How to Get Into NYU Law School: The Ultimate Guide
/How hard is it to get into NYU Law School? Learn the NYU Law School acceptance rate and admissions requirements, plus essays examples that work
learn how to get into nyu law school
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Part 1: Introduction
As a top seven law school nestled in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York University School of Law provides its students with an outstanding legal education in the midst of one of New York City’s most culturally-relevant neighborhoods. This combination makes the NYU experience incredibly unique for legal education.
NYU School of Law has something for everyone. From international law and criminal law, to tax law and business/corporate law, NYU offers some of the best programs of study of any law school. Even if you are not sure of what you want to want to do, it is hard to go wrong by attending NYU. It is one of the best law schools for those looking to enter private practice, especially if you are interested in getting a lucrative job in Big Law after you graduate. NYU also caters to those who are interested in working in service of the public interest at a nonprofit, in government, or as a law clerk for a judge. NYU offers significant resources to public interest students, including various funding and scholarship programs, a special office dedicated solely to serving public interest students, and a generous loan repayment program for graduates who spend part of their careers working in eligible public interest jobs.
In this post, we will cover much of what you need to know about how to get into NYU School of Law, including admissions statistics, application requirements, and some tips on how to best approach the essay portion of your application.
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Part 2: NYU School of Law programs
NYU offers several degree options to its students. The vast majority of its students pursue a Juris Doctor (J.D.), which is the traditional degree associated with going to law school in the United States. NYU also offers a one-year Master of Laws (LL.M.), which is most often pursued by lawyers who received their law degrees outside of the United States and J.D. graduates who are looking to specialize in a particular area of the law. Lastly, students at NYU can pursue a Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.), which prepares students for careers in legal scholarship.
In addition, NYU School of Law also has numerous joint or dual degree programs available to students interested in pursuing interdisciplinary studies, including the popular J.D./M.B.A. program with NYU Stern School of Business.
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Part 3: NYU School of Law admission statistics
With a 2021 first-year J.D. class size of 484 students, NYU is one of the larger top-tier law schools. However, with 104 full-time faculty, 353 courses to choose from in 16 different areas of study, and more than 40 clinics and externships offered, NYU provides a rich academic experience to its students.
NYU School of Law provides a robust picture of its incoming classes. NYU’s first year J.D. class for the Fall of 2023 looks like this:
Demographics:
Students of Color: 47%
Women: 60%
Out of college one to four years: 70%
Out of college five or more years: 10%
GPA spread:
25th percentile: 3.77
50th percentile: 3.90
75th percentile: 3.96
LSAT spread:
25th percentile: 174/180
50th percentile: 172/180
75th percentile: 168/180
As you can see, gaining admission to NYU School of Law is no small task. To put some of these numbers into perspective, NYU is tied for second with Stanford and the University of Chicago amongst all law schools in terms highest median LSAT score. Given this high bar, you should definitely spend a lot of time preparing for the LSAT to ensure you get the best score possible. While a high LSAT score alone will not guarantee admission, and students with “low” scores can still gain admission, you should aim for a score in the 170s.
If you are still an undergraduate, you should study hard and try to get the best grades you can. All else being equal, having a high GPA/LSAT combination improves your chances of admission.
If you are already out of college or are preparing to take time off between college and law school, you should focus on gaining as much experience as possible. As mentioned above, NYU reports that 68% of its current first-year class was out of college for at least one year prior to matriculating at NYU.
In deciding how to spend your interim years, know that there is no right way to go about it. The decision with what to do with your time is yours alone. That said, here are a few things to consider when charting out your path:
Gain experience to improve your resume. Depending on which area of law you are interested in, you may find relevant volunteer or internship opportunities in your community. For example, if you’re interested in immigration law and live in the NYC area, volunteering with the New York Immigration Coalition would provide experience in a field you could later pursue at NYU Law and explore in a personal statement.
Learn about the law and dive into particular topics and fields of study that you may want to explore once school starts. Take the initiative to broaden your knowledge of the legal profession. Even taking EdX courses on different legal topics can show commitment, motivation, and self-discipline—all of which are required to be successful in law school
Become more well-rounded. NYU Law loves seeing multi-talented candidates with diverse interests. Consider joining a debate club or a language meetup in your area. If you play a musical instrument, perhaps a jazz jam session can help you explore your talents.
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Part 4: NYU School of Law application
To apply to NYU Law, you first need to sign up for the Law School Credential Assembly Service (CAS), which you can access online via the Law School Admission Council (LSAC). You will submit your entire application online through LSAC.
NYU has two tracks for J.D. admissions: Regular Admission and Early Decision. Both tracks use the same application, but Early Decision has a separate timeline.
