Thomas M. Cooley Law School: admission requirements and 509 data

What the 2025 numbers say about Thomas M. Cooley

Thomas M. Cooley received 1,323 completed applications for the 2025 entering class and made 700 offers of admission, an acceptance rate of 52.9%. 237 of those admitted enrolled, a yield of 33.9%. Counting deferred admits and part-time entrants, the first-year class came to 237 students: 147 full time and 90 part time. Total JD enrollment across all years is 476.

Enrolled students posted a median LSAT of 147, with a 25th percentile of 145 and a 75th of 151. That is 12 points below the 159 median across the 196 ABA-approved schools in this data. It ranks 192 of 196 on LSAT median. Undergraduate GPA ran 2.67 at the 25th percentile, 3.09 at the median and 3.45 at the 75th.

The school bills tuition by the credit hour rather than by the year, at $1,580 a credit, against the 90 credits the JD requires. The school's own living-expense estimate for a single student off campus is $29,972. 260 JD students hold a grant or scholarship, 57% of the student body, and the median full-time award is $13,746. 6 awards cover full tuition or more.

Of the graduating class that sat a bar exam for the first time, 67 of 130 passed, a rate of 51.54%. The weighted average across the jurisdictions where those graduates sat was 74.12%, so the school ran 22.58 points behind the jurisdictions it feeds. Ten months after graduation, 90 of 143 graduates (62.9%) held a job requiring bar admission. 1 joined law firms of 251 lawyers or more (0.7% of the class), of whom 1 went to firms of 501 or more. The largest single destination was Michigan with 53 graduates, followed by Florida with 49.

Thomas M. Cooley has been approved by the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education since 1975. It is a private school based in Lansing, MI. 18 first-year students left for academic reasons, 9.0% of the class. 2 students transferred in from other law schools.

The full 509 record

Michigan has 5 ABA-approved law schools. The Michigan 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 Thomas M. Cooley Law School 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.