average national acceptance rate for fall 2024 across all 196 ranked law schools was about 41.6%, per U.S. News and ABA data.
Yale, which admitted the fewest students of the 20 schools, was not the only one with an acceptance rate in single-digit percentages. Stanford Law School in California followed with a 8.85% acceptance rate – 378 of 4,270 applicants were admitted – while the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School admitted 9.95% of applicants.
The University of California, Berkeley School of Law had the highest acceptance rate among these 20 law schools: 17.3%.
Nationally, among ranked schools, New England Law Boston in Massachusetts had the highest acceptance rate in fall 2024 at 76.27%, admitting 2,588 of the 3,393 applicants. Two other ranked law schools reported an acceptance rate higher than 70%.
Among all ranked law schools, Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., received the most applications: 11,309.
Nine of the 20 law schools with the lowest acceptance rates are public.
California is home to the most law schools on the list – four – followed by Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia with two each.
Below are the 20 law schools with the lowest acceptance rates for students who started in fall 2024. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.
The acceptance rate data above is correct as of April 8, 2025. Don't see your school on this list? See the complete U.S. News Law Schools rankings here. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.
