|
The University of Chicago Law School
Admissions Office, 1111 E 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637 Phone: 773.702.9494; Fax:
773.834.0942
E-mail: admissions@law.uchicago.edu;
Website: www.law.uchicago.edu
Applicants (Freshman Class; 2005 - 2006)
|
Applied: |
3,859 |
|
Accepted: |
749 |
|
Enrolled: |
195 |
|
Average Age: |
24 |
Student Body (2005 - 2006)
|
Median LSAT: |
169 |
|
Median GPA: |
3.62 |
|
Women: |
40% |
|
Minority: |
23% |
Tuition (In State)
Tuition (Out of State)
| Students
receiving financial aid: |
78% |
Placement
| Placed
within 9 months: |
100% |
| Average
starting salary: |
$15,000 - $165,000 |
Areas of placement
|
Academic: |
1% |
|
Business: |
2% |
|
Government: |
2% |
|
Judicial Clerks: |
28% |
|
Public Interest: |
1% |
Library Resources
|
Number of Volumes: |
718,749 |
|
Number of Titles: |
292,898 |
|
Number of Subscriptions: |
8,878 |
Introduction
Chicago
graduates lead and innovate in government,
public causes, academia, and business, as
well as law. For this reason, Chicago aims
not to certify lawyers, but to train
well-rounded, critical, and socially
conscious thinkers and doers. Three
cornerstones provide the foundation for
Chicago’s educational mission: the
marketplace of ideas, participatory
learning, and interdisciplinary inquiry.
Enrollment/Student Body
Our students’
chief passion is intellectual rigor. They
have shown this passion through their
academic success, and they exhibit signs of
great professional promise. About 5,000
applicants seek approximately 190–195 seats
in each incoming class. Chicago students
come from more than 100 undergraduate
institutions with degrees in nearly every
discipline, and one in ten have graduate
degrees. Many of our students have also had
interesting and successful careers before
law school.
Faculty
What
distinguishes Chicago faculty is their
devotion to both teaching and scholarship.
This might seem a contradiction at first,
but at Chicago, teaching and scholarship
complement each other. Chicago professors
blaze trails in legal thought, and their
revolutionary ideas infuse classroom
discussion with immediacy and excitement.
Our professors write the books, draft the
statutes, and decide the cases that students
read at law schools across America. During
the 2004–2005 academic year, our faculty
will teach more than 170 courses and
seminars at the Law School.
Curriculum
As a
first-year student, you will take a core
sequence covering five principal areas of
the law: contracts, torts, property,
criminal law, and civil procedure; a
required interdisciplinary course called
Elements of the Law; an elective; and a
year-long course on research and writing.
This curriculum familiarizes you with the
basic principles of Anglo-American law,
cultivates legal reasoning, develops writing
ability, and introduces students to
interdisciplinary approaches to the law.
In the second
and third years, you can choose courses from
the full range of Chicago’s more than 170
classes. Generally, classes are small; more
than 60 percent have fewer than 25 students
in them. Additionally, in an average year,
about one-third of the second- and
third-year students take classes in other
divisions of the university.
Special Programs
Students may
also pursue joint degrees with any other
division of the university. Popular programs
include business, public policy,
international affairs, history, and
economics. Students must apply separately to
the other program they want to pursue, and
they can apply for the other program either
before they start law school or during their
first year of law school.
Clinical Opportunities
Housed in the
Arthur Kane Center, our clinics involve more
than 100 students each year in representing
clients with real-world problems. The Mandel
Legal Aid Clinic handles matters involving
appellate advocacy, criminal and juvenile
justice, employment discrimination, civil
rights, housing, and mental health. The
Institute for Justice Clinic on
Entrepreneurship assists aspiring
entry-level entrepreneurs from low- and
moderate-income neighborhoods. The Law
School also partners with outside agencies
to provide additional clinical opportunities
to our students.
Student Activities
About 40
percent of upper-class students serve on one
of the three student-edited journals, the
newest of which is The Chicago Journal of
International Law. The Hinton Moot Court
Board conducts a program in appellate
advocacy for upper-class students, and
first-year students participate in a moot
court as part of the writing and research
program. More than 40 student organizations
provide opportunities for the exploration of
legal specialties, affiliation with
like-minded students, or networking within
identity groups.
Career Services
Our career
services office assists students with
permanent and summer employment. Four
professional career advisors counsel
students in one-on-one planning sessions.
Programs on types of practices and
nontraditional careers are organized
throughout the year for students. Graduates
of the Class of 2005 took jobs in these
areas: 68 percent joined law firms, 21
percent are clerking for judges, 8 percent
are in government/public service, 2 percent
are in business, and 2 percent are
continuing their education. The top four
destinations for our graduates are Chicago,
Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC.
Location
Hyde Park
provides Chicago students with the best of
all possible worlds: a campus with a
college-town atmosphere just a few miles
from the downtown of a vibrant city. Hyde
Park is a dynamic community with parks,
museums, and multiple bookstores. The Law
School is located at the southern end of
campus, facing an expansive “front lawn”
known as the Midway Plaisance. Surrounding
the Law School are a tree-lined, diverse
residential neighborhood, a sandy Lake
Michigan beach, and two sprawling parks. The
campus itself is a Gothic masterpiece where
limestone buildings, built around
tree-shaded quadrangles, sport gargoyles,
ivy, and turrets. The Law School’s modern
building promotes interaction among faculty
and students, while the recently remodeled
classroom wing enhances the learning
experience.
Housing
A graduate
residence hall, located two blocks from the
Law School, is available to law students.
Most rooms are singles with private baths.
In addition, the university has plenty of
single and married student neighborhood
housing available. Many students choose to
rent housing from private landlords. