Parts of the Application and Timing of Decisions

Application Form
Please follow the directions carefully and include the requested information in the spaces provided. You may also enclose a resume or additional sheets to complete or elaborate on this section, but do not submit such additional sheets in lieu of completing the requested information on the application form. You should account for any period of more than three months not spent in school or employed.

LSAT/LSDAS Report
All applicants for admission to the J.D. program are required to take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). All applicants are required to register for the Law School Data Assembly Service (LSDAS). To learn more about the Law School Data Assembly Service please visit www.lsac.org.  After we receive your application, we will request your LSDAS Report from Law Services. The LSDAS Report summarizes undergraduate academic work and includes copies of your transcripts, your LSAT score, and your writing sample.

The law school code for NYU School of Law is 2599.

Note for Foreign Applicants: Foreign transcripts must be submitted through the LSAC JD Credential Assembly Service. Applicants who completed any post-secondary work outside of the U.S. (including its territories) or Canada, must use this service for the evaluation of foreign transcripts. The one exception to this requirement is foreign work completed through a study abroad, consortium, or exchange program sponsored by a U.S. or Canadian institution, and where the work is clearly indicated as such on the home campus transcript. Please visit www.lsac.org for details.

Foreign applicants must take the LSAT however, foreign applicants to the J.D. program need not take the TOEFL. Foreign-trained lawyers should apply for the LL.M. Program.

Recommendation Forms
One recommendation is required to complete your admissions application.
Please submit your recommendation(s) in one of these formats:

If you want the Office of Admissions to notify you that a recommendation being sent directly to us has been received, provide a stamped, self addressed postcard with the recommender’s name on it to the recommender to include with his/her letter. We will send it to you when it arrives with the recommendation.

Note: The Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship, the Sinsheimer Service Scholarship, the Jacobson Public Service Scholarship for Women, Children and Families, the Lindemann Family Public Service Scholarship, and the Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholarship applications require at least one additional recommendation that addresses the applicant’s commitment to public service.

Application Fee or Waiver
If you transmit your application electronically, the fee, payable by credit card only, is $85.  If you are mailing a paper application, please include with your application a check or money order for $100, payable to the New York University School of Law.  The application fee is not applied to tuition and is not refundable.  Please do not send cash. 

Applicants not living in the U.S. should send only international money orders payable in U.S. dollars. Checks from non-U.S. banks are not acceptable.

Applicants who apply electronically and who have received an LSAC-approved LSAT or LSDAS fee waiver, will have their NYU School of Law $85 electronic application fee automatically waived.

Applicants who complete a paper application must submit a photocopy of his or her LSAC-approved LSAT or LSDAS fee waiver with his/her paper application.  NYU School of Law will then approve the application fee-waiver request.  (Please note that there is no NYU School of Law application fee waiver form to complete.)

An application is complete when all items are received and either an application fee is paid or a photocopy of an LSAC-approved LSAT/LSDAS fee waiver is received.

Personal Statement
While the Committee on Admissions does not use interviews as part of the selection process, we would like to give you the opportunity to include more information about yourself than the application form conveys. Because people and their interests vary, we leave the content and length of your statement to your discretion. You may wish to complete or clarify your responses to items on the application form, bring to our attention additional information you feel should be considered, describe important or unusual aspects of yourself not otherwise apparent in your application, or tell us what led you to apply to NYU School of Law.

Note: The Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship, the Sinsheimer Service Scholarship, the Jacobson Public Service Scholarship for Women, Children and Families, the Lindemann Family Public Service Scholarship, and the Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholarship require an additional autobiographical essay. If you are applying for these scholarships, please clearly identify your scholarship autobiographical essay and your admissions personal statement.

All other Scholarships and Academic Scholars Programs at NYU School of Law require additional essays beyond the personal statement.

Supplying Additional Information
The Committee on Admissions encourages you to provide any information that may be helpful to us in reaching a thoughtful decision on your application. While the choice as to whether and what information to submit to the Committee is entirely yours, any information you provide will be used to give you full credit for your accomplishments, to help the Committee reach an informed decision on your application, and to aid the Committee in selecting a diverse student body.

Information that has been useful in the past includes, but is not limited to, descriptions or documentation of disabilities, an explicit history of standardized test results, unusual circumstances which may have affected academic performance, or personal/family history of educational or socio-economic disadvantage. While this list is not all-inclusive, we offer it for you to think about as you consider whether such information might be relevant in your case, and to assure you that it is quite appropriate.

We would also like to know if a member of your family (parents or grandparents) attended the NYU School of Law.

When you receive additional grades (such as first semester of senior year grades), you should submit an updated transcript to Law Services, which will, in turn, send us an updated LSDAS Report.

Any information you submit, including that sent after your application is complete, will be considered by the Committee on Admissions if received before a final decision is reached on your application.

If you choose to provide additional information, please write a separate brief statement attached to your personal statement.

We will notify you by email when your application is complete and ready for review by the Committee on Admissions.  Please check your spam mailbox as some servers filter our email messages.  Please also note that we will not release decision information via email, telephone, or fax.

In completing this application, be sure that your statements are accurate, that you answer the questions on page 3, and sign the application. Misrepresentation may result in denial of admission, the rescinding of an offer of admission, dismissal from the Law School, or any NYU School of Law degrees granted being revoked. The Law School may seek to verify any information submitted by contacting recommenders, employers or school officials.

Timing of Decisions
The Commttee on Admissions at New York University School of Law does not use an index or a formula in the review of applications.  There is no combination of grades and scores that presupposes admission or denial.  Grades and LSAT scores, while important, are not the only factors on which the Committee bases it’s decisions.  A holistic approach to the review of applications requires an extraordinary amount of care, and thus a significant amount of time. There is no way to predict an exact date on which a candidate will receive a decision. 

Candidates who apply under the binding Early Decision option (deadline November 15; must have taken the LSAT no later than September 2007 to qualify) will be mailed notification (admit, deny, or hold) by late December.

Candidates who apply by our regular February 1 deadline (must have taken the LSAT by the previous December to qualify) will be mailed notification by late April. Candidates may hear sooner than late April, but they will certainly hear by then.

Beyond these parameters it is not possible to predict an exact date on which a decision will be made on an application.

Timing of Application Review and Notification
The Committee on Admissions recognizes that some law schools have deposit deadlines as early as April 1 and will ask a candidate for a commitment before that candidate receives a decision from NYU School of Law. Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to accelerate our process in these circumstances. Applications are sent to the Committee on Admissions in the order in which they are completed, but decisions are not necessarily made in the order in which applications are first reviewed. Some applicants may receive a decision fairly quickly based on the overall and relative strength of the application.

In an applicant pool of approximately 7,200 applications, many candidates present strong qualifications. The Law School’s admissions process is both objective and comparative. The Committee follows an on-going process of reviewing and re-reviewing the vast majority of the applicant pool. Most candidates’ applications require significant comparison with the applicant pool as a whole before a final decision can be reached. For many candidates, the Committee is not able to reach a decision until they have a clear picture of that year’s entire applicant pool.

As long as candidates take the LSAT by December and meet the February 1 deadline by having all materials received by the Office of Admissions, they will be given full and complete consideration and will be at no competitive disadvantage in the admissions process. Similarly, candidates who apply under the binding Early Decision option are at no competitive advantage in the admissions process.