Commonwealth's most recently reported first-time bar passage rate is 68.93%, against a Pennsylvania statewide average of 78.99% for the same testing period — a gap of just over 10 percentage points. That gap narrows considerably over time: the school's own ultimate two-year bar passage rate, which counts graduates who pass on a repeat attempt, rises to 75.56%. In other words, roughly three in four Commonwealth graduates who sit for the bar are passing within two years, even though a meaningfully smaller share clear it on the first try than the statewide average does.
Part of the explanation is visible in the entering class profile itself. Commonwealth's LSAT split is 147 at the 25th percentile, 150 at the median, and 153 at the 75th percentile, with an undergraduate GPA band of 2.98 / 3.33 / 3.64. Nationally, LSAT score and undergraduate GPA are the two strongest available predictors of bar outcomes, because the same reasoning, reading, and writing skills the test and college transcript measure are also what the bar exam tests under time pressure. A school whose enrolled class sits in the 147-153 LSAT range — rather than, say, the high 150s or 160s — will generally show more first-time bar attrition than a school with a materially higher entering profile, all else equal. That is a well-established pattern in legal education generally, not a claim specific to any one school's causation, but it is consistent with what Commonwealth reports about both its class credentials and its bar outcomes.
The practical stakes of this gap are significant, because passing the bar is the gate to nearly every outcome Commonwealth graduates actually pursue. Of the school's graduating class of 105 students, 83.8% landed in jobs classified as bar-passage-required or JD-advantage — and the largest single employment category the school reports is simply "Pennsylvania," meaning most graduates who take jobs requiring a law license are doing so in-state. The employment mix skews small and mid-size: of graduates in known firm placements, 30 landed at firms of 1-10 attorneys, 11 at firms of 11-25, and smaller numbers scattered up through the 251-500 range, with zero graduates reported at firms of 501 or more attorneys (the Big Law tier). Twenty-one graduates (20%) went into government roles, two into public interest, and nine secured state or local clerkships. None of these paths open without a bar card, so a 68.93% first-time pass rate — even one that climbs to 75.56% within two years — means a real subset of each class spends an extra several months to a year retaking the exam before they can start the job they trained for.
Financial aid at Commonwealth doesn't fully offset that timeline risk. Ninety-five percent of students receive some grant aid, and the median grant is $25,000 — but the bulk of awards are modest relative to full cost: 57% of grant recipients get less than half tuition covered, 37% get between half and full tuition, and the school reports 0% of students on full-tuition awards. Commonwealth also reports zero students who had a conditional scholarship reduced in each of the three most recent years it discloses, which at minimum means no publicly reported instance of a merit award shrinking due to underperformance — a data point worth confirming directly with admissions if a conditional award is part of an offer, since retention terms vary by year and by scholarship.
Commonwealth is also a relatively young standalone institution. It was originally the Harrisburg campus of the combined Widener University School of Law, and became its own independently operating school — with its own dean, faculty, and curriculum — only on July 1, 2015, when Widener's Delaware and Pennsylvania campuses split. That means Commonwealth's institutional track record as a separate school, including its bar-passage trend line, is shorter than that of many peer schools that have operated under one identity for decades.
For an applicant, the honest takeaway is not that a 68.93% first-time rate makes the JD worthless — the 75.56% two-year ultimate rate and the 83.8% bar-required/JD-advantage placement rate show that most graduates do eventually practice. The takeaway is that bar preparation should be treated as a serious, budgeted phase of the degree, not an afterthought, and that an applicant's own LSAT and GPA position relative to Commonwealth's 147/150/153 and 2.98/3.33/3.64 bands is a reasonable planning signal for how much extra bar-prep runway to plan for, alongside whatever academic and bar-support resources the school offers.
Commonwealth accepted 60.4% of the 909 applicants it received for its most recently reported cycle, offering seats to 549 people to build a class of 159 — 125 full-time and 34 part-time students. That acceptance rate places Commonwealth well outside the range of schools that reject a majority of applicants; more than half of everyone who applies receives an offer. That fact describes selectivity, not an individual's odds — a 60.4% overall rate says nothing about any single applicant's likelihood of admission, since the school reads files holistically against its own class-building goals.
