At St. Thomas, a scholarship offer in your admit letter is not the same as a scholarship you keep. In each of the last three entering classes, more than half of students who started with a conditional scholarship saw it reduced before they finished: 53.9% of the 102 conditional-scholarship holders in the 2024-25 class, 56.6% of 99 in 2023-24, and 50% of 104 in 2022-23. This is not a one-year anomaly — it is the consistent, multi-year pattern at this school, and it should factor into how any admitted student reads a scholarship letter.
A conditional scholarship is tied to hitting an academic benchmark (typically a minimum law-school GPA) after your 1L year, or sometimes each year, to keep the award at its original level. St. Thomas's ABA disclosures report the retention outcome — how many students had their award reduced — but do not publish the specific GPA cutoff or the size of the typical reduction in the data available here, so treat those mechanics as something to confirm directly with the admissions or financial aid office before you enroll, not something to assume.
Sixty-four percent of St. Thomas students receive some grant aid, and the median grant among full-time students is $25,320 a year. But the distribution of award sizes matters as much as the median: 29% of grant recipients get less than half of tuition covered, another 35% get between half and full tuition, and — notably — 0% of recipients receive a full-tuition scholarship. In other words, no incoming student at St. Thomas is starting from a full ride; even the strongest offers are partial, which means a mid-year or end-of-year reduction lands on top of a gap that already existed.
That gap is real money. Annual tuition is $44,730, plus $2,848 in fees, for a combined $47,578 before living costs. St. Thomas's own estimated full cost of attendance is $90,126 once you add an estimated $42,548 for off-campus living. A median grant of $25,320 covers roughly a quarter of that total cost of attendance — the rest is bridged by federal loans, savings, or (increasingly, as of the 2026 federal loan rules) private borrowing once federal borrowing caps are reached. If a scholarship is then reduced after 1L year because a GPA benchmark was missed, the shortfall a student has to cover in years two and three grows, not shrinks.
St. Thomas's LSAT and GPA bands (150/152/156 LSAT; 3.12/3.42/3.65 GPA) mean a meaningful share of the entering class arrives with academic profiles that make a rigorous 1L curve genuinely competitive to clear. Because law school grading is norm-referenced — a fixed share of every section typically lands in the middle and below — a scholarship condition set at a GPA threshold is not a formality for many students; it is a real risk that plays out for roughly half the conditionally-funded class every single year, based on St. Thomas's own three-year track record.
If you're comparing a St. Thomas offer to offers elsewhere, ask three concrete questions the published data pack does not answer: what GPA is required to retain your specific award, whether a partial miss reduces the award partially or eliminates it, and how many consecutive years the condition applies. Then run the math on what your monthly payment looks like if the scholarship is cut after year one — not just what it looks like if it holds. For the general mechanics of how conditional scholarships and school policies work across law schools, and how to negotiate before you sign an enrollment deposit, see the shared scholarship-negotiation guide; but the retention numbers above — 53.9%, 56.6%, 50% — are specific to St. Thomas and are the numbers that should anchor your decision here.
St. Thomas admitted about 60% of its 1,771 applicants for its most recent entering class, filling a class of 431 full-time students (the school does not enroll part-time students). Its LSAT band runs 150 at the 25th percentile, 152 at the median, and 156 at the 75th percentile, with GPAs of 3.12, 3.42, and 3.65 at the same three points.
These numbers are planning anchors, not a prediction of your outcome. If your LSAT score is 152, you are sitting at St. Thomas's published median — squarely in the middle of the class the school actually enrolled. A 156 places you at the 75th percentile, meaning a quarter of admitted students scored higher; a 150 places you at the 25th percentile, meaning three-quarters scored higher. Because the LSAT is scored 120-180 with most meaningful score gains coming from sustained, official-material-based prep over several months (see the shared LSAT-prep guide for the general mechanics), where you land in this band is worth knowing precisely before you apply.
The GPA side of the band tells a similar story: a 3.42 sits at the median, while 3.12 and 3.65 mark the 25th and 75th percentiles. Applicants with numbers below the 25th percentile on either measure are not shut out by these figures alone — holistic admissions files include far more than the two numbers — but they should not expect those numbers to trigger the strongest scholarship tier, given that St. Thomas awards no full-tuition scholarships at all and concentrates most grant aid in the below-half-tuition and half-to-full-tuition bands.
