University of Southern California Gould School of Law: admission requirements and 509 data

What the 2025 numbers say about University of Southern California Gould

University of Southern California Gould received 7,204 completed applications for the 2025 entering class and made 805 offers of admission, an acceptance rate of 11.2%. 227 of those admitted enrolled, a yield of 28.2%. The full first-year class came to 228 students, all full time. Total JD enrollment across all years is 650.

Enrolled students posted a median LSAT of 169, with a 25th percentile of 165 and a 75th of 170. That is 10 points above the 159 median across the 196 ABA-approved schools in this data. It ranks 23 of 196 on LSAT median. Undergraduate GPA ran 3.73 at the 25th percentile, 3.91 at the median and 3.97 at the 75th. 3 of the entering class were admitted on a GRE score rather than an LSAT score.

Full-time tuition is $84,034 a year at a single rate for residents and non-residents. Mandatory fees add $1,914. The school's own living-expense estimate for a single student off campus is $32,298. Tuition, fees and that living estimate add up to $118,246 for one year, or $354,738 across three, before any grant. 601 JD students hold a grant or scholarship, 95% of the student body, and the median full-time award is $40,092. 8 awards cover full tuition or more.

Of the graduating class that sat a bar exam for the first time, 204 of 217 passed, a rate of 94.01%. The weighted average across the jurisdictions where those graduates sat was 78.74%, so the school ran 15.27 points ahead of the jurisdictions it feeds. Ten months after graduation, 215 of 227 graduates (94.7%) held a job requiring bar admission. 143 joined law firms of 251 lawyers or more (63.0% of the class), of whom 133 went to firms of 501 or more. 8 took federal clerkships. The largest single destination was California with 181 graduates, followed by New York with 20.

University of Southern California Gould has been approved by the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education since 1924. It is a private school based in Los Angeles, CA. No first-year students left for academic reasons in the reporting year. 20 students transferred in from other law schools.

The full 509 record

California has 17 ABA-approved law schools. The California 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 of Southern California Gould 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.