The numbers that matter most for positioning yourself are the LSAT and GPA medians, which function as planning anchors rather than predictions. Commonwealth's enrolled class sits at a 147 LSAT at the 25th percentile, 150 at the median, and 153 at the 75th percentile, alongside a GPA band of 2.98 / 3.33 / 3.64. An applicant with a 150 LSAT is at Commonwealth's reported median; a 153 sits at its 75th percentile; a 147 sits at its 25th. The same logic applies to GPA: a 3.33 is the median, a 3.64 the 75th percentile mark. These bands tell you where your own numbers land relative to the class the school actually enrolled, which is useful for calibrating scholarship expectations (see the shared guide on negotiating law school scholarship offers) — it is not a statement about your chances of admission.
Commonwealth's part-time option — 34 of 159 enrolled students, roughly a fifth of the class — is a structural feature of how it builds a class as much as a scheduling convenience. A meaningful part-time cohort is a structural feature that typically broadens who can attend, since part-time scheduling can accommodate students who could not otherwise manage a full-time course load, though the pack does not detail the specific composition of Commonwealth's part-time students. That mix is part of what a 60%-acceptance, non-numbers-only admissions process is built to accommodate: a file with a lower LSAT but a strong work history or upward GPA trend can carry real weight in a holistic read, even though the pack does not detail Commonwealth's specific soft-factor weighting.
Financial aid is distributed broadly rather than concentrated at the top. Ninety-five percent of students receive some grant, with a median award of $25,000. But the distribution skews toward partial awards: 57% of grant recipients get less than half of tuition covered, 37% get between half and full tuition, and the school reports no students receiving a full-tuition award. Combined with the acceptance rate, this suggests Commonwealth's admissions and financial-aid processes both operate on a wide-net, broadly-inclusive model — many applicants are admitted, and nearly all admitted students who enroll get some level of grant support, but very large or full-ride awards are not part of the reported pattern.
Commonwealth carries a U.S. News Tier 2 classification as of the 2026-27 rankings cycle, which is consistent with a school whose median LSAT sits in the high 140s to low 150s rather than deep into the 160s. For an applicant deciding whether to apply, the most useful exercise is not estimating odds but plotting your own LSAT and GPA against the 147/150/153 and 2.98/3.33/3.64 bands, and using that position — plus your own budget and geographic goals given the school's strong Pennsylvania-market placement pattern — to judge fit.
Yes, to a meaningful degree: government work is the single largest employment category for Commonwealth Law graduates, and state/local clerkships significantly outnumber federal ones. Of the school's most recent graduating class, 21 graduates — 20% of the class — landed government jobs, and the data pack identifies "Pennsylvania" itself as the largest reported employer type, consistent with the school's location in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state capital.
Clerkship data tells a similar story. Commonwealth Law reported 9 state and local clerkships against 0 federal clerkships for the same class. That split is exactly what you'd expect from a school whose location advantage runs through Harrisburg's state government and judiciary rather than through a federal appellate circuit hub — federal clerkships tend to cluster around schools with strong relationships to nearby federal courthouses and judges, and this pack shows none in the reported cycle.
If your goal is a role inside Pennsylvania's executive branch, a legislative staff position, a state agency counsel job, or a clerkship with a Commonwealth Court, Court of Common Pleas, or the state Supreme Court, the numbers suggest Commonwealth Law's Harrisburg location is doing real work for graduates who pursue that path — one in five graduates goes into government, and nearly all reported clerkships are state or local. The school's history reinforces this: it became a separately chartered institution in 2015 when the original Harrisburg campus was split off from Widener's Delaware campus specifically to operate under its own faculty and curriculum in the capital.
What the pack does not show is any breakdown of which state agencies, judges, or legislative offices actually hire Commonwealth Law graduates, so applicants should treat the 20% government-placement figure as a directional signal rather than a guarantee of a specific type of state job. It's also worth noting that zero federal clerkships in one reporting cycle does not necessarily mean zero over time, but it is the only data available here, and the honest read is that federal clerkship placement is not something this school's numbers currently support.
The honest answer is that a Commonwealth Law job is far more likely to be at a small Pennsylvania firm or a government office than at a major national law firm. The data pack reports zero graduates — 0% of the class — placed at firms of 501 or more attorneys, the category commonly called "BigLaw." This is not a case of a small number rounding to zero; it is a flat zero in the reported cycle.
Where graduates actually land is concentrated at the small end of the firm-size spectrum. Among the reported firm placements, 30 graduates went to firms of 1-10 attorneys, another 11 to firms of 11-25 attorneys, and smaller numbers scattered across 26-50 (4), 51-100 (2), 101-250 (5), and 251-500 (2) attorney firms. Add those together and roughly 54 graduates took firm jobs, with more than half of that group — 30 of 54 — at firms of ten attorneys or fewer. That is the practical center of gravity for a Commonwealth Law legal career: solo and small-firm practice, not a large-firm associate track.
