Georgetown University Law Center

How to Get Into Georgetown Law

Georgetown Law admits 15.8% of applicants, with a median LSAT of 171 and a median GPA of 3.93 across a full-time class of roughly 575. The single most important strategic lever here is not your raw score — it is the size of the class. Georgetown enrolls roughly as many 1Ls as Yale, Stanford, Chicago and Duke combined, and that scale changes the math of admission. A class this large absorbs more splitters, more reverse-splitters, and more applicants with an unusual story than any peer school. The rigid numbers logic that governs a 200-person class at a school ranked near Georgetown is looser here, because there are simply more seats to fill.

There is also a second door most applicants never see: the part-time evening program, the largest of any top law school, with a separate and more forgiving admissions profile and the same J.D. at the end. If your numbers sit below the full-time medians and you can structure your life around it, that door is the most under-used entry point in American legal education.

RULE — At Georgetown, the class size is your edge. It softens the numbers wall, opens the evening door, and rewards applicants who name a specific Washington ambition instead of a generic one.

Key Takeaways

• Georgetown Law's median LSAT for the current cycle is 171 and its median GPA is 3.93.
• Georgetown Law's acceptance rate is 15.8%, with a full-time class of about 575 — the largest of any top law school.
• Georgetown Law tuition is $83,576, among the highest in the country, and its aid is more modest than peers at this rank.
• Georgetown Law places 55% of graduates into BigLaw and passes the bar at 93.1%.
• Georgetown's part-time evening program admits on lower medians and awards the same degree — the most under-used admissions door in legal education.

Your Georgetown Scorecard: What LSAT and GPA Do You Need?

Georgetown Law's median LSAT is 171 and its median GPA is 3.93. Here is where you stand relative to the published class.

MetricMedian (50th)LSAT171GPA3.93Acceptance rate15.8%Full-time class size575

RULE — A 171 LSAT and a 3.93 GPA are the coordinates of the median admit. Land on both and you are a clean, numbers-in candidate. Miss one and the size of the class becomes your friend: Georgetown has more room to reward a strong LSAT paired with a softer GPA, or the reverse, than almost any school at its rank. This is factual positioning, not odds — but it tells you exactly where to push.

If your LSAT is at or above 171 and your GPA trails 3.93, you are a splitter, and Georgetown is moderately friendly to you precisely because it has seats to fill. If the reverse is true — a 3.95+ GPA and an LSAT in the high 160s — the class size again gives you a lane. What you cannot do is sit below both medians on the full-time track and expect the numbers to carry you. That is the moment to look hard at the evening program.

Who Georgetown Is For

Target Georgetown if your career is Washington. Not "public interest" in the abstract — Washington specifically: federal agencies, congressional staff, regulatory practice at a firm, national security, tax, international organizations. Georgetown's student body is policy-minded, credentialed, and heavily Hill-adjacent. A large share arrive from congressional offices, agencies, campaigns, or the military. If that description already sounds like you, you are the archetype, and the school's entire apparatus — its Semester in Practice, its externships inside agencies during term, its Supreme Court Institute — is built to launch exactly your career.

Not for you if you need a small, tight cohort where professors know your name by October; if you want a federal clerkship or academic pipeline proportional to the school's brand; or if a low-debt outcome is non-negotiable. Georgetown's federal clerkship rate is 6.7% — respectable in absolute terms but modest for a school of this reputation, and a direct consequence of a class this large. Students who want the clerkship-and-academia track at Georgetown's stated rank often find peer schools deliver it more reliably.

Georgetown in Numbers

MetricValueMedian LSAT171Median GPA3.93Acceptance rate15.8%Full-time class size575Annual tuition$83,576BigLaw placement55%Federal clerkship rate6.7%Bar passage93.1%

Read the numbers together and a clear portrait emerges. A 171 median LSAT with a 15.8% acceptance rate marks Georgetown as genuinely selective — this is a top-tier school by any measure — but its scale is the number that reframes everything else. A class of 575 full-time students, plus a large evening program on top, means Georgetown makes more offers, admits a wider range of profiles, and graduates more lawyers into the DC market than any competitor.

The 55% BigLaw figure is strong and tells you the private-sector door is wide open. But notice the gap between that number and the 6.7% federal clerkship rate. For a school with Georgetown's constitutional and appellate reputation, that clerkship number is lower than the brand implies — again, a function of class size. There are only so many clerkships, and 575 graduates dilute the per-capita rate in a way a 200-person class does not.

The 93.1% bar passage rate is healthy and confirms the academic program prepares students well. Set against tuition of $83,576, though, the outcome demands a cost conversation you cannot skip — covered in full below.

