University at Buffalo School of Law: admission requirements and 509 data

What the 2025 numbers say about University at Buffalo

University at Buffalo received 977 completed applications for the 2025 entering class and made 414 offers of admission, an acceptance rate of 42.4%. 163 of those admitted enrolled, a yield of 39.4%. The full first-year class came to 167 students, all full time. Total JD enrollment across all years is 430.

Enrolled students posted a median LSAT of 157, with a 25th percentile of 155 and a 75th of 161. That is 2 points below the 159 median across the 196 ABA-approved schools in this data. It ranks 109 of 196 on LSAT median. Undergraduate GPA ran 3.51 at the 25th percentile, 3.71 at the median and 3.88 at the 75th.

Full-time tuition is $26,430 for residents and $32,100 for non-residents, a gap of $5,670 a year. Mandatory fees add $3,320. The school's own living-expense estimate for a single student off campus is $24,814. Tuition, fees and that living estimate add up to $60,234 for one year, or $180,702 across three, before any grant. 212 JD students hold a grant or scholarship, 51% of the student body, and the median full-time award is $7,500.

Of the graduating class that sat a bar exam for the first time, 132 of 154 passed, a rate of 85.71%. The weighted average across the jurisdictions where those graduates sat was 86.24%, so the school ran 0.53 points behind the jurisdictions it feeds. Ten months after graduation, 125 of 137 graduates (91.2%) held a job requiring bar admission. 14 joined law firms of 251 lawyers or more (10.2% of the class), of whom 6 went to firms of 501 or more. 1 took federal clerkships. The largest single destination was New York with 125 graduates, followed by California with 1.

University at Buffalo has been approved by the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education since 1936. It is a public school based in Buffalo, NY. 12 first-year students left for academic reasons, 8.0% of the class.

The full 509 record

New York has 15 ABA-approved law schools. The New York guide compares them on LSAT median, cost and bar passage, and covers the state's admission rules.

Data: ABA Standard 509 Information Report (2025), published for consumer disclosure, retrieved from the ABA Required Disclosures portal on 2026-09-01. Bar passage and employment figures come from the same portal's Bar Passage Outcomes and Employment Summary reports for the class of 2024. Figures describe the 2025 to 2026 reporting cycle for University at Buffalo School of Law and are restated in our own structure; no ABA document or file is reproduced here. Verify anything decision-critical with the school.

Related reading: LSAT score guide, GPA benchmarks, law school cost and ROI, application timeline, all 196 ABA-approved schools, and the Yale profile for the top of the range.