Outside of law firms, government employment absorbed 21 graduates (20% of the class), a handful — 4 graduates — moved into business and industry roles, and 2 graduates (1.9%) took public interest positions. Across the graduating class of 105, 83.8% obtained employment that was full-time, long-term, and either bar-passage-required or JD-advantage — a broad category that includes traditional attorney jobs as well as law-related roles that value but do not strictly require a J.D.
If your target is a large corporate law firm, national litigation boutique, or a Big Law summer associate track, the reported numbers do not support treating Commonwealth Law as a pipeline to that outcome — the class produced zero placements in that category. If instead your goal is a Pennsylvania-based small-firm practice, solo practice, in-house or business role, or a state government position, the employment mix lines up much more closely with what actual graduates are doing. Applicants should weigh the cost of the degree against this realistic employment profile rather than against a hypothetical large-firm salary, since the data pack gives no indication that large-firm hiring is part of this school's current outcomes.
Ninety-five percent of Commonwealth's J.D. students receive some form of grant, which is a strikingly high figure — but the school's own reporting leaves the actual sticker price hard to pin down, and that gap matters for anyone trying to budget realistically.
Here is what the data actually shows. Of students receiving grants, 57% get an award covering less than half of tuition, and 37% get an award covering between half and full tuition. Notably, 0% of grant recipients receive a full-tuition award — so at Commonwealth, a "full ride" essentially does not appear in the current aid distribution. The median grant among full-time students is $25,000 a year, which is a useful anchor for comparing any offer you receive against the school's reported distribution, though the pack does not let us correlate grant size with individual LSAT or GPA position.
What the pack does not give us is equally important to name honestly: the published annual tuition figure and a full cost-of-attendance estimate are not available in this data set. What we do have is a living-expense estimate for students living off campus, budgeted at $32,862 for the year — a number that, combined with actual tuition (which you should confirm directly from Commonwealth's financial aid office or its ABA 509 disclosure before enrolling), forms your real cost of attendance. Any total cost figure you see elsewhere should be checked against the school's current published numbers rather than assumed from prior-year data, since these figures shift year to year.
The pack also reports on conditional scholarship retention — whether students who receive a merit scholarship keep it if their grades slip below a GPA threshold — for the 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-25 entering classes. In each of those years, the entering and reduced-scholarship figures are reported as zero. That could mean Commonwealth has no meaningful scholarship "cliff" tied to class rank, or it could reflect a gap in how this particular figure was reported; the data as provided does not let us distinguish between those two explanations with confidence, so treat this specific point as unverified and ask the admissions office directly how (or whether) merit awards are tied to maintaining a set GPA.
Putting the numbers together: a Commonwealth admit is very likely to see some grant money — 95% of the class does — and the most common outcome is a partial award below the half-tuition mark, with a meaningful minority landing between half and full tuition. Because no one in the reported data receives a full ride, and because tuition and total cost-of-attendance figures are not confirmed in this pack, the responsible move for any applicant is to request a written net-price estimate that adds Commonwealth's actual current tuition, fees, and the $32,862 living estimate together, rather than relying on any single number in isolation. For the general mechanics of comparing and negotiating scholarship offers across schools, see our scholarship-negotiation guide, and for how federal loan caps interact with whatever gap remains after grants, see our loans and PSLF guide — both are generic frameworks you should apply to Commonwealth's specific, verified numbers rather than to any estimate here.
Commonwealth builds a substantial share of its curriculum around hands-on learning, with simulation courses drawing the heaviest enrollment of the three experiential tracks the school reports. In the most recent reporting period, 255 student enrollments were filled in simulation courses — role-play and skills-based classes that mimic practice tasks like negotiation, drafting, or client counseling without a live client — making simulations the largest single category of experiential learning at the school by volume.
Field placements, where students work under supervision at an outside employer such as a government office, court, or legal organization for credit, filled 137 seats. That is a large number relative to Commonwealth's total J.D. enrollment of 411 students, suggesting field placements are a routine, widely used part of the path through the degree rather than a niche option for a handful of students each year.
Law clinics show a different pattern. The school reports 72 available clinic seats but only 31 filled, meaning roughly 43% of clinic capacity was used in the reporting period. That gap could reflect several things the pack doesn't specify — clinics offered but not fully enrolled, seats reserved across multiple practice areas with uneven student demand, or scheduling constraints for a program serving both full-time and part-time students. Because the pack does not name Commonwealth's specific clinics or their subject-matter focus, applicants who want to know whether a particular practice area (family law, criminal defense, tax, or otherwise) has a live clinic in a given year should confirm directly with the school rather than assume based on the aggregate numbers here.
