How to Get Into Washington University in St. Louis Law School: LSAT, GPA & Admissions (2026)

If you are figuring out how to get into Washington University in St. Louis Law School, two numbers frame the file: a 175 LSAT median and a 3.96 GPA median. According to WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure, that LSAT median is elite, yet the GPA 25th percentile falls all the way to 3.58, which changes the strategy entirely.

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. Every figure on this page comes from WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report (fall 2025 entering class), the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, and Washington University in St. Louis Law School's own admissions pages.

Here is what makes Washington University in St. Louis Law School the most interesting admit in this set: it is the clearest splitter play in America. WashU Law posts a 175 LSAT median, the equal of several top-ten schools, yet its GPA 25th percentile sits all the way down at 3.58 and its acceptance rate is 18.96%. It reached that elite LSAT median by paying for it. According to WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure, 94% of students receive grants, the median grant is $48,000, and 86 students hold full-tuition awards. In plain terms, WashU Law buys high scores and tolerates the lower GPAs that high-LSAT splitters bring, which makes it the rare elite school where a lopsided number has a genuine path. Read this page with that thesis in mind.

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

WashU Law is a national school with a 175 LSAT median, a 3.96 GPA median, and an 18.96% acceptance rate for the fall 2025 class, according to WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure. Full-time tuition and fees run $73,684, but 94% of students receive grant aid. The table below collects the core numbers.

MetricWashU Law (fall 2025 entering class)LSAT (25th / 50th / 75th)165 / 175 / 176GPA (25th / 50th / 75th)3.58 / 3.96 / 4.0Acceptance rate18.96%Applications5,616Offers of admission1,065Matriculants from the pool258First-year class261Full-time tuition and fees$73,684 (tuition $72,792 plus fees $892)Living expenses$28,603Share receiving grants94%Median grant$48,000Conditional scholarshipsNoFirst-time bar passage93.57%Employed at ten months98.6% (281 of 285)

Source: WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report (fall 2025 entering class), WashU Law's ABA bar-passage report, and the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024. Tuition and living expenses are printed separately in the 509, which does not publish a single combined cost-of-attendance total, so this page will not quote one.

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

To sit at the center of WashU Law you want a 175 LSAT and a 3.96 GPA. But WashU Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure puts the 25th percentiles at a 165 LSAT and a 3.58 GPA, the widest spreads in this set. That gap is the whole story: a lopsided profile has a real path here.

WashU Law reports an LSAT 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile of 165, 175, and 176, and a GPA spread of 3.58, 3.96, and 4.0, in its 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure. Start with the Washington University in St. Louis law LSAT median of 175. That number is genuinely elite, on par with several schools ranked in the national top ten, and half of WashU Law's fall 2025 class scored at or above it. Now look at how far the 25th percentile falls: a 165 LSAT sits ten full points below the median. Very few schools with a 175 median admit a quarter of their class at 165, and that ten-point drop is the reverse-splitter door, where a near-perfect GPA carries an LSAT well under the median.

The GPA tells the mirror-image story, and it is the one WashU Law is famous for. WashU Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure puts the GPA 25th percentile at 3.58 against a 3.96 median, a spread of 0.38 of a point, which is enormous for a school with numbers this high. A 3.58 undergraduate record is a solid-but-unremarkable GPA, and yet a full quarter of WashU Law's class sits at or below it. The reason is the splitter door: those lower-GPA admits are overwhelmingly high-LSAT applicants, people bringing a 175 or above who are forgiven a GPA well beneath the median. That is what people mean when they call WashU Law a splitter school. A genuinely high LSAT buys the median even when the GPA lags.

Put the two together and WashU Law is the most forgiving school in this set for a lopsided profile in either direction. Lovare's analysis formally classifies WashU Law as reverse-splitter friendly, with a GPA 25th-to-median spread of 0.38 and an LSAT 25th-to-median spread of 10 points, per WashU Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. 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. WashU Law does both, and it stretches farther on each axis than either Vanderbilt Law or USC Gould. The strategic reading is direct. If you have a 175-plus LSAT and a GPA in the mid-3.5s, WashU Law is one of the best T14-adjacent targets in the country for you, and if you have a near-4.0 GPA and an LSAT around 165, the ten-point LSAT spread means WashU Law is still in play when higher-median peers are not.