With 1,067 offers extended out of 1,771 applications, St. Thomas's acceptance rate of roughly 60% is on the higher end nationally, and its entering class of 431 is a substantial cohort for a single-campus, Miami Gardens-based law school. A higher acceptance rate does not by itself say anything about any individual applicant's chances — this guide does not make odds-based predictions — but it does describe the shape of the applicant pool St. Thomas draws from and the size of community you'd be joining: a large, full-time-only J.D. class within a total J.D. enrollment of just under 1,000 students.
The honest way to use these figures is comparative: take your own LSAT and GPA, place them against 150/152/156 and 3.12/3.42/3.65, and use that placement — median, above, or below — to calibrate expectations about where you might land in St. Thomas's scholarship distribution, where the median grant is $25,320 against a total estimated cost of attendance of $90,126. For the mechanics of how LSAT timing, retakes, and application deadlines interact across the admissions cycle generally, see the shared application-timeline guide; the band itself, and what it implies about cost at this specific school, comes only from St. Thomas's own reported figures above.
Illustrative: 3-year borrowing at the 2026-27 federal rate (8.07%) over 10 years; your figures depend on your offer and salary.
St. Thomas University College of Law's most recently reported first-time bar passage rate was 87.06%, compared to a state average of 75.87% — a gap of roughly 11 percentage points. That is a striking result for a school whose entering class carries a median LSAT of 152 and a median GPA of 3.42, credentials that sit well below the numbers typically associated with the highest bar-passage rates nationally. On paper, a class with a 25th percentile LSAT of 150 should struggle against Florida's exam. In practice, St. Thomas's graduates have been passing it at a rate that beats the field.
The school's own reporting also cites a separate data point: Florida's overall first-time passage rate for all test-takers was 72.41% in 2024, with an all-jurisdictions overall passage rate of 80.89% that same year. These figures come from a different administration and reporting window than the 87.06%-versus-75.87% comparison, and the two 'state average' numbers do not match each other exactly — a reminder that bar statistics are cycle-specific and should always be checked against the most current release before an applicant relies on them. What both data points agree on is the direction: St. Thomas graduates have been outperforming their state peers, not trailing them.
The school's Ultimate Bar Pass Rate — the percentage of a graduating class that eventually passes the bar within two years of graduation — was 87.68% for the class of 2022. That figure matters because it captures graduates who needed a second attempt, and it confirms that St. Thomas's strong first-time number is not an outlier produced by a single easy administration; the school's graduates clear the bar at a high rate even accounting for retakes.
The data pack does not spell out a causal mechanism, so any explanation should be stated as observation rather than proof. What is verifiable is that St. Thomas runs a substantial academic infrastructure around its JD program: 34 law clinics, all filled; 96 filled field placements; and 474 filled seats in simulation courses, alongside four co-curricular offerings. That is a meaningful volume of applied, skills-based instruction for a school with roughly 998 total JD students, and it suggests a curriculum built around practical readiness rather than purely doctrinal instruction — though the pack does not state that this curriculum is designed as bar preparation specifically, so that link should not be overstated.
A second, more sobering data point sits alongside the bar numbers: conditional scholarship attrition. Among students who entered with conditional scholarships, 53.9% had their awards reduced in the 2024-25 cycle, 56.6% in 2023-24, and 50.0% in 2022-23. In each of those cohorts, roughly half to just over half of conditional scholarship recipients failed to maintain the GPA needed to keep their full award. This is disclosed academic-standards data, not bar-passage data, and the pack does not connect the two directly — but it does indicate that St. Thomas enforces real academic benchmarks during law school, which is at least consistent with (not proof of) a student body that reaches graduation prepared for a rigorous licensing exam.