Beyond clinics, placements, and simulations, Commonwealth reports 8 co-curricular offerings — extracurricular programs such as competition teams or practice-focused student organizations — though the pack does not break out what those eight offerings are.
Taken together, the numbers point to a curriculum where structured field placements and simulation courses do most of the heavy lifting in exposing students to practice skills, with a smaller but real live-client clinic program layered on top. For context on where graduates land afterward, 83.8% of Commonwealth's graduates were employed in full-time, long-term positions requiring bar passage or a J.D. advantage — a figure that sits alongside this experiential footprint but is reported separately in the school's outcomes data and shouldn't be read as proof of a causal link between any one clinic or simulation course and a specific job outcome.
Commonwealth became a fully independent law school on July 1, 2015, when Widener University split its single law school into two separate institutions — meaning the school you'd apply to today has run its own admissions, faculty, and curriculum for about a decade, not since its more distant 1971 origin.
The lineage matters for context: the law school began in 1971 as the Delaware Law School, affiliated with Widener University in 1975, and was renamed Widener University School of Law in 1989 when a second campus was added in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. For over two decades, the Harrisburg and Delaware campuses operated as one law school with two locations. On July 1, 2015, Widener split that arrangement into two independently operating schools — Widener University Delaware Law School and the renamed Widener University Commonwealth Law School — each now with its own dean, faculty, student body, and curriculum, while both remain part of Widener University.
What that means for a prospective applicant today: Commonwealth is not a branch campus or a satellite program borrowing another school's identity — it is the standalone successor to the Harrisburg campus, based in Pennsylvania's state capital, and its current reported outcomes, class profile, and curriculum reflect this independent school specifically, not a combined Delaware-and-Harrisburg average from before 2015. Commonwealth currently carries a Tier 2 U.S. News classification (2026-27 rankings), and its Harrisburg location places it in the seat of Pennsylvania state government, a geographic fact worth noting given the school's own data showing 20% of graduates entering government positions and Pennsylvania as its largest employment jurisdiction.
Applicants researching "Widener Law" online should be careful to distinguish historical material about the pre-2015 combined school, or about the separate Delaware Law School, from Commonwealth's own current, independently reported figures.
Commonwealth's reported LSAT range runs from a 25th percentile of 147 to a 75th percentile of 153, with a median of 150. If your score sits at or above 153, you're above three-quarters of the admitted class on this metric; a 150 puts you squarely at the middle; a 147 places you at the 25th percentile, meaning roughly a quarter of admitted students scored lower. These are planning anchors, not odds — GPA, the personal statement, and softs all factor into a holistic file, and Commonwealth's acceptance rate suggests the numeric bar is not the primary gate for most applicants.
The LSAT itself, since the August 2024 reformat, consists of two scored Logical Reasoning sections, one scored Reading Comprehension section, and an unscored variable section — Logic Games are gone, and Argumentative Writing is a separate unscored writing sample submitted online. Because schools consider your highest score, and because a modest jump (say from 147 to 150, or 150 to 153) can shift both your position in Commonwealth's range and the size of scholarship offers discussed below, focused prep with official practice material over several months is usually the highest-leverage move before you apply. For a structured study approach, see /how-to-study-for-the-lsat.
Commonwealth admitted about 60% of its 909 applicants for the most recent reported cycle, and its GPA range (2.98 at the 25th percentile up to 3.64 at the 75th, with a 3.33 median) is wide enough that the file review is clearly holistic rather than a hard numeric cutoff. That combination — a broad GPA band and a moderate LSAT median — means your personal statement, resume, and letters of recommendation carry real weight in how your application is read, not just as tiebreakers.
Practically, that argues for applying with a complete, well-edited file rather than rushing in early with a thin one. Because financial aid at schools with tiered scholarship bands (discussed next) is often awarded on a rolling basis tied to when a complete application is reviewed, applying earlier in the cycle — once your LSAT score, transcripts, and statement are all genuinely ready — tends to produce better scholarship outcomes than applying later with a stronger score but a rushed file. If your numbers land below Commonwealth's medians, use the personal statement and any addenda to explain context (career change, upward grade trend, work experience) rather than treating the numbers as fixed. For a cycle-by-cycle checklist of deadlines and what to prepare when, see /law-school-application-timeline; once you have offers in hand, /law-school-scholarship-negotiation covers how to compare and leverage multiple award letters.