What does a realistic profile look like? A 175 LSAT paired with a 3.96 GPA places an applicant exactly at both of WashU Law's medians. Below the 165 LSAT or the 3.58 GPA, an applicant needs a clear compensating strength on the other number, and because both floors are already low relative to the medians, dropping beneath them is a real warning sign rather than a rounding error. The Washington University in St. Louis law GPA distribution rewards a strong LSAT more than almost any peer, so an applicant deciding where to spend preparation energy should treat the LSAT as the lever that opens WashU Law.

Is WashU Law harder to get into than its reputation?

No. WashU Law is more accessible than its 175 LSAT median suggests. WashU Law's 18.96% acceptance rate is the highest of the ten leading schools whose LSAT median sits within two points of its 175, per Lovare's band analysis of the 2025 ABA 509 disclosures. Its numbers read top-ten, but its admit rate is the friendliest in that elite band.

To judge the Washington University in St. Louis law acceptance rate honestly, compare it only with schools that share its academic profile. Among the ten leading national law schools whose median LSAT falls within two points of WashU Law's 175, that is a median of 173 to 177, ranked by acceptance rate, WashU Law is the least selective of the group. This is the exact inverse of the Vanderbilt or USC story: those schools are harder than their reputations, while WashU Law is easier than its elite median implies.

Ranked from most to least selective by acceptance rate, the band runs as follows: Yale University at 4.1%, Stanford University at 6.1%, the University of Pennsylvania (Carey) at 8.1%, Harvard University at 9.2%, the University of Chicago at 9.7%, the University of Virginia at 10.2%, Columbia University at 11.8%, Northwestern University (Pritzker) at 12.3%, Cornell University at 18.2%, and Washington University in St. Louis at 19.0%. WashU Law's own 18.96% rate, from its 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure, sits at the bottom of that list. The nearest school is Cornell University at 18.2%, and then there is a large gap up to Northwestern University at 12.3%. Every other school in WashU Law's LSAT band admits a distinctly smaller share of its applicants.

The honest verdict, then, is that WashU Law is not harder than its reputation; it is more attainable than its scores let on, and that is by design. WashU Law competes for a 175 LSAT median against schools that admit half or a third as many applicants, and it wins those high scorers with money rather than with a lower admit rate. For a strong-LSAT applicant, this is the opportunity in the set: the academic company of a top-ten class at an acceptance rate that is materially more generous than any of WashU Law's LSAT peers. That does not make WashU Law easy, an 18.96% admit rate still turns away four of every five applicants, but it does make it the softest elite target in its band.

Does WashU Law have Early Decision, and is it binding?

WashU Law offers a rolling Early Decision option, but it does not publish the terms that make an Early Decision binding. According to WashU Law's own admissions pages, there is no published deposit, no stated withdrawal requirement, and no advertised scholarship consequence, so this page will not call WashU Law's Early Decision binding or quote terms it does not disclose.

This is where honesty matters more than a confident answer. WashU Law's own admissions materials describe a rolling Early Decision path, but unlike Vanderbilt Law or USC Gould, WashU Law does not publish whether that Early Decision is binding, whether it carries a nonrefundable deposit, whether an admit must withdraw other applications, or whether committing early guarantees a scholarship. Those terms are simply not stated in the materials behind this page. Because the absolute rule of this analysis is to report only what the primary sources say, this page states the absence plainly rather than importing binding-Early-Decision mechanics from other schools and pretending they apply to WashU Law.

The practical takeaway for an applicant is twofold. First, do not assume WashU Law's Early Decision works like a classic binding program with a guaranteed merit award, because WashU Law does not advertise one, and given how central scholarships are to WashU Law's strategy, an applicant should confirm exactly what an Early Decision commitment does and does not lock in before signing. Second, because WashU Law leans so heavily on merit money to build its class, the more important lever for most applicants is not the timing of the application but the strength of the LSAT that drives the size of the scholarship offer. Confirm WashU Law's current Early Decision terms directly with the school before relying on any of them.

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

WashU Law lists full-time tuition and fees of $73,684 plus $28,603 in living expenses in its 2025 ABA 509 disclosure, which prints those separately and does not total them. But WashU Law has the strongest aid story in this set: 94% of students receive grants, the median grant is $48,000, and 86 students attend on full-tuition awards.

