Vermont Law School's own numbers put the full-time cost of attendance at $80,409 for a single year, and its most recent first-time bar pass rate of 67.91% sits 7.55 points below the Vermont state average of 75.46%. Those two facts, side by side, are the honest starting point for anyone deciding whether to enroll — not a verdict, but the reckoning the school's own reporting invites.
The headline cost of attendance breaks into full-time tuition and fees of $56,457 ($55,382 tuition plus $1,075 in fees) and an estimated $23,952 in off-campus living costs. Multiply that single-year figure across three years of full-time study and, before any interest accrues and before subtracting a single dollar of scholarship, the sticker approaches roughly $240,000 — a back-of-envelope ceiling, not a prediction, since the pack does not report a multi-year total and individual costs will shift year to year.
Against that ceiling, Vermont Law is not shy with aid: 99% of students receive some grant, and the median full-time grant is $28,000, which would offset roughly half of a single year's tuition and fees for a student at the middle of the distribution. But the grant-band data show that aid is uneven. Sixty-four percent of students receive a grant covering less than half of tuition, 27% land in the half-to-full range, and only 8% receive a full-tuition award. In plain terms: most admitted students are still paying the majority of tuition out of pocket or through debt, even though almost everyone gets some discount off the sticker price.
Not as reliably as the state's other bar-takers. Vermont Law's first-time pass rate of 67.91% compares to a Vermont state average of 75.46% — a gap of about 7.5 points that any applicant weighing the cost above should register directly, since a bar license is the prerequisite for nearly every outcome the degree is meant to produce. The gap narrows over time: the school's own two-year ultimate pass rate is 76.30%, meaning a meaningful share of graduates who do not pass on the first attempt do pass eventually. That second number is worth taking seriously — it suggests the first-time rate understates eventual licensure — but it also means some graduates spend an additional bar cycle, and additional cost, before they can practice.
Of Vermont Law's 130 total graduates in the reporting cohort, 76.2% were employed in jobs that were full-time, long-term, and either bar-passage-required or JD-advantage — the standard measure of a positive law-school outcome. That leaves roughly a quarter of the class in part-time, short-term, non-JD, or unemployed status nine months after graduation.
Within the employed group, the job mix skews small and local rather than toward the highest-paying tier of the market. Only 3 graduates (2.3% of the class) landed at firms of 501 or more attorneys — the "Big Law" category that anchors the upper end of the national salary distribution. The larger clusters were at small firms: 22 graduates at firms of 1-10 attorneys, 6 at firms of 11-25, and 4 at firms of 26-50. Twenty graduates (15.4%) went into government work, 14 (10.8%) into public interest, and 13 into business and industry roles. Twenty-eight graduates secured state or local clerkships, while the pack reports zero federal clerkships in this cohort. The single largest reported employment category is Vermont itself — consistent with a school whose outcomes are concentrated close to home rather than distributed across major legal markets. For an applicant counting on a Big Law salary to justify the debt calculated above, this outcomes profile is the clearest evidence the pack offers: that outcome is realistic for only a small handful of each graduating class.
The honest way to hold these numbers together is not as a single yes-or-no answer but as a filter for who the investment plausibly serves. A student who receives one of the school's larger grants — the 8% getting a full-tuition award, or even the 27% in the half-to-full band — is taking on materially less risk than a student in the 64% majority paying most of tuition out of pocket, especially given that only a small share of graduates access the highest-paying segment of the legal market. Someone specifically drawn to Vermont's own legal market, to government or public-interest work, or to state-court practice in Vermont may find the outcomes data — heavy state-court clerkship placement, meaningful government and public-interest representation — a reasonably good match for the degree's actual track record, even without a Big Law payoff. Someone borrowing close to the full $80,409 sticker price while hoping for a large-firm salary to service that debt is betting against what this pack's own numbers show: that outcome occurred for only 3 of 130 graduates in the reporting year, and that the bar itself is harder to clear on the first attempt here than the Vermont average. This is not a claim about anyone's individual odds — it is what the school's own reported numbers say about the shape of the class that came before.
None of this is financial or admissions advice; it is a description of what the pack reports, offered so an applicant can weigh cost against documented outcome patterns before committing.
Vermont Law admitted 909 of the 1,553 people who applied, an acceptance rate of 58.53% — a figure that places the school firmly on the more accessible end of the law school admissions spectrum. That acceptance rate alone doesn't predict any individual applicant's outcome, but it does tell you the school is not selecting a small class from an enormous pool; it is building a moderate-sized entering cohort from an applicant pool it accepts more than half of.