Most Commonwealth students receive some scholarship money, but relatively few receive enough to cover tuition in full — so understanding the size and shape of that aid matters more than the sticker price alone. According to the school's reported data, 95% of students receive a grant, the median grant among full-time students is $25,000 a year, and the aid is distributed unevenly: 57% of students receive an award covering less than half of tuition, 37% receive one covering half to nearly all of tuition, and effectively none receive a full-tuition ride. The school's reported annual living-expense estimate for students living off campus is $32,862, which is a real and recurring cost layered on top of tuition regardless of your scholarship tier. Note that Commonwealth's specific tuition figure was not reliably available in the data used for this guide, so treat any tuition number you see elsewhere as something to verify directly with the school before you build a budget.
However you finance the gap, the federal loan landscape changed materially for law students. As of the rules taking effect July 1, 2026, Grad PLUS loans are eliminated for new borrowers, and law — as a professional program — is capped at $50,000 in federal Direct Unsubsidized loans per year, $200,000 in aggregate for law study, within an overall $257,500 lifetime federal borrowing limit. That cap matters most for students in the 57% band receiving less-than-half-tuition grants: if tuition plus the $32,862 living estimate exceeds what federal loans and any savings can cover, the shortfall has to come from private loans, which carry different terms and no income-driven safety net.
On repayment, new borrowers will choose between a Tiered Standard Plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), an income-driven option running roughly 1-10% of adjusted gross income with a $10 minimum payment. Critically, the Standard Plan is the default and earns zero credit toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF); anyone planning to work toward PSLF through government or nonprofit employment must actively elect RAP. Given that a meaningful share of Commonwealth graduates go into government work (detailed in the outcomes section below), this election matters more here than at schools where nearly everyone repays directly on a large-firm salary. Because these federal rules are time-sensitive and continuing to evolve, verify the current terms before relying on them, and see /law-school-loans-and-pslf for the fuller mechanics. If you're comparing more than one scholarship offer, /law-school-scholarship-negotiation walks through how to use a stronger competing offer as leverage.
Whether a law degree is 'worth it' is never a single yes-or-no answer — it depends on what you want to do with it, what you pay, and how the school's actual outcomes line up with that goal. At Commonwealth, the honest picture is mixed and specific: 83.8% of graduates land in full-time, long-term jobs that are either bar-required or JD-advantage, which is a solid overall placement rate, but the composition of those jobs skews heavily toward smaller employers and government rather than large firms. Zero graduates in the reported class went to firms of 501+ attorneys — the 'Big Law' tier that anchors the widely cited six-figure salary spike — while the largest single employment category was Pennsylvania-based work generally, with about 20% of the class going into government roles and the bulk of firm placements landing in offices of 1-10 attorneys. If your goal walking in is a large-firm associate track, that outcome data should weigh heavily on your decision regardless of scholarship offer.
The bar-passage numbers also deserve a plain reading rather than a glossed-over one. Commonwealth's first-time bar passage rate was 68.93%, compared to a state average of 78.99% for the same administration — a real gap of roughly ten points. The two-year ultimate pass rate, which captures repeat-takers, rises to 75.56%, meaning a meaningful share of graduates pass on a later attempt rather than the first. That gap matters concretely: bar passage is typically required before you can practice at all, and a lower first-time rate can mean a delayed start to earning a lawyer's salary, plus the cost and stress of a second attempt. Anyone relying on the Uniform Bar Exam's portability between states, or planning around Pennsylvania's specific bar requirements, should factor this pass-rate gap into their planning rather than assuming it away.
Put those two data points together with the financing picture, and a workable framework emerges. Commonwealth is more likely to be worth it for someone who plans to practice in Pennsylvania, is targeting government service, public-interest, or small-to-midsize firm work rather than Big Law, and who receives a grant substantial enough to keep debt proportionate to the salaries typical outside the 501+ firm tier — since 95% of students get some grant but only 37% get half-tuition-or-better, that grant size varies student to student and should be negotiated and scrutinized rather than assumed. It's a harder case for someone counting on a large-firm salary to justify sticker-price borrowing, or for someone who can't verify a scholarship will hold given the school's aid distribution. For the general framework on comparing law-school cost against likely outcomes before you commit, see /is-law-school-worth-it; for how loan repayment and PSLF interact with a government-heavy outcome profile like Commonwealth's, revisit /law-school-loans-and-pslf.