Start with the sticker. WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure lists full-time tuition and fees at $73,684, built from $72,792 in tuition and $892 in fees, and separately lists living expenses at $28,603. That 509 does not print a single combined cost-of-attendance total, so any all-in annual number seen elsewhere is someone's arithmetic and not a figure WashU Law reports. This page will not invent one.

Now the aid, and this is WashU Law's defining feature. According to WashU Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure, 94% of students receive grant aid, the highest share in this three-school set, with grant amounts at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of $40,000, $48,000, and $60,000. Those quartiles are strikingly high: even the 25th percentile grant, $40,000, covers more than half of tuition, and the 75th percentile grant of $60,000 nearly matches the full sticker. WashU Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure also reports 86 full-tuition awards and 77 awards above full tuition, so 163 students in total attend with tuition entirely covered or more. Those grants include both merit and need-based aid, but the sheer scale and the tie to high LSAT scores make WashU Law's program function, in practice, as one of the most aggressive merit operations in legal education.

For a typical grant recipient, the math is the best in this set. Against the $73,684 sticker for tuition and fees, a student holding WashU Law's median grant of $48,000 nets about $25,684 in tuition and fees before living costs, using figures from WashU Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. That net is far below what a median-grant student pays at Vanderbilt Law or USC Gould, and for the 163 students at full tuition or above, the tuition line is zero. Living expenses of $28,603 still sit on top, so WashU Law is not free even for a median-grant student, but the effective price of the degree is dramatically lower than the headline for almost the entire class.

One protection deserves emphasis. WashU Law reports that its scholarships are not conditional, per its 2025 ABA 509 disclosure, meaning a grant cannot be reduced or revoked for missing a class-rank or GPA threshold after the first year. That matters because a large merit award only counts if it survives the curve. At schools with conditional scholarships, a first-year award can shrink when a student lands in the bottom half of the class, and half the class does by definition. At WashU Law, the grant an admitted student is quoted is the grant they keep for all three years, which turns a big first-year offer into a reliable three-year discount.

What are your real chances off the WashU Law waitlist?

No school, WashU Law included, discloses waitlist admits, so the honest proxy is implied yield: matriculants divided by offers. WashU Law's fall 2025 numbers give a 24.2% implied yield, in the middle of this peer set, which suggests a waitlist that moves in a typical year without being the primary way WashU Law fills its class.

Here is the reasoning in full. WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure reports 1,065 offers of admission and 258 matriculants drawn from that applicant pool, an implied yield of 24.2%. No ABA disclosure, WashU Law's included, publishes how many applicants are admitted off the waitlist or how many accept, so implied yield is the honest way to reason about waitlist movement. When a school keeps only about a quarter of the students it admits, it must send far more offers than it has seats, and it typically works its waitlist as the class settles.

A 24.2% yield sits between Vanderbilt Law at 20.9% and USC Gould at 28.2% within this comparison, which places WashU Law in the middle for waitlist activity. For a waitlisted WashU Law applicant, that is a reasonable sign. WashU Law extends a large number of offers, 1,065 against 5,616 applications per its 2025 ABA 509 disclosure, and keeps under a quarter of them, so the class does not fill entirely from first-round acceptances and the waitlist has room to matter. This is not a guarantee, because waitlist behavior swings year to year with how the yield lands, but the structural signal at WashU Law points to a waitlist that is live rather than frozen.

Where do WashU Law graduates actually work?

WashU Law graduates are the least geographically concentrated in this set. In the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, no single market took even a fifth of the class: Illinois and Missouri tied at the top with 17.9% of graduates, and the top three markets held only 48.4%. Large firms of 101-plus lawyers hired 53.0% of the class.

The most useful fact about WashU Law's outcomes is how evenly the class spreads. In the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, WashU Law placed 51 graduates in Illinois, 51 in Missouri, and 36 in New York, its three largest markets. Illinois and Missouri tied for the top spot, each taking 17.9% of the class, the lowest top-market share of the three schools profiled here, and the top three markets combined reached only 48.4%, meaning more than half the class went somewhere else. A WashU Law degree, in practice, anchors in the two Midwestern hubs of St. Louis and Chicago while sending a strong contingent to New York, and it does not lock a graduate into any single legal market.