Applications for both tracks traditionally open at the beginning of September. For Regular Decision, you have until February 15 to submit your application. However, NYU notifies admitted students on a rolling basis, so you should try to turn your application in as soon as possible to have the best chance of getting admitted. If you submit your materials on the February 15 application deadline, you should hear back from NYU by late April.
NYU School of Law’s Early Decision process works a lot like the traditional college Early Decision process you may be familiar with. By applying Early Decision, you are committing yourself to attending NYU if you are admitted. After receiving your acceptance letter, you must decline any acceptances from other law schools and also withdraw any pending applications. Failure to take these actions will result in NYU revoking its offer of admission, so think carefully about whether Early Decision is right for you. Applicants that do not receive an Early Decision acceptance may have their applications moved into the Regular Decision pool or rejected entirely.
To apply Early Decision, you must submit your application by November 15. NYU sends out its Early Decision by late December. If you would like to be considered as an Early Decision candidate, NYU requires you to complete and submit its Early Decision Contract. This can be done in the application prior to submitting it, or if you have already submitted your application, you may also complete the contract and email it to law.moreinfo@nyu.edu, prior to the closing of the application window.
If you are interested in applying to one of NYU’s public interest scholarship programs, it is important to keep track of the special deadlines. As of now, NYU requires all scholarship applicants for the current admissions cycle to submit their completed applications and CAS law school reports by January 1. In addition, scholarship applicants must take the LSAT or GRE no later than November 2022.
For more detailed information about the application process, click here for NYU’s FAQ page.
Regardless of whether you apply Regular Admission or Early Decision, you will need to submit the following materials:
The application form along with an $85 application fee.
A résumé.
LSAT/GRE scores.
NYU now accepts a GRE score in lieu of an LSAT score. While you can apply with either a LSAT score or a GRE score, if you take the LSAT, law schools can see that, even if you prefer to put forward your GRE score.
NYU accepts LSAT scores from test administrations that occurred up to five years before the application date. For example, a score from the June 2019 LSAT is the oldest LSAT score that students applying in the 2024 cycle are allowed to use.
To apply Early Decision, you must take the LSAT or GRE no later than October. All other applicants must take the LSAT or GRE no later than January.
Two recommendation letters.
If you are currently in school or recently graduated (within two years of your application to law school), both letters should be from faculty from your school. If you have been out of school longer than two years, only one letter needs to be academic.
Essays:
Mandatory: law school personal statement. NYU provides applicants with discretion regarding the length and content of the personal statement. However, we suggest that you try to keep your personal statement to two pages, single-spaced, 11 or 12-pt font.
Optional: law school diversity statement. No length requirements given. We will discuss how to write this type of essay later in the guide.
Optional: additional information, if relevant. This includes statements of strong interest in attending NYU and explanations of undergraduate and/or LSAT/GRE performance.
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Part 5: NYU School of Law essay strategies
In this section, we will discuss how to approach writing essays for your application to NYU School of Law. We will also show you some full-length essay examples from admitted students so that you can get a sense for how you can approach this process. Keep in mind that there are many approaches you can take to writing high-quality essays. We will highlight some things that successful applicants often have in their essays, but it is important to tailor our advice to your specific situation.
Some general guidelines to keep in mind when writing your essays:
Focus on crafting the very best writing you can and make sure to proofread your essays for correct grammar and spelling. Since writing well is an incredibly important skill for lawyers, NYU’s admissions officers will absolutely be paying attention to how you write in addition to what you write.
Be sure to carefully follow essay instructions, including length guidelines. Going over a specified word limit will show you have trouble following directions, which is not a good sign for someone to looking to be a lawyer.
Personal statement
To simplify the process of applying to law school, we suggest writing a personal statement that can be tailored to each school that you apply to. Try to keep your essay to two pages, single spaced.
Here are a few things we think you should keep in mind while writing your personal statement:
Make sure your personal statement touches on why you want to go to law school and highlights your commitment to practicing law in the future. While this might seem like a no-brainer, it is important not to lose sight of the purpose of your personal statement, which in this case, is to demonstrate why you should be a law student at NYU School of Law.
Provide a clear example of your skills or qualities that could translate to success in law school. Law students must be analytical, organized, meticulous, creative, resilient, have good time management skills, and be able to synthesize large amounts of information. Using your personal statement to tell a story that demonstrates that you possess one or more of these qualities and are thus prepared for the rigors of law school can be very effective.
Do not be afraid to use your personal statement to tell an interesting story. We like this approach, because it makes your personal statement enjoyable to read while also giving the reader a glimpse into your life story. Telling a personal story helps to humanize you to your reader, which can help them feel connected to your application.
Pay close attention to your essay structure. Avoid using long words and sentence structures. Each sentence should be succinct and clear. Also use good transitions between paragraphs so that your essay reads smoothly, and your reader is able to easily keep track of the key points you are trying to convey.
