How to Get Into Howard Law School: LSAT, GPA & Admissions (2026)

The short answer to how to get into Howard Law School is to reach the medians in Howard Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure: a 156 LSAT and a 3.63 GPA. The middle 50 percent of the entering class scored 153 to 160 on the LSAT and earned 3.4 to 3.8 in GPA. Clear both and, because the pool is deep, keep the rest of the file strong.

By Ali Unar, Georgetown Law, Founder of Lovare Institut. Ali Unar is a Georgetown Law student and the founder of Lovare Institut, an admissions and LSAT-prep practice built on primary-source law school data. Verified August 2026. Admissions figures on this page come from Howard Law School's 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report for the fall 2025 entering class, employment figures from the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, and bar passage and other details from Howard Law's own published ABA reports and pages.

Howard Law School is far more selective than its median score alone would predict, and it backs that selectivity with a large-firm pipeline few schools in its band can match. Among the 57 ABA law schools whose median LSAT is within two points of Howard Law's 156, ranked by acceptance rate, Howard Law is the 2nd most selective, per Lovare's analysis of the 2025 ABA 509 disclosures. It admitted just 24.05% of a 2,428-applicant pool. On the other side of the ledger, in the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, 46.3% of Howard Law graduates went to large firms of 101 or more lawyers, an unusually high share for its band, and the class placed across Washington and New York rather than a single local market. The thesis of this page is that Howard Law School is a nationally recruited school whose admit gate and BigLaw outcomes both run well ahead of its LSAT band, a profile you should weigh against its lower first-time bar figure and its conditional scholarships.

Howard Law School at a glance: LSAT, GPA, acceptance rate and cost

Howard Law School posts a 156 LSAT median, a 3.63 GPA median, and a 24.05% acceptance rate in Howard Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure. Full-time tuition and fees run $41,412, below many private peers, though grants reach under half the class. The table below collects the headline admissions, cost, and outcome numbers for the fall 2025 entering class.

MetricHoward Law School (fall 2025 entering class)LSAT (25th / 50th / 75th)153 / 156 / 160GPA (25th / 50th / 75th)3.4 / 3.63 / 3.8Acceptance rate24.05%Applications2,428Offers of admission584Matriculants from the applicant pool172First-year class176Full-time tuition and fees$41,412Living expenses$38,251Share receiving grants48%Median grant$23,657Conditional scholarshipsYes (an award can be reduced or cut for grades)First-time bar passage76.77%Employed at ten months91.2% (134 of 147)

Source: Howard Law School's 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report for the fall 2025 entering class, with employment from the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024 and bar passage from Howard Law's ABA bar-passage report. The 509 prints tuition and living expenses separately and does not publish a single combined cost-of-attendance total, so this page does not sum them into an all-in figure.

What LSAT and GPA do you really need to get into Howard Law School?

Howard Law School reports an LSAT spread of 153 to 160 and a GPA spread of 3.4 to 3.8 in its 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. A 156 LSAT and a 3.63 GPA sit at both medians. Below the 153 LSAT or the 3.4 GPA, an applicant needs a clear compensating strength on the other number.

Howard Law School reports an LSAT 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile of 153, 156, and 160, and a GPA 25th, 50th, and 75th of 3.4, 3.63, and 3.8 for the fall 2025 entering class, per Howard Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure. The median is the fiftieth percentile: half of the enrolled class scored above 156 on the LSAT and above 3.63 in GPA, and half scored below. At Howard Law the medians look moderate in isolation, but they sit on top of an admit rate that is anything but moderate, so treat the numbers as the floor of a competitive file rather than the finish line.

The LSAT band at Howard Law School is meaningfully wider on the top than the bottom. From the 25th percentile of 153 to the median of 156 is three points, and from the median to the 75th of 160 is four more points. That upward reach means Howard Law enrolls a real number of students well above its median, so a 156 puts you at the center of the class but a 159 or 160 strengthens your position noticeably. A 153, the bottom quartile, is a genuine admit range but wants a GPA at or above 3.63 to carry the file.

The GPA band runs from 3.4 at the 25th to 3.8 at the 75th, a spread of 0.4. A 3.4 is a respectable college record that sits at the bottom quartile for Howard Law School, so it needs LSAT support at or above the 156 median. Read the two bands together and they describe a class with attainable-looking central numbers guarded by a selective admit gate, which is exactly why the rest of the application carries so much weight at Howard Law.

That shape makes Howard Law School splitter friendly. Lovare's read of the 509 spreads shows a GPA 25th-to-median spread of 0.23 and an LSAT 25th-to-median spread of three points. A splitter-friendly school forgives a lower GPA when the LSAT is high; a reverse-splitter-friendly school forgives a lower LSAT when the GPA is high. Howard Law leans splitter: a high LSAT of 160 or better paired with a GPA below the 3.4 bottom quartile has a real path, while a strong GPA with an LSAT under 153 is the tougher sell. If your LSAT is your stronger number, Howard Law School is a school where that strength counts.