What Georgetown Is Actually Selecting For

Georgetown is selecting for Washington ambition delivered with specificity. The admissions data supports this on two axes. First, the class size makes it moderately splitter-friendly and moderately reverse-splitter-friendly at once — a school with this many seats can absorb a high-LSAT/lower-GPA candidate and a high-GPA/lower-LSAT candidate in the same cycle without distorting its medians. That flexibility signals a committee reading files for fit and trajectory, not just running the numbers grid.

Second, the employment mix tells you what the school feeds. A 55% BigLaw rate means the private market is a primary destination, but Georgetown's true identity is in the government-adjacent slice that the BigLaw number doesn't capture — the graduates who go into agencies, onto the Hill, into regulatory and national-security practice. That is the career track the school is built to feed, and the applicants who name it explicitly are the ones the committee is looking for.

INSIGHT — Georgetown rewards specificity about federal practice more than any other law school. "I want to be a lawyer who does good" is invisible here. "I spent two years as a legislative aide on the Senate Banking Committee and I want to move to the enforcement side of financial regulation" is exactly the file this admissions office is built to say yes to. The school's programs — the externships inside agencies, the Semester in Practice, the Supreme Court Institute — only make sense for someone with a Washington plan, and the essay is where you prove you have one.

What Georgetown Is Known For

Georgetown's signature identity is proximity to power. It is, plainly, the law school of the American federal government — and no other school can replicate the physical and institutional access that comes from being in Washington, at scale, plugged into the agencies and the Hill.

The marquee program is the Supreme Court Institute, which moots every single case argued before the Supreme Court — for both sides, free of charge — and is used by most advocates who appear before the Court. There is nothing else like it in legal education. Around it sits a constellation of centers built for public law: the Center on National Security, the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, and the Center on Privacy and Technology. The Georgetown Tax LLM is second only to NYU's. Curriculum B offers an alternative first-year track organized around legal theory rather than the standard doctrinal sequence. And the part-time evening program is the largest of any top law school — a defining feature, not an afterthought.

Georgetown runs more clinics than any school except Harvard, including Appellate Litigation, Federal Legislation, the Institute for Public Representation, Criminal Justice, Civil Rights, Domestic Violence, and the Center for Applied Legal Studies. Its distinctive traditions — Semester in Practice and externship programs that place students inside federal agencies during term time — are things almost no other top school can offer, because almost no other top school is in Washington.

On specialty strength, Georgetown ranks number one or two nationally in clinical training, tax, environmental, healthcare, international, and constitutional law. It sits in the national top ten in more specialty categories than any school outside Harvard. If your interest is a specific field of public or regulatory law, Georgetown almost certainly has a nationally ranked program in it.

Culture & Life at Georgetown

The one-line version: Georgetown is the Washington machine — the largest law school in America, wired directly into the federal government in a way nothing else can match. That scale defines the culture. The student archetype is policy-minded, credentialed, and Hill-adjacent, with a heavy contingent from congressional staff, agencies, campaigns, and the military. The intellectual style runs to government, regulatory, tax, national security, and international law at the highest level — this is a school where the Supreme Court Institute mooting a live case is a normal Tuesday.

Grading is letter grades on a curve, and the curve is felt more acutely here than at smaller schools. Standing out among 575 people takes deliberate effort — you have to make yourself visible, chase the clinics and externships, and put yourself in front of faculty, because the institution will not do it for you. Collegiality is middling by the school's own reckoning; this is a big, ambitious, professionally driven place, not a small warm one.

The common complaint is size, full stop. Georgetown enrolls roughly as many 1Ls as Yale, Stanford, Chicago and Duke put together, and the individual attention reflects that. Who thrives: anyone whose career is Washington — agencies, Congress, regulatory practice, national security, international organizations. Who should look elsewhere: students who need a small cohort, or who want a clerkship or academic pipeline sized to the school's reputation.

The city is the whole point. Washington DC is the center of American public law and the only city where the government is the largest employer of lawyers. Cost of living is estimated at $33,905; a studio near campus runs $2,000 to $2,600, and students spread into Navy Yard, Petworth, and Arlington to manage it. The trade-off is explicit: you accept the largest class in American legal education in exchange for unmatched physical access to the federal government.

The Honest Take

Pick Georgetown if your career is Washington — agencies, Congress, regulatory practice, national security, tax, or international organizations. For that student, there is no substitute. The access, the externships, the specialty programs, and the alumni network inside the federal government are simply unmatched, and they compound over a career in ways a ranking spot cannot capture.

Skip it if you want a small cohort, a clerkship pipeline proportional to the school's reputation, or a low-debt outcome. On all three, Georgetown will disappoint you, and the disappointment is structural, not fixable.

The thing nobody tells you: Georgetown fell four spots in US News to #18 and, in the very same month, climbed four spots into the BigLaw Go-To top ten at 53.77%. The two rankings measure different things. For a DC-bound student, the second one matters far more than the first. Do not let a US News dip talk you out of a school whose actual job — putting graduates into elite Washington practice — it does better than almost anyone. Read the ranking that measures what you actually want.