For an applicant with an LSAT near or below the school's 152 median, the honest takeaway is twofold. First, St. Thomas's published bar outcomes do not suggest that admitting a class with modest predictors has translated into a weak bar record — the opposite pattern shows up in the numbers reported. Second, the conditional scholarship data is a real cost-and-risk factor independent of bar outcomes: a scholarship offer at entry is not the same as a scholarship retained through graduation, and applicants should model their finances assuming a real chance of losing part of their award, not assuming they will be in the retention-favorable half of the class.
Neither the 87.06% first-time rate nor the 87.68% ultimate rate is a guarantee for any individual — bar passage is an outcome of individual preparation, not a school-wide promise — but as a planning anchor, both figures indicate that St. Thomas's bar-passage performance has been a genuine strength relative to its state, not a weakness masked by a below-median admitted class.
St. Thomas graduates overwhelmingly build careers in Florida, and most land at small firms rather than large ones. The school's own reporting flags Florida as the largest employment location for its graduates, and the firm-size data backs up a picture centered on solo and small-firm practice: of the graduates who entered private practice, 49 went to firms of 1-10 attorneys — by far the single largest placement category — with another 15 at firms of 11-25 lawyers and 16 at firms of 26-50. Eight graduates went solo. That means the modal St. Thomas outcome is practicing law at a small Florida firm or as an independent practitioner, not at a national or international firm.
Big Law is present but modest in scale: 7 graduates, or 3.6% of the class, went to firms of 501 or more attorneys. A further 10 landed at firms in the 251-500 range and 5 each at the 51-100 and 101-250 brackets. Taken together, these numbers describe a graduating class of 194 whose private-practice outcomes cluster heavily toward small and mid-sized firms, with a narrow but real path into the largest firms for a small slice of each class.
Outside private practice, government work is a meaningful outcome: 22 graduates (11.3%) went into government positions, and 12 (6.2%) went into public interest roles. Eight graduates entered business and industry positions, and 2 secured federal clerkships (the pack reports no state or local clerkships for this cohort). Across all employment categories, 78.4% of the class held a job that was full-time, long-term, and either bar-required or JD-advantage — the standard measure used to describe genuinely law-related employment outcomes.
Yes — several of the school's most visible alumni built careers squarely within Florida's legal and political institutions. Cord Byrd (JD 1997) serves as Florida's Republican secretary of state, and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (JD 2010) represents Florida's 20th congressional district in the U.S. House. Gaston Cantens (JD 1992) and Juan-Carlos Planas (JD 1998) both served in the Florida House of Representatives, and Jose Baez (JD 1997) built his defense practice in Florida before gaining national attention in the Casey Anthony trial. Ricky K. Patel (JD 2009) practices of counsel at Akerman LLP, a large Miami-based firm — one example of the Big Law path that a small share of each class does reach. Ana Navarro (JD 1997) took her law degree into political commentary rather than practice, illustrating that a St. Thomas JD has also served as a credential outside conventional legal employment.
An applicant set on a large national firm should treat that outcome as a narrow slice of St. Thomas's placement record — 3.6% of the recent graduating class — rather than a typical destination. An applicant aiming to practice in South Florida, particularly in small-firm, solo, or government practice, or pursuing a path through Florida's political and public-sector institutions, will find that outcome far better represented in the school's actual placement data and alumni record.
Yes, in the sense that St. Thomas backs up its practical-training claims with full enrollment: all 34 of its law clinic slots were filled, 96 students were placed in field placement positions, and 474 seats in simulation courses (moot court, trial advocacy, negotiation-style classes) were filled in the most recent reporting cycle. For a class of 431 students, that is a substantial share of the student body cycling through experiential coursework rather than sitting in lecture-only classrooms for three years.
Whether that experiential emphasis translates into outcomes is where the numbers get more specific. St. Thomas graduates passed the bar on their first attempt at 87.06%, well above the state average of 75.87% for the same cycle, and the school's ultimate bar passage rate — measuring graduates within two years of finishing — reached 87.68%. That gap between St. Thomas's first-time rate and the broader state average is one of the more concrete, verifiable signals that the clinical and simulation-heavy curriculum is doing real work preparing students for licensure, even if it can't be isolated as the sole cause.
