Washington University of St. Louis School of Law

Student Rating^? B+ Alumni Rating^? B+ ATL Top 50 Rank #17	Tuition $51,626 Total Investment ^? $271,103	Enrollment 684	Student/Faculty Ratio 9.6
LSAT (25/75) 160/170 GPA (25/75) 3.39/3.89	Region M State M	Dean Kent Syverud
Applicants who are accepted 30 / 100 Admitted students who enroll 2.9 / 10	Top Biglaw Employers ^?	Talking Points Has one of the oldest and largest moot court programs in the country. Notable alumni include: Phyllis Schlafly, Alphonso Jackson (former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development), Louis Susman (current US Ambassador to the UK).

Ratings & Rankings

Colored bars represent the range of average school ratings. Black line is this school's rating.

Academics

Students
vs. all schools

Minimum: 2.25
Mean: 3.67
Maximum: 4

Alumni
vs. all schools

Minimum: 2.4
Mean: 3.51
Maximum: 4

Practical/Clinical Training

Students
vs. all schools

Minimum: 2.14
Mean: 3.29
Maximum: 3.83

Alumni
vs. all schools

Minimum: 1.86
Mean: 3.02
Maximum: 3.8

Career Counseling

Students
vs. all schools

Minimum: 1.29
Mean: 2.25
Maximum: 3.56

Alumni
vs. all schools

Minimum: 1.17
Mean: 2.16
Maximum: 3.25

Financial Aid Advising

Students
vs. all schools

Minimum: 1.5
Mean: 2.90
Maximum: 3.29

Alumni
vs. all schools

Minimum: 1.25
Mean: 2.67
Maximum: 3.5

Social Life

Students
vs. all schools

Minimum: 1.8
Mean: 3.00
Maximum: 3.67

Alumni
vs. all schools

Minimum: 2.4
Mean: 3.40
Maximum: 3.86

More Ratings*

	Student	Alumni
	A	B+
	A-	B-
	C+	B
	A-	A-
	B	A-

US News Rank

#18 - Tie

What do these ratings mean?

from Brian Dalton, Breaking Media Director of Research

The ATL School and Firm Insiders Survey asks self-identified current students, alumni, and practicing lawyers to rate major aspects of life at their law school (academics, social life, clinical training, career services, financial aid advising) and/or law firm (compensation, hours, morale, culture, training). We then translate these ratings into letter grades, where the mean score for each particular ratings category is the equivalent of a “B.”

We require a minimum threshold of responses for each institution before we publish any survey-based ratings content. Using a standard formula for statistical validity, we adhere to a threshold that gives us an 85% confidence level and a 10% margin of error. The precise threshold number will of course vary depending on the size of the individual institution. For example, for a law firm of 1,000 attorneys, we would require 50 responses in order to publish ratings for the firm.

Sector	Anticipated	Actual
Source: ATL Insider Survey and the American Bar Association
Work for a firm	56%	36%
Work for government	19%	14%
Work in non-profit/public interest	13%	9%
Go solo	0%	2%

Insider Reviews

from students and alumni of Washington University of St. Louis School of Law

Alumni

Wash U is a great school. And St. Louis is a great place to be a student (it’s cheap, it’s convenient and there’s beer and baseball).
Alumni

Good academics, career services is useless.
Alumni

Career services is a joke. I am working at the same job, with the same salary (admittedly higher than most of my classmates) than before law school. Basically, I took a three year break and came right back to where I started. Of course, those three years depleted most of my savings. Unless you can graduate in the top 5% here, it is not worth attending.
Alumni

Students

Administration is very good at telling applicants what they want to hear during the admissions process. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of lies, or at least mistruths. WUSTL has a pretty building, but the job market in St. Louis is awful for a lot of us, and those who aren’t in the top 10-15% are really struggling to find jobs elsewhere because we go to school outside of a traditionally strong legal market.
2L

Has academic quality comparable to T14 schools, just hasn’t made it there yet. However, widely known that the administration’s number one goal is to get the school there. They firmly believe that Wash. U. deserves to be a T14 school.
1L

It’s extremely important to go to school in a geographic area in which you want to work; unless an applicant wants to work in Saint Louis they should think very carefully about committing to Wash U. Also, this school is incredibly cynical and does not care about anything except increasing the prestige of the school itself, which only tangentially benefits students.
3L

Salary info for the entire graduating class, more cutoffs in that data than just 25/50/75% (maybe a breakdown by 10% or 20% instead of 25%)
2L

That if you want to attend a top notch school that focuses on real life training, Washington University is the place for you.
2L

The events put on by the CSO, while helpful, become extremely repetitive. It has been my observation, though, that he unfortunate reality of the situation is that they probably need to be doing this more so than anyone realizes. I have been to biglaw networking events in St. Louis where 1Ls (which is all I can really speak to) show up unshaven or sloppily dressed (for the men) or in too revealing or too casual clothes (for the women).
1L