Is Howard Law School harder to get into than its reputation?

Howard Law School is harder to get into than its LSAT median suggests. Among the 57 ABA law schools whose median LSAT is within two points of Howard Law's 156, ranked by acceptance rate, Howard Law is the 2nd most selective, per Lovare's analysis of the 2025 ABA 509 disclosures. That is a stealth-reach position: the score band is moderate, the admit gate is not.

Reputation places Howard Law School among the nation's most significant law schools, a historically Black institution with a national profile and a civil-rights legacy that reaches well beyond its enrollment numbers. Its 156 LSAT median, read cold, would suggest a school in the middle of the pack. To test the gap, Lovare built a peer band of the 57 ABA law schools whose median LSAT falls within two points of Howard Law's 156, that is, a median of 154 to 158, then ranked them by acceptance rate from the 2025 ABA 509 disclosures. Howard Law School comes in 2nd of 57, which means only one school with a comparable median admits a smaller share of its applicants.

What drives that gap is demand. Howard Law School drew 2,428 applications and made only 584 offers for the fall 2025 class, per Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure, a 24.05% acceptance rate. Applicants come for the mission, the network, and the outcomes rather than for a high median score, and that deep national pool against a small offer count is what produces a top-two selectivity ranking in the band. The honest read is that the 156 median understates how competitive admission actually is: at Howard Law School, meeting the medians makes you a plausible candidate, but the strength of your essays, recommendations, and reasons for choosing Howard is what converts a plausible file into an admit.

How much does Howard Law School cost, and how much scholarship money will you get?

Howard Law School charges $41,412 in full-time tuition and fees, per Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure, plus $38,251 in living expenses. Forty-eight percent of students receive a grant, with a median award of $23,657. A student receiving that median grant nets about $17,755 in tuition and fees before living costs.

Howard Law School carries a lower sticker than many private peers, and that is a real part of its value. Howard Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure lists full-time tuition and fees at $41,412 and living expenses at $38,251. The 509 prints tuition and living separately and does not publish a single combined cost-of-attendance total, so any all-in annual number quoted elsewhere is someone's arithmetic rather than a figure Howard Law reports, and this page will not invent one. Note that the living-expense figure is high, a reflection of the Washington, DC cost of living, so budget for it even where tuition is manageable.

Aid at Howard Law School is a mixed picture worth reading carefully. According to the same 509, 48% of Howard Law students receive grant aid, with awards at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of $10,037, $23,657, and $32,364. The good news is depth at the top: Howard Law reports 25 full-tuition awards and 2 awards above full tuition, so a meaningful number of students attend free or better. The caution is reach: fewer than half of students receive any grant, so a majority pay close to the full $41,412 sticker unless they win an award. This is the reverse of a school where nearly everyone gets a partial discount; at Howard Law, the aid is concentrated rather than spread.

For a recipient, the math works out like this. Against the $41,412 sticker, a student receiving Howard Law School's median grant of $23,657 nets about $17,755 in tuition and fees before living costs, using figures from Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. A student who wins one of the 25 full-tuition awards attends without tuition, which against the lower Howard Law sticker is among the better financial outcomes available at any private law school.

One consumer warning matters at Howard Law School: its scholarships are conditional. Per Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure, an award can be reduced or eliminated if your grades fall below the threshold the school sets, so the number in your admission letter is not guaranteed for all three years. Before you count that money, ask the Howard Law admissions office in writing what class-rank or grade threshold applies, how many students fall below it in a typical first year, and what share keep the full award into the second and third years. A conditional award you lose after a curved first year can erase the sticker advantage that drew you to Howard Law School in the first place.

What are your real chances off the Howard Law School waitlist?

Howard Law School does not disclose waitlist offers or admits, and no ABA report does. The honest proxy is implied yield: 172 matriculants against 584 offers is a 29.5% yield in Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. That is a moderate yield, so Howard Law fills much of its class from first-round offers while leaving some room the waitlist can fill.

Here is the reasoning in full. Howard Law School enrolled 172 matriculants from 584 offers in its 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure, an implied yield of 29.5%. No ABA disclosure, Howard Law's included, publishes how many applicants are admitted off the waitlist or how many accept, so implied yield is the honest proxy for waitlist movement. When roughly three in ten admitted students enroll, a school extends more offers than seats and relies on predictable melt, which usually means the waitlist is a live but secondary tool rather than the main way the class is built.