Employment outcomes tell a more mixed story. Of the 194 graduates in the reporting class, 78.4% landed in jobs that were full-time, long-term, and either required bar passage or were JD-advantage positions. The largest single employment category was within Florida itself, consistent with a school whose clinics and field placements are built around the local legal market. On the firm-size breakdown, most employed graduates went into small practices: 49 into firms of 1-10 attorneys, 15 into 11-25, 16 into 26-50, with smaller clusters at 51-100 (5), 101-250 (5), and 251-500 (10) attorney firms. Seven graduates (3.6% of the class) went to firms of 501 or more attorneys — the Big Law tier. Eight graduates went solo.
Outside private practice, 22 graduates (11.3%) went into government roles and 12 (6.2%) into public interest positions, two secured federal clerkships, and eight moved into business and industry roles. Taken together, the picture is a school whose graduates predominantly build careers in small and mid-size Florida firms and public-sector roles, with a small but real Big Law pipeline, and whose hands-on training model appears to correlate with an above-average first-time bar passage rate for the state.
In 2023, U.S. News & World Report reported that St. Thomas University College of Law was the sixth most ethnically and racially diverse ABA-accredited law school in the country. It's a factual distinction the school has publicly cited, though applicants should treat it as a snapshot from that reporting cycle rather than an annually re-verified ranking.
What's more durable and verifiable in the school's own numbers is its posture on affordability, which functions as the practical access lever most applicants can actually plan around. Sixty-four percent of students received grant aid, with a median grant of $25,320 against list tuition of $44,730 (plus $2,848 in fees). Twenty-nine percent of students received awards covering less than half of tuition, and 35% received awards in the half-to-full range. For students weighing whether a diverse, urban-Miami-Gardens law school is also a financially workable one, those grant figures — not the diversity ranking itself — are the numbers worth building a decision around.
St. Thomas's most visible alumni cluster in criminal defense, Florida politics, and media commentary rather than corporate law. Jose Baez (JD 1997) is the best-known name, having served as defense attorney in the Casey Anthony trial. Ana Navarro (JD 1997), also from that same 1997 cohort, became a Republican political commentator and co-host of The View, giving the school a recognizable presence in national media.
On the political side, Cord Byrd (JD 1997) serves as Florida's Republican secretary of state, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (JD 2010) represents Florida's 20th congressional district in the U.S. House, and both Gaston Cantens (JD 1992) and Juan-Carlos Planas (JD 1998) served in the Florida House of Representatives. Cantens also became vice president of Florida Crystals, the sugar company. Isaac Wright Jr. (JD 2007) built a distinctive story as a defense attorney who secured his own release and exoneration from a wrongful conviction before practicing law himself. Ricky K. Patel (JD 2009) works of counsel with Akerman LLP in Miami.
The common thread is a Florida-centric, often politically or media-visible career path — consistent with a school whose largest employment category for recent graduates is within the state itself.
The law school has carried the St. Thomas University name for most of its history and returned to it in 2025. Founded in 1984 as part of St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida, the College of Law had at one point been renamed the Benjamin L. Crump College of Law before Crump and the university announced, in 2025, a mutual decision to transition the name back to St. Thomas University College of Law.
The pack does not detail the reasoning behind either the original naming or the reversal, so applicants should not read motive into it beyond what's been publicly confirmed: it was described as a mutual decision. Leadership has also changed hands in this period — Alfredo Garcia, the first Cuban-born dean of a U.S. law school, previously served as dean, and Tarlika Nunez-Navarro has served as dean since August 2023. For applicants researching the school, materials and rankings published under the Crump name and those under the St. Thomas name refer to the same institution and program.
A 152 LSAT sits at St. Thomas's median, a 150 is at its 25th percentile, and a 156 is at its 75th percentile — those are the school's own reported benchmarks, not a prediction of admission. GPA medians run alongside that band at 3.12 (25th), 3.42 (50th), and 3.65 (75th), so a competitive file typically pairs a score near or above 152 with a GPA in that range, though schools weigh the full file rather than either number alone.