The school's reported LSAT range is 148 at the 25th percentile, 152 at the median, and 157 at the 75th percentile. GPA runs 2.81 at the 25th percentile, 3.25 at the median, and 3.61 at the 75th. These bands are the right way to read your own numbers against the school: a 152 LSAT sits at Vermont Law's midpoint, a 157 places an applicant in the top quarter of the entering class by test score, and a 148 sits at the bottom quarter reported. None of this is a probability statement — a score at or above the median doesn't guarantee an offer, and a score below the 25th percentile doesn't rule one out — it is simply where a given number falls relative to the class the school has actually enrolled. Applicants working on their own score should treat these bands as planning anchors, not thresholds; the mechanics of preparing for the current LSAT format are covered in more general terms at /how-to-study-for-the-lsat.
The total entering class is 290 students, split between 132 full-time and 158 part-time — meaning part-time enrollment is actually larger than full-time at Vermont Law, an unusual structure worth noting for anyone assuming a standard three-year, full-time-only cohort. That split matters practically: a part-time student pays the part-time tuition rate ($41,538 annually, versus $55,382 full-time) and moves through the program on a different timeline, which changes both the total cost calculation and the pacing of the degree.
Admission and aid are tied together at Vermont Law in a way applicants should register early: 99% of students receive some grant aid, with a median full-time award of $28,000. But the distribution of that aid is uneven — 64% of students receive a grant covering less than half of tuition, 27% receive between half and full tuition, and only 8% receive a full-tuition scholarship. In practice, this means a strong LSAT and GPA relative to the school's medians is worth raising in a scholarship conversation, since aid is not distributed as a flat, uniform discount; for a general framework on how to have that conversation, see /law-school-scholarship-negotiation.
A 58.5% acceptance rate combined with a 152 median LSAT signals a school where the numeric bar for admission is lower than at the most selective national programs, and where the application decision is realistically less about whether an offer arrives and more about what the offer costs. Given that grant aid is not automatic at any particular level and that most students land in the smaller-grant band, the more consequential number for many applicants may end up being the aid letter rather than the acceptance letter itself. General guidance on sequencing applications and comparing offers across schools is available at /law-school-application-timeline; the pack does not report Vermont Law's specific application deadlines or fee, so applicants should confirm those directly with the school.
Illustrative: 3-year borrowing at the 2026-27 federal rate (8.07%) over 10 years; your figures depend on your offer and salary.
Vermont Law School's own ABA employment disclosures show a class that lands mostly in small firms, Vermont state government, and state or local clerkships — not in large national firms. Of the 130 graduates in the reporting cohort, 76.2% were working in full-time, long-term jobs that either required bar passage or were classified as J.D.-advantage roles, the standard federal measure of a law school's employment outcomes.
The firm-size breakdown makes the shape of the outcomes clear. Among graduates who went into private practice, 22 landed at firms of 1-10 attorneys, 6 at firms of 11-25, and 4 at firms of 26-50 — together 32 graduates, or roughly a quarter of the class, in what most people mean by "small firm" practice. One graduate reported a firm in the 101-250 range, none in the 251-500 range, and only 3 graduates — 2.3% of the class — reported jobs at firms of 501 or more attorneys, the bracket commonly called Big Law. If your goal walking in the door is a large-firm, six-figure-plus starting salary, this data says plainly that Vermont Law is not a Big Law pipeline school: three seats in a class of 130 is the honest baseline to plan around, not an exception to expect to beat.
Government and public-interest work make up a much larger share of outcomes than large-firm practice does. Twenty graduates (15.4%) went into government jobs, and 14 (10.8%) went into public-interest positions — together accounting for more than a quarter of the class, well above the 2.3% that went to the largest firms. Thirteen more graduates reported business or industry roles. Clerkships are also a notable feature of the outcomes profile: 28 graduates — nearly 22% of the class — took state or local clerkships, while zero reported federal clerkships. A state/local clerkship rate above one-fifth of the graduating class is unusually high relative to the near-total absence of federal clerkships, and it signals where the school's placement strength actually sits: state judiciaries and Vermont's own legal system, not the federal appellate pipeline that feeds many national firms.
The pack's summary field for largest employment category also flags Vermont itself — that is, the state, rather than a firm-size or sector bracket, is reported as the single largest concentration of where graduates end up working. Combined with the government, public-interest, and state-clerkship numbers above, this points toward a strong in-state and regional employment gravity: graduates who want to build a career in Vermont's courts, agencies, or smaller legal market have real, data-backed company among their peers, while graduates aiming at national Big Law or large out-of-state firms are pursuing an outcome the recent graduating class rarely produced.