A 29.5% yield is moderate, which puts Howard Law School between the extremes. It is higher than a school that yields a quarter of its offers and leans hard on its waitlist, and lower than a school that yields close to half and barely moves its list. For a waitlisted applicant to Howard Law, that means real but limited hope: some cycles see movement, others little, and the outcome turns on how the deposited class lands in a given year and how many admits choose Howard Law over competing offers.

If you land on the Howard Law School waitlist, the play is the standard one: send a concise letter of continued interest naming Howard Law as a top choice, add any new LSAT score or improved grades, and keep another acceptance in hand as your real plan. One honest note on the class figures: Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure lists 172 matriculants from the applicant pool but a first-year class of 176. The small gap reflects students who arrive through paths other than this single cycle's pool, such as admitted students who deferred from a prior year. The 29.5% implied yield is computed from the 172 pool matriculants against the 584 offers, which is the correct comparison for reasoning about this cycle's waitlist odds at Howard Law School.

Where do Howard Law School graduates actually work?

In the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, Howard Law School placed 31.3% of graduates in the District of Columbia and 62.6% across the District, New York, and Maryland. Large firms of 101 or more lawyers took 46.3% of graduates, and federal clerkships took 2.7%. Howard Law pairs a Washington base with real New York reach and a strong large-firm pipeline.

Howard Law School's employment profile is more national than most schools its size, and that is a genuine selling point. In the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, Howard Law placed 46 graduates in the District of Columbia, 34 in New York, and 12 in Maryland. That is a 31.3% top-market share and a 62.6% top-three share. The District anchors the class, but New York is a close second market rather than a rounding error, which tells you the Howard Law network genuinely reaches the two largest legal markets on the East Coast rather than concentrating in a single city.

Why lead with market spread and firm size rather than the raw employment rate? Because the rate is similar across peers. Howard Law School reported 134 of 147 graduates employed at ten months, or 91.2%, in the same ABA Employment Summary. The number that separates Howard Law from its band is what those jobs are, and here Howard Law stands out.

On firm outcomes, Howard Law School is a genuine large-firm feeder. The ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024 shows 46.3% of Howard Law graduates taking jobs at large firms of 101 or more lawyers, nearly half the class and an unusually high share for a school with a 156 LSAT median. That figure is the strongest single argument for Howard Law School: it converts admission into access to the highest-paying segment of private practice at a rate most of its band peers do not approach. If a large-firm salary is a primary goal, Howard Law delivers on it more reliably than its median score would lead you to expect.

Federal clerkships round out the picture. The ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024 shows 2.7% of Howard Law School graduates entering federal clerkships, a modest share that fits a class oriented more toward large-firm and government practice than toward the courts. Read the whole profile together and Howard Law School is best understood as a nationally recruiting school with a Washington-and-New York center of gravity and a large-firm pipeline that punches above its band.

When are Howard Law School's application deadlines?

Howard Law School's specific application deadlines and any Early Decision terms are not confirmed here for the current cycle. If you are planning a cycle, confirm the current regular-decision deadline and any binding or non-binding Early Decision option directly on Howard Law's admissions site, because those dates shift from year to year and this page will not state a date it cannot verify.

Howard Law School, like most ABA law schools, runs a rolling admissions cycle that typically opens in the early fall and reviews files as they are completed, which rewards applying early in the window when more seats and more scholarship money remain. Given how selective Howard Law is relative to its band, applying early is not a small edge here: with 2,428 applicants competing for 584 offers, a complete file submitted in the first weeks of the cycle meets a fuller set of open seats than one submitted late. That general rhythm is standard across the market, but the exact opening date, the priority and final deadlines, and whether Howard Law offers an Early Decision track with specific terms are details this page did not verify from a primary source.

The practical takeaway for Howard Law School applicants is to treat the calendar as a competitive variable rather than an afterthought. Aim to have your LSAT taken, your transcripts and letters in, and your application submitted as early in the cycle as your materials allow. Confirm the current deadlines and any Early Decision terms on Howard Law School's admissions page before you rely on them, because a page like this one is a planning aid verified in August 2026, not the registrar of record.

Frequently asked questions about getting into Howard Law School

Is a 156 LSAT good enough for Howard Law?

A 156 is exactly the LSAT median at Howard Law School, per Howard Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure, where the middle 50 percent scored 153 to 160. A 156 puts you at the fiftieth percentile, but because Howard Law is the 2nd most selective school in its LSAT band, treat the median as a competitive baseline and lean on a strong GPA, essays, and reasons for choosing Howard Law School.

What GPA do you need to get into Howard Law?

Howard Law School reports a GPA median of 3.63, with a 25th-to-75th range of 3.4 to 3.8, in its 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. Aim for 3.63 or higher. Because Howard Law is splitter friendly, a strong LSAT can help carry a GPA in the low 3.4s, but a transcript at or above the median keeps your file inside the competitive core of the class Howard Law School enrolls.

