City University of New York School of Law: admission requirements and 509 data

What the 2025 numbers say about City University of New York

City University of New York received 2,300 completed applications for the 2025 entering class and made 659 offers of admission, an acceptance rate of 28.7%. 212 of those admitted enrolled, a yield of 32.2%. Counting deferred admits and part-time entrants, the first-year class came to 219 students: 161 full time and 58 part time. Total JD enrollment across all years is 695.

Enrolled students posted a median LSAT of 155, with a 25th percentile of 152 and a 75th of 161. That is 4 points below the 159 median across the 196 ABA-approved schools in this data. It ranks 132 of 196 on LSAT median. Undergraduate GPA ran 3.26 at the 25th percentile, 3.54 at the median and 3.77 at the 75th.

Full-time tuition is $15,450 for residents and $25,640 for non-residents, a gap of $10,190 a year. Mandatory fees add $563. The school's own living-expense estimate for a single student off campus is $30,805. Tuition, fees and that living estimate add up to $57,008 for one year, or $171,024 across three, before any grant. 112 JD students hold a grant or scholarship, 17% of the student body, and the median full-time award is $8,000. 1 awards cover full tuition or more.

Of the graduating class that sat a bar exam for the first time, 132 of 201 passed, a rate of 65.67%. The weighted average across the jurisdictions where those graduates sat was 86.00%, so the school ran 20.33 points behind the jurisdictions it feeds. Ten months after graduation, 141 of 192 graduates (73.4%) held a job requiring bar admission. 4 joined law firms of 251 lawyers or more (2.1% of the class), of whom 2 went to firms of 501 or more. The largest single destination was New York with 143 graduates, followed by California with 4.

City University of New York has been approved by the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education since 1985. It is a public school based in Long Island City, NY. 2 first-year students left for academic reasons, 1.0% of the class. 6 students transferred in from other law schools.

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 City University of New York 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.