If you’re a prospective law student, chances are you’ve heard about the incredible low acceptance rate of Duke Law School. Just for reference, let’s take a look at the law school applicant acceptance rates for top 25 schools in the country:

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Duke Law School Acceptance Rate

When asked how Duke Law School has been faring since the beginning of the law school crisis, Director of Admissions Mark Hill seems momentarily confused, as if he has to remember what the term meant. That’s not particularly surprising, because institutions like Duke have evaded the worst of the storm. While many schools struggled to attract applicants, Duke got 5,014 and turned most of them away. Its acceptance rate is 19%. The bar to get in is high: The entering class of 2013 had an average undergraduate GPA of 3.77 and an average LSAT score of 169. Though the school is located in Durham, North Carolina, most of the class is from the Northeast (26%) and the Mid-Atlantic (also 26%); 21% hailed from the West, 11% each arrived from the South and the Midwest, and the remaining 5% came from outside the United States.
How did Hill come to be the person admitting all these students? “Uh, well, I was an unhappy graduate student,” the North Carolina native admits. “There was a time when I thought I wanted to be an anthropology professor. It didn’t take me too long to realize that though I think anthropology is really, really interesting, it wasn’t what I wanted to do for my career.” What he did love was his undergraduate experience at Duke. “That got me interested in working in a university setting,” Hill says. “I think that’s what attracted me to admissions in the first place—just the chance to help people find a good fit for their interests and what they hope to get out of an institution.”
Hill started his career in higher education working with chemistry graduate students at Northwestern University. But when an opportunity at Duke Law’s admissions office popped up, he jumped on the chance to go back to his alma mater. Did he imagine staying in the law school world? It wasn’t a given; unlike many law school admissions directors, he’s never been a lawyer. (Then again, he’s never been a chemist either.) But he’s now worked in Duke’s admissions office for 12 years, and “it really is a pretty good place to be,” he says. Most people equate law school with stress and misery, but you wouldn’t guess that from speaking with Hill.

Applicants5,558Acceptance Rate20%Median Undergrad GPA3.78Accepted Applicants Who Attend235

Test Scores

LSAT25th-75th percentile
(enrolled students)167 – 170

Application Process

Rolling AdmissionsYes

Application Fee$80

LSDAS Service UsedYes

Applicants accepted in terms other than fallNo

Transfer Applicants AcceptedYes

Deferred AdmissionYes

Other Admission Factors

Academic

LSAT Score

Undergraduate GPA

Essay / Personal Statement

Selectivity Rating

Admissions selectivity rating94

National Comparison: Overview of FactsRanking

duke law school ranking

#1 in Private Sector Salary

Duke Law is tied for #1 in terms of the median starting salary among graduates working in private practice as law firm associates ($180,000).

#2 in Employment Rate at 10 Months

#5 in Employment Rate at Graduation
Duke Law ranks #2 in terms of graduates employed ten months after graduation (95.6%) and #5 in terms of graduates employed at the time of graduation (91.6%) .

#5 in Bar Passage Rate

Duke Law ranks #5 in terms of bar passage rate among first-time test takers (97.8%), and it outperforms by +22.1% the state of New York’s overall bar passage rate of 75.7%. (A national comparison on this metric should be taken in a qualified sense and with caution, because every state has a different bar passage rate.)

#7 in Highest Tuition

Duke Law ranks #7 in terms of highest tuition among full-time law students ($64,722). We rank from a total of 283 tuition rates from 194 law schools, ranking twice those law schools that have different in-state and out-of-state tuition rates.

#8 in Median LSAT

Duke Law is tied for #8 in terms of the median LSAT score (169) among those applicants granted admission who enrolled as full-time students. The LSAT measures reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, and logical reasoning.

#11 in Acceptance Rate

Duke Law ranks #11 in terms of student selectivity with an acceptance rate of 20.2% among those who applied for admission.

#18 in Median Undergraduate GPA

Duke Law ranks #18 in terms of highest median undergraduate GPA (3.78) among those applicants granted admission who enrolled as full-time students.

#28 in Student to Faculty Ratio

Duke Law is tied for #28 in terms of lowest student to faculty ratio (5.5:1).

#30 in Library Size

Duke Law ranks #30 in terms of library size with 711,681 volumes or equivalents.

#34 in Public Sector Salary

Duke Law is tied for #34 in terms of median starting salary among graduates working in government jobs or judicial clerkships at the federal or state level ($60,000).

#77 in Presence of Minority Students

Duke Law ranks #77 in terms of the highest percentage of students who are racial or ethnic minority (35.8%).

#94 in Presence of Minority Faculty

Duke Law ranks #94 in terms of the highest percentage of faculty who are racial or ethnic minority (12.6%).