The LSAT itself has been administered in its current format since August 2024: two scored Logical Reasoning sections, one scored Reading Comprehension section, an unscored variable section, and a separate unscored Argumentative Writing sample submitted online. Logic Games are gone. Most applicants who move their score meaningfully do so through several months of study with official practice material, and schools consider an applicant's highest reported score — so a retake strategy aimed at clearing St. Thomas's median, or pushing into its 75th-percentile range, is a reasonable planning goal rather than a guess. For a fuller walkthrough of study approaches and timing, see the shared guide at /how-to-study-for-the-lsat.
A competitive file at St. Thomas Law is built around where your numbers land against the school's own class profile, not against some abstract national bar. St. Thomas's most recently reported entering class had an LSAT split of 150 at the 25th percentile, 152 at the median, and 156 at the 75th percentile, with GPAs of 3.12/3.42/3.65 across the same bands. A 156+ LSAT paired with a GPA near or above 3.65 places you at or above the school's strongest reported cohort; scores near 150 and GPAs near 3.1 sit at the lower end of the reported range rather than outside it.
Because the current LSAT (in place since August 2024) is two scored Logical Reasoning sections and one scored Reading Comprehension section, with Logic Games removed, most applicants now spend several months working through official practice material before sitting for a score they intend to submit — see our LSAT prep guide for a study framework. If your diagnostic sits meaningfully below the school's median band, it is usually worth one more retake cycle before applying.
Beyond numbers, a straightforward personal statement that explains your interest in practicing law — particularly in Florida, where St. Thomas places the large majority of its graduates — and any addenda that contextualize a lower GPA or an academic gap tend to matter more at a school with a holistic, access-oriented admissions posture than at a highly numbers-driven peer. Build your application timeline backward from your target term using our general law school application timeline guide, and apply as early in the cycle as your file allows, since rolling admissions processes tend to reward earlier completed applications.
The real cost of attending St. Thomas Law is closer to $90,000 a year than to its published tuition line, and whether a scholarship survives your 2L and 3L years is far from guaranteed. Annual JD tuition is $44,730 plus $2,848 in fees, and the school's own estimate for off-campus living adds another $42,548 — for a total estimated cost of attendance around $90,126 per year, or roughly $270,000 over three years before any aid.
Sixty-four percent of St. Thomas JD students receive some grant aid, with a median grant of $25,320 — enough to cover roughly half of tuition for a typical grant recipient, though not the living-cost side of the budget. Of students receiving aid, 29% get grants covering less than half of tuition and 35% get grants covering half to full tuition; St. Thomas reports no students in the full-tuition-or-more band. In practice, this means most funded students are still financing a large majority of a $90,000-a-year cost of attendance through loans or personal resources.
The more important number for prospective students is what happens after year one. St. Thomas's own conditional scholarship data show that of 102 entering students on conditional scholarships in 2024-25, 55 (53.9%) had their scholarship reduced; the prior two entering cohorts saw reduction rates of 56.6% and 50.0%. In other words, roughly half of students who start with a conditional scholarship at St. Thomas see it reduced by the time they reach upper-level tuition — typically because law school scholarships are conditioned on maintaining a set GPA within a mandatory curve, and only some portion of any class can maintain a given GPA target by design. Before enrolling, ask the school directly for the exact GPA retention requirement attached to your offer and model your loan need both with and without that scholarship continuing — our scholarship negotiation guide walks through how to do this and how to push back on an initial offer.
On the borrowing side, the federal loan rules that will apply to incoming students are changing. As of the 2026-27 cycle, Grad PLUS loans are eliminated for new borrowers, and law students are capped at $50,000 per year and $200,000 in aggregate in federal Direct Unsubsidized loans, within a $257,500 lifetime federal cap, at a rate near 8.07% plus roughly a 1.057% origination fee (verify current figures before borrowing). Against a St. Thomas cost of attendance near $90,000 a year, the federal annual cap alone will not cover the full budget for most students without a scholarship offsetting the difference, meaning a private loan, savings, or a larger grant has to close the gap. On repayment, new borrowers will choose between a default Standard Plan — which earns no credit toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness — and the income-driven Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), which is the plan required for anyone counting years toward PSLF. Given that St. Thomas places 11.3% of its graduates in government roles and 6.2% in public interest roles, PSLF and RAP are directly relevant to a meaningful minority of the class; graduates headed into private firm work should plan around direct repayment on a Standard-type schedule instead. See our loans and PSLF guide for the full mechanics.