What this means for an applicant deciding whether to enroll is straightforward. If your career goal is Vermont state government service, public-interest law, a state or local clerkship, or practice at a small firm — in Vermont or a similar regional market — the employment data lines up with that goal more often than not. If your goal is a large national firm, the data says that outcome occurred for only 3 of 130 graduates in this cohort, and you should weigh the cost of attendance against that specific likelihood rather than against the more common Big Law salary narrative you may have heard about law school generally. The pack does not break out starting salaries by sector, so it is not possible to say from this data alone what a government, small-firm, or clerkship graduate actually earned — only where they were employed nine to ten months after graduation.
Vermont Law School's first-time bar pass rate was 67.91%, compared to a state average of 75.46% for the same administration — a gap of about 7.5 percentage points on a single sitting. But the school's ultimate two-year pass rate, which tracks the same graduating class through repeat attempts, rises to 76.30%, meaning a meaningful share of graduates who did not pass on the first try went on to pass within two years of graduation.
The two-year ultimate rate is the standard ABA-required metric for judging a law school's bar outcomes precisely because a single first-time score can understate how a class performs once repeat-takers are counted. Reading the two numbers together tells a specific story about Vermont Law's cohort: the first-time gap against the state average is real and shouldn't be waved away, but it is not the last word — roughly three-quarters of the class had passed the bar within two years, which is a materially different picture than the first-time number alone would suggest to an applicant just skimming headline statistics.
It's also worth being precise about what the two-year rate does not tell you. A 76.3% ultimate rate still means that, within the tracked window, close to a quarter of the graduating cohort had not yet passed a bar exam. The data pack does not break this down by state, by attempt number beyond "first" versus "ultimate," or by full-time versus part-time enrollment status, so it is not possible to say from this pack alone whether the gap is concentrated among a particular subgroup, a particular state's exam, or evenly spread across the class. The pack also does not disclose details of Vermont Law's own bar-prep curriculum or academic support programming, so no claim can be made here about what the school does operationally to close the first-time gap — only that the gap exists and narrows substantially by the two-year mark.
For an applicant weighing this school, the practical takeaway is to treat the first-time rate and the ultimate rate as two different planning inputs rather than picking whichever number is more flattering. A 67.91% first-time rate against a 75.46% state average suggests it is realistic to plan for the possibility of a second attempt rather than assume a first-time pass, while the 76.30% two-year rate suggests that most students who do need a second attempt do eventually clear the bar. Anyone planning to practice in a state with reciprocity or portability rules for an admitted score should independently verify the current rules for that jurisdiction, since those rules are set by state bar authorities and can change independent of anything reported here.
Vermont Law School's experiential capacity is best understood against its full J.D. population, not just a single entering class. The school reports 704 total J.D. students enrolled across all years, and it is that broader body — not only the 290-student class referenced in admissions snapshots — that draws on the school's clinic, field-placement, and simulation-course capacity in a given cycle.
Of 214 available clinic seats, 116 were filled, and 79 field-placement slots were filled as well. That gap between seats offered and seats filled suggests clinical capacity at Vermont Law is not a bottleneck: students who want a clinical experience are not competing for scarce spots the way they might at a school where clinic enrollment runs at or near capacity. The pack does not name individual clinics, so applicants should verify current clinical offerings and subject areas directly with the school before assuming any specific practice-area clinic is guaranteed.
Simulation courses show the opposite pattern — heavy use. With 841 simulation-course enrollments recorded, the volume exceeds total J.D. enrollment, meaning a meaningful share of students are taking more than one simulation-based course during their time at the school. Simulation courses (trial advocacy, negotiation, drafting, and similar skills-based classes taught through role-play and structured exercises rather than live client work) are typically lower-stakes than clinics but still build practical skill; their high enrollment volume here indicates the format is a central, not peripheral, part of how Vermont Law delivers practical training.
The school also reports seven co-curricular offerings, though the pack does not specify what they are (moot court, journals, and similar activities are common at law schools generally, but none are confirmed here for Vermont Law specifically, so applicants should check the school's own listings rather than assume).
Taken together, the numbers describe a school that has built out clinic and field-placement capacity beyond current demand, while simulation coursework is the more heavily trafficked part of the practical curriculum. For an applicant evaluating "hands-on" training, the practical takeaway is that clinic and field-placement access appears attainable rather than lottery-based, based on the filled-versus-available seat counts alone — though the pack does not include a year-over-year trend, so this describes one data snapshot, not a guaranteed pattern for future entering classes.