#139 in Presence of Female Faculty

Duke Law is tied for #139 in terms of the highest percentage of faculty who are female (35.0%).

GPA & LSAT

References to the lowest, median, and highest GPA and LSAT scores reflect those of the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile, respectively, among those applicants granted admission who enrolled as full-time students in fall 2018.

Acceptance Rates

The acceptance rate is that of applicants granted admission as full-time students for classes commencing in fall 2018. The acceptance rate of the applicants does not reflect actual enrollment rates, a subset figure.

Student-to-Faculty Ratios

The student-to-faculty ratio shows the number of students for that class per faculty member. This ratio reflects the applicants granted admission who enrolled as full-time students in fall 2018.

Bar Passage Rates

The bar passage rates reflect those among first-time test takers for the winter and summer 2017 administrations of the bar examinations. The state noted is that in which the greatest number of the law school’s graduates took the bar exam for the reported period.

Employment Rates

The employment rates shown are those of the 2017 full-time graduates at the time of graduation and ten months after graduation.

Law Library Volumes

The data indicate the number of print and microform volumes, as well as volume equivalents.

Gender, Race & Ethnicity

The data shown indicate the percentage of the faculty that are male and female, respectively, and the percentage of the faculty and students that are racial or ethnic minority (Hispanics of any race, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, multiracial, non-resident alien, or unknown race).

Salaries

The salary statistics are those of full-time, long-term employed law graduates for the class of 2017 at the time of graduation and within ten months after graduation (approximately spring 2018 ), as self-reported by the graduates.

The salaries indicated for “Median Salary Private” reflect those salaries of the 50th percentile, among those graduates working in private practice as law firm associates. The salaries indicated for “Median Salary Public” reflect those salaries of the 50th percentile, among those graduates working in government jobs or judicial clerkships at the federal or state level.

In determining median salaries, jobs classified as “JD advantage” have been excluded (i.e., positions in which the employer requires a JD or considers it an advantage to hold such a degree, but in which admission to the bar is not required).

Fall 2020 Application Information
Application Deadline:	February 15
Application Fee:	$70

Admissions Statistics	2020	2017
Acceptance Rate	20.2%	23.3%
LSAT Score (Median)	169	168
LSAT Score (25th-75th percentile)	167-170	166-170
GPA (Median)	3.78	3.70
GPA Range (25th-75th percentile)	3.66-3.87	3.56-3.84

Bar Exam Statistics	2020	2017
State in which most graduates took bar exam:	NY	NY
School’s bar passage rate:	97.8%	94.3%
State overall bar passage rate:	75.7%	72.7%
School bar pass rate vs. state bar pass rate:	+22.1%	+21.6%

Employment Statistics	2020	2017
Graduates employed at graduation:	91.6%	86.5%
Graduates employed 10 months after graduation:	95.6%	93.0%

Tuition and Expenses	2020	2017
Tuition:	$64,722	$57,717
Room and Board:	$12,916	$12,978
Proportion of full-time students receiving grants:	86.6%	83.8%
Median grant amount among full-time students:	$25,000	$20,000
Average indebtedness of those who incurred debt:	$134,948	$131,073
Proportion of graduates who incurred debt:	67.3%	67.6%
View National Comparison

Students & Faculty	2020	2017
Total Students:	682	668
Men:	54.3%	57.6%
Women:	45.6%	42.4%
Student Racial Demographics:
White:	64.2%	N/A
Black:	6.9%	N/A
Hispanic:	7.8%	N/A
Asian:	8.1%	N/A
Student-to-Faculty Ratio:	5.5 : 1	N/A
Total Faculty:	183	N/A
Male:	65.0%	N/A
Female:	35.0%	N/A
Minority:	12.6%	N/A

Full-Time Starting Salaries	2020	2017
Private Sector (Median):	$180,000	$160,000
Public Sector (Median):	$60,000	$60,000
View National Comparison

