Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law: admission requirements and 509 data

What the 2025 numbers say about Northwestern University Pritzker

Northwestern University Pritzker received 7,976 completed applications for the 2025 entering class and made 981 offers of admission, an acceptance rate of 12.3%. 245 of those admitted enrolled, a yield of 25.0%. The full first-year class came to 250 students, all full time. Total JD enrollment across all years is 776.

Enrolled students posted a median LSAT of 173, with a 25th percentile of 167 and a 75th of 175. That is 14 points above the 159 median across the 196 ABA-approved schools in this data. It ranks 5 of 196 on LSAT median. Undergraduate GPA ran 3.76 at the 25th percentile, 3.96 at the median and 4.00 at the 75th. 16 of the entering class were admitted on a GRE score rather than an LSAT score.

Full-time tuition is $79,772 for residents and $79,722 for non-residents, a gap of $-50 a year. Mandatory fees add $861. The school's own living-expense estimate for a single student off campus is $28,220. Tuition, fees and that living estimate add up to $108,803 for one year, or $326,409 across three, before any grant. 581 JD students hold a grant or scholarship, 76% of the student body, and the median full-time award is $40,000. 18 awards cover full tuition or more.

Of the graduating class that sat a bar exam for the first time, 235 of 256 passed, a rate of 91.80%. The weighted average across the jurisdictions where those graduates sat was 81.00%, so the school ran 10.80 points ahead of the jurisdictions it feeds. Ten months after graduation, 243 of 264 graduates (92.0%) held a job requiring bar admission. 184 joined law firms of 251 lawyers or more (69.7% of the class), of whom 178 went to firms of 501 or more. 15 took federal clerkships. The largest single destination was Illinois with 140 graduates, followed by New York with 35.

Northwestern University Pritzker has been approved by the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education since 1923. It is a private school based in Chicago, IL. No first-year students left for academic reasons in the reporting year. 38 students transferred in from other law schools.

The full 509 record

Illinois has 9 ABA-approved law schools. The Illinois 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 Northwestern University Pritzker 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.