By employer type, WashU Law feeds a solid large-firm pipeline. The ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024 shows 151 WashU Law graduates, or 53.0% of the class, taking jobs at firms of 101 or more lawyers, and 112 of those, 39.3% of the class, at the very largest firms of 501 or more lawyers. So large-firm practice, what applicants usually mean by BigLaw, is the single most common destination for a WashU Law graduate. That is the outcome that services the debt, and it is worth pairing with the aid picture: a WashU Law student who both wins a large merit grant and lands a BigLaw job carries an unusually favorable ratio of salary to loans.

WashU Law also posts the strongest clerkship number in this set. In the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, 27 WashU Law graduates, or 9.5% of the class, took federal clerkships, a genuinely strong share that signals WashU Law places graduates into competitive federal chambers. Overall placement is excellent: the same summary shows 281 of 285 WashU Law graduates employed at the ten-month mark, a 98.6% employment rate, the highest of the three schools here, and WashU Law's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure reports first-year academic attrition of 1.0%, meaning almost no one who starts washes out academically. Because near-total employment is standard at this level, the reason to weigh WashU Law on market spread is that fit is decided by where a degree actually leads, and WashU Law's answer is the most flexible in this set: the Midwest by default, New York readily, and no single-market trap.

When are WashU Law's application deadlines?

WashU Law runs a rolling admissions process that includes an Early Decision option, according to WashU Law's own admissions pages. The materials behind this page do not publish a fixed regular-decision deadline or specific Early Decision dates, so confirm the current cycle directly with WashU Law. These details reflect what was verified in August 2026.

WashU Law's calendar is less precisely dated in the primary materials than some peers'. WashU Law's own admissions pages describe a rolling process with an Early Decision path, but they do not, in the sources behind this analysis, pin a single fixed regular-decision deadline or publish exact Early Decision dates and deposit deadlines. Rather than import a date from another school or guess, this page states that absence honestly. Because WashU Law reviews on a rolling basis, the practical advice that follows from rolling admissions still holds: earlier complete applications generally face a fuller pool of seats and scholarship money than later ones, so applying early in the cycle is an advantage even without a published hard deadline.

One caveat applies regardless. Application cycle dates and processes shift from year to year, and what is correct for one cycle can change in the next. The rolling structure and Early Decision option described here reflect WashU Law's own admissions pages as verified in August 2026. Before building a timeline around them, confirm the current deadlines and Early Decision terms directly on WashU Law's site, because a page like this one is a planning aid, not the registrar of record.

Frequently asked questions about getting into WashU Law

Is a 175 LSAT good enough for WashU Law?

A 175 is exactly WashU Law's LSAT median, per WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure, so it is right at the center of the class. Half the fall 2025 class scored at or above 175 and half below. Paired with almost any reasonable GPA, a 175 is a strong position here, because the school's wide GPA spread down to a 3.58 25th percentile means a high LSAT is forgiven a lower GPA here more readily than almost anywhere.

What GPA do you need to get into WashU Law?

WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure reports a GPA median of 3.96, a 25th percentile of 3.58, and a 75th percentile of a perfect 4.0. The 25th percentile of 3.58 is unusually low for a school with a 175 LSAT median, which means a GPA in the mid-3.5s is workable at WashU Law provided the LSAT is high. Below 3.58, an applicant realistically needs a 175-plus LSAT to compensate.

What is WashU Law's acceptance rate?

WashU Law's acceptance rate is 18.96%, computed as 1,065 offers against 5,616 applications in WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure. That is the highest acceptance rate among the ten leading schools whose LSAT median falls within two points of its 175, making WashU Law the most accessible school in its elite LSAT band. About 19 applicants in every hundred receive an offer from WashU Law in a given cycle.

How many people apply to WashU Law each year?

WashU Law received 5,616 applications for its fall 2025 entering class, according to WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure. From that pool, WashU Law extended 1,065 offers of admission and enrolled 258 matriculants, building a first-year class of 261. The large offer count relative to applications is what produces the 18.96% acceptance rate, the friendliest in WashU Law's LSAT band.

Does WashU Law have binding Early Decision?

WashU Law offers a rolling Early Decision option, but it does not publish binding terms. According to WashU Law's own admissions pages, there is no stated deposit, no advertised withdrawal requirement, and no published scholarship consequence tied to Early Decision, so this page cannot confirm that WashU Law's Early Decision is binding. An applicant considering it should confirm exactly what the commitment involves directly with WashU Law before applying.