Whether St. Thomas Law is worth it depends heavily on what you can pay to attend, what kind of legal career you're aiming for, and how you weigh a strong bar-passage record against a cost of attendance near $90,000 a year and a below-median national ranking. The honest answer is that it is worth it for a specific applicant — someone targeting Florida practice, receiving a meaningful scholarship, and prioritizing bar-passage support — and a harder case for someone borrowing the full cost of attendance with no regional tie to South Florida.
Start with the cost side. At roughly $90,126 per year in estimated cost of attendance, three years at St. Thomas runs close to $270,000 before aid. Sixty-four percent of students receive a grant, with a median award of $25,320 — meaningful, but far short of covering the full budget for most recipients. And that scholarship is not guaranteed to hold: St. Thomas's own reporting shows that roughly half of students entering on a conditional scholarship (53.9% in the most recent cohort) had it reduced by the time they reached upper-level tuition, almost certainly because of a GPA-retention condition tied to the mandatory curve. Anyone evaluating St. Thomas on cost should model the scenario where that scholarship shrinks or disappears after 1L year, not just the year-one sticker price.
The bar-passage record is a genuine strength. St. Thomas reported an 87.06% first-time bar passage rate against a state average of 75.87% — an 11-point gap above the Florida average — and an 87.68% ultimate pass rate within two years of graduation. For a school outside the top ranking tiers, materially outperforming the state average on first-time bar passage is a real, differentiating outcome, and it suggests the school's academic and bar-support infrastructure (34 filled clinic slots, 96 field placements, and 474 simulation-course enrollments among its experiential offerings) is doing real work for students who complete the program.
Employment outcomes are mixed and should be read carefully. Of St. Thomas's most recent graduating class of 194, 78.4% landed in jobs categorized as full-time, long-term, bar-required or JD-advantage positions — a majority, but one that leaves roughly one in five graduates outside that category nine to ten months after graduation. Among graduates in bar-required or JD-advantage jobs, the firm-size distribution skews heavily toward small practice: 49 graduates landed at firms of 1-10 attorneys, another 15 at firms of 11-25, and only 3.6% (7 graduates) went to the largest firms of 501+ attorneys typically associated with the "Big Law" salary tier. Government work absorbed 11.3% of the class and public interest another 6.2%, with just two federal clerkships and no reported state or local clerkships. The general labor market for new lawyers is bimodal — a smaller cluster earning around $215,000 at the largest firms, and a much larger cluster well below six figures everywhere else — and St. Thomas's own placement data, with only 3.6% of the class entering the 501+ firm tier, places most graduates in that second, larger cluster. The pack does not report St. Thomas-specific starting salary figures, so no dollar number can be attached to that placement with confidence; treat any salary claim you see elsewhere about this school with real skepticism unless it cites the school's own reporting.
Rank and market position matter for expectations, not for gatekeeping. St. Thomas sits at #168 in the U.S. News 2026-27 rankings, a school whose primary hiring market is Florida — the state where the large majority of its graduates practice. If your goal is a large national firm or a federal clerkship pipeline, St. Thomas's own outcomes data suggest that path is realistic for only a small share of any class. If your goal is to practice law in South Florida in a small or mid-size firm, government office, or solo practice, the school's placement pattern and above-average bar passage rate line up much more directly with that goal.
Put together, the worth-it calculus comes down to three questions. First, what will you actually pay after your scholarship — including the real possibility it shrinks after 1L — against a total cost near $270,000? Second, does your intended practice location and practice type (small Florida firm, government, public interest) match what St. Thomas's own employment data shows its graduates actually doing? Third, are you financing this with federal loans capped under the post-2026 rules, and if you're aiming at a public-service track, have you confirmed you'll be enrolled in RAP rather than the default Standard Plan so your payments count toward PSLF? An applicant who answers those three questions with a funded seat, a Florida-focused plan, and a clear loan strategy is in a genuinely different position than one borrowing the full sticker price on a national-firm assumption the school's own numbers don't support. For the general mechanics behind each of those three questions, see our law school worth-it framework and loans/PSLF guides.