At Vermont Law, part-time students outnumber full-time students in the entering class — 158 part-time seats against 132 full-time, out of 290 total. That split alone signals the part-time track is a mainstream path at this school, not a small side option.
Cost is one clear driver: annual part-time tuition is reported at $41,538, compared with $55,382 in full-time tuition (plus $1,075 in full-time fees). The lower annual figure reduces the amount a part-time student needs to finance or earn in any single year, spreading the total cost of the degree over a longer timeline in exchange for a lighter annual bill.
The pack does not report the length of the part-time program in years, how part-time coursework is scheduled (evenings, weekends, or a hybrid format), or whether clinic and field-placement access differs between the two tracks. Applicants weighing the part-time option — commonly a fit for people balancing work, caregiving, or geographic constraints — should confirm these structural details directly with Vermont Law's admissions office rather than assume a standard format.
A 152 LSAT places you exactly at Vermont Law's reported median; a 148 sits at its 25th percentile and a 157 at its 75th. Those three numbers — the school's 25th/50th/75th percentile LSAT band — are the only honest way to read your own score against this school's admitted class, and they should function as planning anchors, not predictors of any individual outcome.
The LSAT itself, since the August 2024 format change, consists of two scored Logical Reasoning sections, one scored Reading Comprehension section, and one unscored variable section; Logic Games were removed from the scored exam. Argumentative Writing is now a separate, unscored, online-proctored writing sample submitted apart from the multiple-choice test. Because schools consider an applicant's highest reported score, a retake after focused preparation with official practice material can meaningfully shift where you land relative to a band like Vermont Law's 148-157.
Vermont Law's GPA band runs 2.81 (25th percentile) to 3.61 (75th percentile), with a 3.25 median — a wider spread than the LSAT band in relative terms, which suggests the school's file review weighs more than a single number. An applicant with a GPA below the 25th percentile but an LSAT at or above the 75th, or vice versa, is not unusual in a pool this size (1,553 applications, 909 offers).
What these bands do not tell you is your probability of admission — that framing doesn't hold up to how holistic admissions actually works, and no honest guide states an admissions chance from percentile position alone. What the bands do tell you is where you'd sit within the middle 50% of Vermont Law's admitted class, which matters most for merit scholarship conversations: schools commonly extend their largest scholarships to applicants scoring at or above their median, so an LSAT nearer 157 than 148 is the more typical strong position for scholarship leverage at this school. For a structured plan on moving your score before you apply, see the shared guide on how to study for the LSAT.
Vermont Law reports an acceptance rate of 58.53% (909 offers out of 1,553 applications) — a meaningfully higher admit rate than at highly selective law schools, which changes how you should allocate your application effort. A higher acceptance rate generally means the admissions committee is spending comparatively more of its evaluation on file-specific factors — personal statement, resume, addenda — rather than using numeric cutoffs to triage a flood of applicants, so it's worth investing real time in those written materials rather than treating them as a formality.
It also changes the calculus around timing. In cycles with rolling or near-rolling review, applying earlier in the cycle general tends to preserve more seats and more scholarship funding than applying near a final deadline — a pattern common across law admissions generally, not unique to any one school. Confirm Vermont Law's specific deadlines and any early-decision or priority options directly with the school, since exact dates are time-sensitive and not listed here.
Because most law schools distribute merit aid based substantially on where an applicant's numbers sit relative to the school's own medians, and because scholarship offers are often negotiable once you're admitted, it's worth reading a general guide on scholarship negotiation before you commit to any offer. And because federal loan rules changed materially for the 2026-27 borrowing year (Grad PLUS eliminated, new annual and aggregate caps, and only two repayment plans available to new borrowers), pair your admissions research with the shared guides on law school loans and PSLF and on the law school application timeline before finalizing your list.
Almost every admitted student at Vermont Law walks away with some grant money, but the size of that grant is what actually determines whether the school is affordable for you — and the published data gives you real anchors to plan against. Ninety-nine percent of students receive a grant, and the median full-time grant is $28,000 a year, roughly half of the $55,382 sticker tuition (before the $1,075 in mandatory fees). That median is a planning number, not a promise: the school's own distribution shows 64% of grant recipients get less than half of tuition covered, 27% land in the half-to-full range, and only 8% receive a full-tuition award. In other words, a below-median grant offer is the statistical norm here, not the exception, so treat any award letter against that 64%/27%/8% split rather than assuming you'll land in the top tier.