Below is an example of what our student, Elan, wrote to get into NYU School of Law (Note: some identifying details have been changed to protect the writer’s privacy.):
At the age of 4, I had presumptively decided to dedicate myself to law enforcement. I roamed my childhood home imitating my favorite detective, Columbo, convinced that I was closing in on bad guys. At age 7, when a rock was mysteriously thrown through the back windshield of my mother’s car in our south Atlanta neighborhood, I was the first to investigate and draw up the usual suspects. At age 13, I decided that I would pursue a career as a forensic profiler for the FBI. I dreamed of wearing a badge, like my hero Columbo, to signify my membership as a dutiful public servant. By this time, my mother and I had left Atlanta for a small, predominantly white town in Texas. At 17, I momentarily reconsidered my plans when I mentioned Rodney King in my senior English class, only to be met with silence by my peers, who had never heard of him. Perhaps their parents had not warned them about police violence as mine had. I briefly considered that their experiences with law enforcement, directly or indirectly, would always be different than mine. And still, despite my brief reservation, my commitment to federal law enforcement was unwavering.
At age 19, my conceptions and career plans collapsed around me. Since moving to New York for college, I had attended numerous forums, lectures, and panels on the intersection of two issues I was intimately but naively familiar with—criminal justice and racial prejudice. My rural Texas hometown never discussed “mass incarceration,” “mandatory minimums,” or “stop-and- frisk.” I was not aware of how severely racial prejudice inundated the criminal justice system, and I panicked at the revelation that it was so powerful and institutionalized as to be written into law.
Despite my childhood convictions, my conceptions of good and bad guys had changed. I had been conditioned to believe that the delineations were clear—those who executed the law and those who disobeyed it—the good and the bad. I discovered, however, that sometimes those with badges, shiny degrees, and high-ranking positions are the bad guys. Sometimes the bad guys have power, authority, wealth, and societal respect. They sometimes sit in boardrooms and county seats. They receive awards and accolades. They stand in court. They even become president.
And the good guys—sometimes the good guys can be found in federal prison for minor drug possession or spending six years at Rikers Island awaiting trial for a crime for which they have not been proven guilty. They are sometimes sixteen-year-old boys in detention centers, who are considered “delinquent” because their teachers do not possess the cultural competency to understand that the violence they face at home and in their neighborhood causes them to act out in class. Sometimes they are fathers killed in dark stairwells because their skin color is inherently threatening. They are women who, by merely speaking up, threaten the power and authority of men and are thus considered “disobedient” or “noncompliant,” warranting a criminal penalty that will keep them subdued. They are the wrongly convicted who have lost years of their life, dignity, and sanity after being punished for crimes they did not commit. They are arrested for being too poor to afford the subway fare. They are subject to societal and legal ostracism because they have been labeled “undocumented,” “delinquent,” and “criminal.”
At 19, I decided that I would not work for the FBI. I felt far more compelled to advocate for those who fall victim to a legal system that targets, marginalizes, and disenfranchises them. My current position in the Public Corruption Unit of the County District Attorney’s Office has allowed me the unique opportunity to witness how the system operates in practice so that I am ultimately equipped to challenge it. I am confident that my career trajectory will allow me to bring both attention and solutions to the various issues plaguing policing, prosecution, and incarceration. Not only will I give voice to these issues, drawing from my personal and professional experiences, but I intend to avidly defend those suppressed and overshadowed by abuses of authority.
At age 23, I recognize the glaring contradiction in the understanding of justice I had as a girl. Distinctions of “good” and “bad” are not black and white, nor are they all encompassing, nor do they wholly quantify a person. That said, as these labels tend to traditionally exist in the criminal justice system, they often differ dramatically from the surface perception. They perpetuate a system that is deeply prejudicial and flawed. As it turns out, I spend every day at my job investigating and analyzing “bad guys,” just as I imagined when I was a little girl. Unfortunately, they are successfully posing as good ones.
Some things we like about Elan’s personal statement:
Elan uses her essay to tell a story about how her childhood interest in law enforcement and desire to pursue a career in criminal justice evolved as she grew older. She details how specific experiences in her life provided nuance to her “simplistic” childhood worldview of criminal justice and complicated her understanding of the law. Through this narrative, she lets her reader know that she has a genuine interest in the law and helps the reader to imagine how she could fit in at law school given her interests.
Elan conveys her story through a well-structured, easy-to-follow narrative. The progression of her essay follows the chronological development of her views on law enforcement. In the end, she relates all of her development back to the views she held as a child, which really drives home how her thinking and understanding regarding the topic of her essay has developed.
Elan’s personal statement is bold. The topic she discusses is not an easy one, but she covers it very well. Her writing gives her readers a genuine look into who she is as a person, which could really help set her apart from applicants who write about more generic topics.