What is Howard Law's acceptance rate?

Howard Law School admitted 24.05% of applicants for the fall 2025 class, extending 584 offers against 2,428 applications, according to Howard Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure. Among the 57 schools within two points of its 156 LSAT median, that ranks Howard Law School 2nd most selective, a far tighter admit gate than the moderate median score alone would suggest.

How many people apply to Howard Law each year?

Howard Law School received 2,428 applications for the fall 2025 entering class, made 584 offers, and enrolled 172 matriculants from the pool for a first-year class of 176, per Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. That large national pool against a small offer count is what makes Howard Law School so selective relative to its LSAT band.

How much does Howard Law cost per year?

Howard Law School lists full-time tuition and fees of $41,412 plus living expenses of $38,251 in its 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. Howard Law does not publish a single cost-of-attendance total in the 509, so tuition and living are best read separately. The tuition is lower than many private peers, but the Washington, DC living figure is high, so budget for it at Howard Law School.

Does Howard Law give scholarships?

Yes, but to a minority of students. Howard Law School reports that 48% of students receive grant aid, with awards of $10,037, $23,657, and $32,364 at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles, plus 25 full-tuition awards, per Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. The aid is concentrated rather than universal, so under half the class receives any grant at Howard Law School.

Are Howard Law scholarships conditional?

Yes. Howard Law School uses conditional scholarships, per Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure, which means a first-year award can be reduced or eliminated if your grades fall below the school's threshold. Before you count the money, ask the Howard Law School admissions office in writing what threshold applies and what share of students keep the full award into the second and third years.

What is Howard Law's bar passage rate?

Howard Law School posted a 76.77% first-time bar passage rate for exam year 2024, with the District of Columbia as its largest jurisdiction, according to Howard Law's ABA bar-passage report. That is below the rate at several band peers and is a real number to weigh. Its ultimate pass rate for the 2022 cohort was 87.32%, so most graduates who do not pass first time eventually clear the bar at Howard Law School.

Where do most Howard Law graduates work?

The District of Columbia and New York. The ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024 shows Howard Law School placed 46 graduates in the District, 34 in New York, and 12 in Maryland, a 31.3% top-market share and 62.6% across the top three. That two-market spread gives Howard Law School more national reach than most schools its size.

Do Howard Law graduates get large-firm jobs?

Yes, at a high rate. In the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, Howard Law School sent 46.3% of graduates to large firms of 101 or more lawyers, nearly half the class. That share runs well above most schools with a comparable LSAT median and is the single strongest financial argument for Howard Law School as a route into the highest-paying tier of private practice.

Can a splitter get into Howard Law?

A splitter has a real path. Lovare reads Howard Law School as splitter friendly, with a GPA 25th-to-median spread of 0.23 and an LSAT spread of three points in the 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. That means Howard Law forgives a lower GPA when the LSAT is high, so a high-LSAT applicant with a sub-3.4 GPA is more viable at Howard Law School than a high-GPA applicant with a sub-153 LSAT.

How selective is Howard Law compared with schools at the same LSAT?

Howard Law School ranks 2nd most selective of the 57 ABA schools within two points of its 156 LSAT median, by acceptance rate in the 2025 ABA 509 disclosures, per Lovare's analysis. Only one school with a comparable median admits a smaller share of applicants, so Howard Law School is a genuine reach relative to its scores, driven by a deep national applicant pool.

Is Howard Law worth the cost?

For many applicants, yes. Howard Law School pairs a lower $41,412 tuition sticker with a 46.3% large-firm placement rate and a 91.2% employment rate at ten months, per Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 and the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024. Weigh those strengths against the 76.77% first-time bar figure and the conditional scholarships when you judge the value of Howard Law School.

What LSAT and GPA give the best shot at a Howard Law scholarship?

Numbers above the medians. Howard Law School concentrates its aid, reporting 25 full-tuition awards and a 75th-percentile grant of $32,364, so an application above the 156 LSAT and 3.63 GPA medians competes best for the larger awards, per Howard Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. Because Howard Law School scholarships are conditional, protect the award with a strong first year.

Sources

Every figure on this page is drawn from primary disclosures, listed here so readers can verify each one directly.

Howard Law School 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report (fall 2025 entering class): https://backend.abarequireddisclosures.org/api/AnnualQuestionnaire/GenerateIndividualDisclosure509Report?schoolId=32&year=2025

Howard Law School ABA bar-passage report: https://backend.abarequireddisclosures.org/api/BarPassageOutcomes/GenerateIndividualBarPassageReport?schoolId=32&year=2025

ABA Employment Summary, Class of 2024: https://backend.abarequireddisclosures.org/api/EmploymentOutcomes/GenerateIndividualEQSummaryReport?schoolId=32&year=2024

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