The biggest risk: the combination of a class around 575 full-time students plus a large evening program, tuition of $83,576, and modest aid makes this the most expensive way to enter public service in the country. If you come here for a government job, you are paying private-school prices for a public-sector salary, and the debt does not care about your mission. Go in with that math done, not discovered in year three.

The Georgetown Battle Plan (Step-by-Step)

This is the tactical spine. Five steps, in order.

Step 1 — Fix your score band against the medians. Georgetown's medians are a 171 LSAT and a 3.93 GPA. Be honest about where you sit. At or above both, you are a clean full-time candidate and should apply full-time, early. Above the median on one and below on the other, you are a splitter or reverse-splitter — and Georgetown's class size makes it moderately friendly to you. Below both medians on the full-time track, do not force it; the evening program is your real move.

Step 2 — Play the school's highest-leverage variable: the evening door. Georgetown's part-time evening program is the most under-used admissions door in American legal education. It admits on meaningfully lower medians and awards the identical J.D. If your numbers trail the full-time class but you can build your life around evening classes — many students keep DC day jobs on the Hill or at agencies while enrolled — this is the highest-leverage decision on this page. The degree is the same; the bar to entry is lower.

RULE — If you are below both full-time medians and your career is genuinely in Washington, apply to the evening program before you write off Georgetown. Same diploma, lower wall.

Step 3 — Write the essay Georgetown is built to reward. Say what you want to do in Washington and why this school is the way to do it. Georgetown rewards specificity about federal practice more than any school in the country. Do not write about wanting to help people. Write about the enforcement division you want to join, the regulatory area you already know, the agency you already interned at. Name the program — the Center on National Security, the Federal Legislation Clinic, the Tax LLM pathway — that maps to your plan.

Step 4 — Build the resume for the Washington track. The archetype here arrives from congressional staff, agencies, campaigns, or the military. If you have that background, foreground it. If you don't, get proximate to it before you apply: a Hill internship, an agency detail, a policy fellowship, campaign work. Georgetown reads for trajectory toward federal practice, and your resume should already be pointed at the city.

Step 5 — Run the scholarship and cost math cold. Georgetown's aid posture is moderate — less generous than peers at this rank — and its tuition is $83,576, among the highest in the country. Apply early, apply to peer schools that will make you competing offers, and bring those offers back. Georgetown's aid is not lavish, but a real offer from a comparably ranked school is still your best lever. If public service is your destination, model Public Service Loan Forgiveness explicitly into your cost plan — it is often the deciding factor in whether this school's price is survivable.

INSIGHT — At a school with modest aid and a high sticker price, the negotiation is not about squeezing Georgetown for more — it's about knowing your walk-away number before you enroll. Do that math in the application season, not after.

Scholarship & Cost Reality: Is Georgetown Worth the Price?

Georgetown's tuition is $83,576 a year, and its financial aid is more modest than peers at its rank. Add the estimated $33,905 cost of living in Washington, and a full three-year, full-freight budget runs well into the mid-$300,000s before interest. That is the plain read, and it is the most operational fact on this page for anyone weighing an offer.

Set that against the outcome. A 55% BigLaw rate means more than half the class lands in jobs that service that debt on the standard associate scale — for those graduates, the ROI works. The tension is that Georgetown's core mission draws students to the government track, where salaries are far lower and the debt math is far harder. That is the school's central contradiction: it is the best on-ramp to federal practice in the country, and the most expensive one.

RULE — If you are Georgetown-for-government, your financial plan is not a scholarship — it's a forgiveness strategy. Model PSLF, model income-driven repayment, and know the number before you sign. If you are Georgetown-for-BigLaw, the salary carries the debt and the calculus is simpler.

Where Georgetown Graduates Actually Go

Georgetown places 55% of graduates into BigLaw and clerks 6.7% into federal clerkships. The BigLaw number is genuinely strong and confirms the private-sector pipeline is wide open, particularly into DC firms' regulatory, litigation, and administrative practices. The clerkship number is where you should calibrate expectations: 6.7% is solid in absolute terms but modest for a school of Georgetown's reputation, and it is a direct consequence of graduating a class of 575.

Beyond the private sector, Georgetown's defining destination is Washington government itself — agencies, congressional offices, the executive branch. That path does not show up in the BigLaw figure but is central to what the school is for. The placement is national in the sense that Georgetown's brand carries anywhere, but it is Washington-concentrated in practice: this is where the school's network is deepest and where its access pays off most. If your career target is DC public law, that concentration is exactly what you want. If you intend to practice in a specific regional market far from the coasts, weigh whether Georgetown's DC-heavy network is the right fit versus a school anchored in that market.