Optional essays (Diversity Statement)
Like most top law schools, NYU allows applicants to include optional essays with their application. These essays can cover topics not addressed in your personal statement that will help the admissions committee gain a better understanding of who you are as a person. We encourage all applicants to consider writing supplemental essays—especially what we like to refer to as diversity statements. These essays give you the chance to highlight what makes you unique and can cover a wide range of topics such as race, gender, sexuality, or particular interests that you have.
If you are unsure if writing a diversity is the right thing for you to do, we suggest reading our guide to writing law school diversity statements and guide to law school admissions, which cover how to approach this decision.
If you choose to write a diversity statement, here are a few things we think you should keep in mind:
Feel free to think big. Diversity includes more than the traditional concepts of race, gender, and sexuality. While there is nothing wrong with focusing on those areas, taking time to also highlight other areas of diversity could help set your essay apart from all of the others that admissions officers will read. Pursuing this strategy also opens up the diversity statement to those who might not qualify as “diverse” in one of the traditional areas. Some other examples of diversity include service in law enforcement or military, living with a chronic illness or disability, competing in sports professionally, or growing up in another country. We suggest that you attempt to write a diversity statement if at all possible.
Emphasize why diversity is important to you and how it will influence how you show up in the classroom and law school community. Law schools like applicants who will be engaged and active members of their student bodies. You can use your diversity statement to show your readers how the kind of impact you will have during your three years in school.
If you have an interest in the law (or think you have an interest) and tie it into your diversity essay, we recommend you do so. If you end up changing your mind once you get into the school of your choice, that is totally fine!
Below, we have included a diversity statement from Anthony, who was also admitted to NYU School of Law (Note: some identifying details have been changed to protect the writer’s privacy.):
My mother, her mother, and her three siblings all live within a half-hour’s drive of one another outside of Washington, D.C., and throughout my childhood, I saw my cousins and grandparents almost every day. My close-knit family was therefore very surprised that I did not take a job in the city after earning my graduate degree, but instead decided to work abroad. Just as I was the first and only person in my family to attend a predominantly white institution for college, I am the first to work internationally. They have all but given up on trying to convince me to stick around.
At this point, I am used to being different. As I have pursued a career in foreign affairs, I have learned to grapple with and move past the challenges of being a Black American in spaces where others like me are few and far in between. I have been called a racial slur to my face more times abroad than I have been in the United States, but I still relish the opportunity to immerse myself in other cultures and societies. Similarly, while I was initially distracted and sometimes discouraged by being the only African American in meetings while working in the federal government, I eventually learned to block out those thoughts and focus on the task at hand.
At times that self-consciousness reemerges as I question whether my aspiration to facilitate political stabilization in other conflict-affected countries is justified given the persistent institutional racism within my own. I was dispirited when learning of Trayvon Martin’s murder while I researched education policy in South Africa and of Philando Castile’s killing as I soaked in the beauty of Jerusalem’s Old City, for instance. Nevertheless, I am confident of the path to which I am called, and conquering my doubts has strengthened my conviction that fighting against injustice anywhere is guarding justice everywhere. Now, as I prepare to enter law school, I know my independence of thought and self-assurance in my calling will enable me to challenge common biases and assumptions, thereby helping others to better understand their own roles in promoting justice and peace.
Some things we like about Anthony’s diversity statement:
Anthony uses his diversity statement to bring together how his career interests, life experiences, and racial background have intersected to shape his life. He highlights how these various manifestations of diversity of diversity have impacted who he is and how he will show up in the classroom, on campus, and in his broader life. This combination gives his reader a good picture of who he is and what sets him apart from other applicants.
Anthony’s essay is well-written. He gives his reader a peek into many sides of who he is in a very succinct manner. All of his sentences and paragraphs build upon each other to further his narrative. It is clear to the reader that Anthony is a skilled writer, which will help assure them that he is a good candidate for admission to law school.
Final thoughts
Getting accepted to New York University School of Law is no small feat. To increase your chances of getting admitted, make sure to follow these steps:
1. Get the best grades and standardized test scores possible.
2. Think deeply about why you want to go to law school.
3. Communicate your desire to go to law school in your application essays in a thoughtful, creative way that highlights the quality of your writing and the unique experience, perspective, and set of skills you will bring to NYU.
About the Author
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on law school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into law school using his exclusive approach.
THERE'S NO REASON TO STRUGGLE THROUGH THE LAW SCHOOL ADMISSIONS PROCESS ALONE, ESPECIALLY WITH SO MUCH ON THE LINE. SCHEDULE YOUR COMPLIMENTARY 30-MINUTE CONSULTATION TO ENSURE YOU LEAVE NOTHING TO CHANCE.