Library Resources	2020	2017
Volumes and equivalents:	711,681	704,033

The Gatekeeper To The Duke University School of Law

 
When asked how Duke Law School has been faring since the beginning of the law school crisis, Director of Admissions Mark Hill seems momentarily confused, as if he has to remember what the term meant. That’s not particularly surprising, because institutions like Duke have evaded the worst of the storm. While many schools struggled to attract applicants, Duke got 5,014 and turned most of them away. Its acceptance rate is 19%. The bar to get in is high: The entering class of 2013 had an average undergraduate GPA of 3.77 and an average LSAT score of 169. Though the school is located in Durham, North Carolina, most of the class is from the Northeast (26%) and the Mid-Atlantic (also 26%); 21% hailed from the West, 11% each arrived from the South and the Midwest, and the remaining 5% came from outside the United States.
How did Hill come to be the person admitting all these students? “Uh, well, I was an unhappy graduate student,” the North Carolina native admits. “There was a time when I thought I wanted to be an anthropology professor. It didn’t take me too long to realize that though I think anthropology is really, really interesting, it wasn’t what I wanted to do for my career.” What he did love was his undergraduate experience at Duke. “That got me interested in working in a university setting,” Hill says. “I think that’s what attracted me to admissions in the first place—just the chance to help people find a good fit for their interests and what they hope to get out of an institution.”
Hill started his career in higher education working with chemistry graduate students at Northwestern University. But when an opportunity at Duke Law’s admissions office popped up, he jumped on the chance to go back to his alma mater. Did he imagine staying in the law school world? It wasn’t a given; unlike many law school admissions directors, he’s never been a lawyer. (Then again, he’s never been a chemist either.) But he’s now worked in Duke’s admissions office for 12 years, and “it really is a pretty good place to be,” he says. Most people equate law school with stress and misery, but you wouldn’t guess that from speaking with Hill.
What do you think makes Duke stand out from other top law schools?
The students who are excited to come here value the combination of a top-flight legal education and a pretty relaxed environment. If you look at the objective statistics from the top schools, there are minor differences here and there in terms of employment and things like that, but that’s not necessarily the biggest differentiator for a lot of people. What really makes Duke a good fit is the knowledge that folks here can get a very strong legal education and have good job prospects all across the country—but they can get all that somewhere where class sizes are small, where the cost of living isn’t insane, and where they’re really going to get to know their classmates very well and enjoy the full experience of being a law student.
Let’s say you’re talking to a perfectly good applicant, but you don’t think that applicant will be happy at Duke Law. Would you address that with him or her?
I do think Duke’s a good fit for lots of people, so it’s rare that you would directly say, “Look, this just isn’t going to work for you.” It might be that an applicant has some particular academic interest that isn’t as well-developed here. Somebody asked me about maritime law, and there are schools located near water that have resources in that area, but that’s not necessarily something that’s super standout in our curriculum. But I think a lot of it relates to lifestyle rather than just academic choices. For the right kind of person, Duke’s a great fit, but Durham’s not a huge metropolis. If you want to have a place where you can really be focused on your studies and really be a full-time law student, it makes sense, but if you really have to be in a place where you can you get Chinese food at two ‘o clock in the morning, you might not be as happy here.
What we try to do, with applicants and especially with admitted students, is make sure they get the information on what the experience at Duke is like, what our graduates do, and all of those kinds of things, so that they can make their own choices. That’s what makes this community its strongest: when people come here because they’ve made informed choices and not because they thought it was something else—they’d get here and kind of go, “Oh, I don’t like this, actually.”
How has the law school crisis affected admissions at Duke?
I don’t think it’s affected Duke nearly as much as it seems to have affected a number of other schools. As far as applications go, there was an across-the-board decline three years ago. Last year and this year, we didn’t see as many applications as we did before the decline, but we’ve seen increases. Our career services office is certainly working hard, and there’s more individual work with students than there was seven or eight years ago. Not everybody can just sign up for on-campus interviews and take that route. You need to work with individual people to help them really craft a plan to find a good job.
But we’re still finding that students are getting employed. Duke is not unique in this; there’s a level of school that continues to be appealing to employers, and I think applicants are becoming increasingly sophisticated and informed about outcomes and what they’re getting themselves into, such that they’re looking at Duke and similar schools as good bets. I think that’s one of the reasons our application numbers have at least stabilized. As I said, we’re seeing some increases.
I’ve heard a lot of admissions directors talk about wanting to see candidates who are all very different from each other. What does that mean to you?
We would not want a class of 200-some people with exactly the same academic or personal background. When our professors talk to us about the kind of teaching experiences they want, one of the things they mention is being able to have a discussion where one student can say, “Well, from an economic perspective, you can look at this issue in this way,” and somebody else who has a background in sociology can give a different take on it, and a third person who has extensive work experience in a related field can draw on that. They tell us—and it makes good sense, and I’ve always believed it—that the range of perspectives really enhances the educational experience. When you’re a school with a relatively small and close-knit community, you want people to be able to interact in productive ways, so we definitely do think that’s an important part of assembling our classes.
Are there some non-academic differences you look for?
Different kinds of work experience, different socioeconomic backgrounds—I mean, one of the things I think about when I’m reading applications is the kinds of opportunities people might have had. It’s great to see people who have had interesting internships and volunteer experiences, but I always try to be mindful of the people who had to work to pay for their tuition during the summers or during the school year. I definitely feel like that’s a perspective well worth having in a student body, especially when those applicants have thoughtful things to say about their experiences.