On the question of whether that aid is conditional — meaning tied to maintaining a set GPA after 1L year, with the risk of losing part of the scholarship if you fall below it — Vermont Law's own reporting for the three most recent cycles (2022-23 through 2024-25) shows no students recorded as entering under conditional-scholarship terms and no recorded reductions in any of those years. That's a favorable signal if accurate, but the reporting field is also thin enough that it may simply reflect non-disclosure rather than a confirmed absence of stipulations; verify directly with the financial aid office before assuming your own offer has no GPA strings attached, and ask explicitly whether your letter includes a renewal condition.
The bigger structural issue to plan around is the federal loan ceiling that takes effect for new borrowers under the 2026-27 rules: Direct Unsubsidized loans are capped at $50,000 per year, and Grad PLUS — which used to fill any remaining gap — is being eliminated for new borrowers. Vermont Law's full-time tuition and fees alone ($56,457) already exceed that $50,000 annual federal cap before you add living costs, and the school's own full-time cost-of-attendance estimate, including an off-campus living allowance of $23,952, comes to roughly $80,409 a year. That means even a student who borrows the federal maximum will face a real shortfall that has to be closed with scholarship money, savings, or a private loan — a gap that's larger for the majority of students sitting in that 64% "less-than-half-grant" band than for the 8% receiving full-tuition awards. Because the repayment landscape has also narrowed to two federal options (a default Standard Plan that earns no PSLF credit, and the income-driven Repayment Assistance Plan that must be affirmatively elected), your borrowing decision here isn't just about the sticker price — it's about which repayment track you'll actually be on after graduation, particularly if you're aiming at the public-sector or government jobs that make up a meaningful share of this school's outcomes. For the mechanics of comparing offers and negotiating a better one, see the scholarship-negotiation and loans/PSLF guides linked elsewhere in this guide; for Vermont Law specifically, the numbers above are the ones to run your own math against.
Vermont Law makes the most sense for someone whose target career sits in government, public interest, clerkships, or small-firm practice — especially within Vermont's own legal market — and makes the least sense for someone whose primary goal is a large national law firm. That's not a guess; it follows directly from where this school's graduates actually land. Of 130 graduates in the reporting class, only 3 (2.3%) went to firms of 501+ attorneys, the Big Law category where first-year salaries cluster near the high end of the market. By contrast, small-firm practice is the dominant outcome: 22 graduates went to firms of 1-10 attorneys, another 6 to firms of 11-25, and 4 to firms of 26-50 — meaning the large majority of graduates who go into private practice do so at small firms, not large ones. Add to that 20 graduates (15.4%) in government roles, 14 (10.8%) in public interest, and 28 in state or local clerkships out of the same graduating class, and a clear picture emerges: this is a school whose placement strength runs through the public and small-firm sectors, with Vermont itself listed as the single largest employment destination. If your career plan depends on a Big Law salary to service loan debt, that plan should not be built around this school's placement data.
The LSAT and GPA medians give you a second planning anchor, separate from career outcomes. Vermont Law's entering class sits at a 152 median LSAT (25th percentile 148, 75th percentile 157) and a 3.25 median GPA (25th percentile 2.81, 75th percentile 3.61). Use these only as a reference point for where your own numbers sit relative to the class you'd be joining — a 157 puts you at the 75th percentile here, a 148 at the 25th — not as any indication of your odds of admission, which this school's data can't and shouldn't be used to predict.
Bar passage is the variable that most deserves a clear-eyed look before you commit. Vermont Law's first-time bar passage rate is 67.91%, compared with a 75.46% average across all test-takers in the same state, and the ultimate two-year passage rate is 76.3%. That gap between first-time and ultimate passage tells you two things: a meaningful share of graduates need a second attempt, and most of those who do retake it eventually pass. If you enroll here, build a serious, well-resourced bar-prep plan into your third year regardless of which state you intend to sit for, and don't assume the JD alone gets you across that finish line — the UBE's portability (used in many but not all states) means your eventual bar strategy should be locked in early, not left to third-year drift.
Put together, the framework looks like this. Vermont Law is a reasonable fit if you want a public-interest, government, clerkship, or small-firm-and-regional path — particularly if Vermont or a similar market is where you intend to practice — and if the grant offer you receive brings your net cost meaningfully below the school's roughly $80,409 full-time cost of attendance, since 76.2% of graduates land in bar-required or JD-advantage roles rather than the high end of the salary distribution that would justify heavier borrowing. It's a weaker fit if Big Law is the goal (2.3% of the class), if you need a top-tier bar-passage safety margin without extra prep, or if your only viable financial plan assumes a full-tuition scholarship rather than the below-half-tuition award that 64% of grant recipients actually receive. Run your own numbers against these specific figures — not against a generic "is law school worth it" calculation — before deciding.