How much does WashU Law cost per year?

WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure lists full-time tuition and fees at $73,684 and living expenses at $28,603 for the year. WashU Law does not publish a single combined cost-of-attendance total in that 509, so this page will not quote one. A student receiving WashU Law's median grant of $48,000 nets about $25,684 in tuition and fees before living costs, the lowest net in this set.

Does WashU Law give merit scholarships?

Yes, and aggressively. According to WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure, 94% of students receive grants, which include merit and need-based aid, with a median grant of $48,000 and quartiles of $40,000 and $60,000. WashU Law also reports 86 full-tuition awards and 77 awards above full tuition, so 163 students attend with tuition fully covered or more. A high LSAT is the main driver of the largest WashU Law awards.

What is WashU Law's bar passage rate?

WashU Law's ABA bar-passage report shows a first-time pass rate of 93.57% for the 2024 exam year, with a 94.92% rate in its largest jurisdiction, Illinois. The ultimate pass rate, measured two years out for the 2022 cohort, is 96.79%, per the same report. In short, the large majority of WashU Law graduates who sit for a bar exam pass on the first attempt, and nearly all pass eventually.

Do WashU Law graduates get large-firm (BigLaw) jobs?

Yes, and it is the single most common outcome. In the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024, 151 WashU Law graduates (53.0%) took jobs at firms of 101 or more lawyers, and 112 of those (39.3% of the class) landed at firms of 501 or more lawyers. Large-firm practice is the largest single destination for WashU Law graduates and, paired with WashU Law's heavy scholarship aid, produces a favorable salary-to-debt ratio.

Where do most WashU Law graduates work?

WashU Law graduates spread widely. The ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024 shows Illinois and Missouri tied at 51 graduates each (17.9% apiece), with New York third at 36, so the top three markets account for only 48.4% of the class. WashU Law is the least geographically concentrated school in this set, anchoring in St. Louis and Chicago while sending a strong group to New York.

Can a splitter get into WashU Law?

Yes, and WashU Law is the clearest splitter school in this set. WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure shows a GPA 25th-to-median spread of 0.38, meaning a full quarter of the class has a GPA at or below 3.58 despite a 175 LSAT median. A high-LSAT, lower-GPA splitter is exactly the profile WashU Law forgives, so a 175-plus LSAT with a mid-3.5s GPA is a live application here.

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

WashU Law is the least selective school in its LSAT band. Among the ten leading schools with a median LSAT within two points of its 175, ranked by acceptance rate, WashU Law's 18.96% is the highest, per WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure. The nearest is Cornell University at 18.2%, and then a large gap up to Northwestern University at 12.3%. WashU Law reads top-ten by scores but admits a far larger share than its LSAT peers.

Is WashU Law worth the cost?

For most admitted students, yes, and it is arguably the best-priced school in this set after aid. Against a $73,684 tuition and fees sticker in WashU Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure, 94% of students receive grants with a $48,000 median, and the ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2024 shows 98.6% of WashU Law graduates employed at ten months, with 53.0% in large firms. That aid-to-outcome ratio makes WashU Law's cost easy to defend.

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

A high LSAT is the single biggest lever. Because WashU Law built its 175 median by paying for high scores, an LSAT at or above the 176 upper quartile positions an applicant best for the largest awards, up to the 86 full-tuition and 77 above-full-tuition grants WashU Law reports in its 2025 ABA Standard 509 disclosure. A strong GPA helps, but at WashU Law the LSAT is what most reliably drives the size of the offer.

Sources

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

WashU Law 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report (fall 2025 entering class): https://backend.abarequireddisclosures.org/api/AnnualQuestionnaire/GenerateIndividualDisclosure509Report?schoolId=88&year=2025

ABA Employment Summary, Class of 2024: https://backend.abarequireddisclosures.org/api/EmploymentOutcomes/GenerateIndividualEQSummaryReport?schoolId=88&year=2024

WashU Law ABA bar-passage report: https://backend.abarequireddisclosures.org/api/BarPassageOutcomes/GenerateIndividualBarPassageReport?schoolId=88&year=2025

WashU Law J.D. program application page: https://law.washu.edu/admissions/apply/jd-program-application/

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