Common Mistakes

Treating US News as the score that matters. Georgetown slipped to #18 in US News while climbing into the BigLaw Go-To top ten in the same month. Applicants who fixate on the general ranking and ignore the placement ranking are optimizing for the wrong number. For a DC-bound student, where graduates actually land beats where a magazine ranks the school.

Ignoring the evening program. The single most common error at Georgetown is applying full-time with numbers that trail the full-time medians, getting dinged, and never realizing the evening program admits on lower medians for the identical degree. If your career is in Washington and your numbers are soft, the evening door is the move you missed.

Writing a generic public-interest essay. Georgetown rewards Washington specificity above all. A vague essay about serving justice reads as a candidate who could go anywhere — which is the opposite of what this committee wants. Name the practice, the agency, the program.

Underestimating the size problem. Applicants romanticize the brand and forget that 575 classmates means less individual attention, a sharper curve to stand out on, and a per-capita clerkship rate diluted by scale. Go in knowing you will have to make yourself visible — chase clinics, externships, and faculty relationships deliberately, because the institution's size won't do it for you.

Skipping the debt math. At $83,576 a year with modest aid, students who plan on government salaries but don't model loan forgiveness discover the problem after graduation. Do the math before you enroll, not after.

Not leveraging competing offers. Georgetown's aid is moderate, but it does respond to real offers from peer schools. Applicants who accept the first aid letter without bringing competing offers to the table leave money — and negotiating position — on the floor.

Worked Example

Consider an applicant with a 170 LSAT and a 3.85 GPA — just under both medians — who spent three years as a legislative aide on a Senate committee and wants to move into financial regulatory enforcement. On the full-time track, this candidate sits below both the 171 LSAT and 3.93 GPA medians, which at a smaller school would be a hard wall.

At Georgetown, the class size gives this profile room to breathe on the full-time track, and the resume is exactly the archetype the school selects for. The play: apply full-time, and write the essay Georgetown is built to reward — name the committee, the regulatory area, the specific enforcement practice, and the Georgetown centers and clinics that map to it. That essay converts a slightly-below-median numbers file into a compelling trajectory file.

The backstop, if the full-time application doesn't land: the evening program, where the same candidate — who could keep the Hill job while enrolled — admits on lower medians for the identical J.D. Either way, this applicant treats the cost as the real decision, models PSLF given the government target, and brings any competing offer from a peer school back to Georgetown's financial aid office. That is the full playbook in one profile.

Your 7-Day Sprint

• Day 1 — Pull your LSAT and GPA and place them exactly against Georgetown's 171 / 3.93 medians. Decide: clean full-time candidate, splitter, reverse-splitter, or evening-program candidate.
• Day 2 — If your numbers trail both medians, research the part-time evening program in detail — deadlines, structure, and whether you can build your life around it. This is the day that decision gets made.
• Day 3 — Draft the core of your "why Washington, why Georgetown" essay. Name the specific practice area, agency, and Georgetown program. Cut every generic sentence.
• Day 4 — Audit your resume for the Washington track. Foreground any Hill, agency, campaign, or military experience. Identify gaps and how you'll frame trajectory around them.
• Day 5 — Build your peer-school list for competing offers — schools ranked near Georgetown whose aid you can leverage. Line up those applications on the same timeline.
• Day 6 — Run the three-year cost model: $83,576 tuition plus $33,905 living costs, minus realistic aid. If government-bound, model PSLF. Know your walk-away number.
• Day 7 — Confirm early-decision math. Georgetown's ED is binding — only use it if Georgetown is unambiguously your first choice and the cost math already works, since ED forecloses competing-offer leverage.

Direct Answer: How Do I Get Into Georgetown Law?

To get into Georgetown Law, target a 171 LSAT and a 3.93 GPA — its medians — against a 15.8% acceptance rate. The school's decisive advantage for applicants is its size: a full-time class of about 575, the largest of any top law school, which softens the numbers wall and makes it moderately friendly to both splitters and reverse-splitters. If your numbers trail the medians, use the part-time evening program — it admits on lower medians for the identical J.D. and is the most under-used door in legal education. Write an essay that names a specific Washington career, because Georgetown rewards federal-practice specificity above all. Then run the cost cold: at $83,576 tuition with modest aid, model loan forgiveness if you're government-bound before you enroll.

Sources & Methodology

All figures are drawn from Georgetown University Law Center's ABA-required disclosures and official reporting. LSAT median (171), GPA median (3.93), acceptance rate (15.8%), class size (575), and tuition ($83,576): Georgetown University Law Center, https://www.law.georgetown.edu, pulled on the reporting date. Employment figures — BigLaw placement (55%), federal clerkship rate (6.7%) — and bar passage (93.1%): same source and date. Cost-of-living estimate ($33,905): Georgetown financial aid reporting, same source and date.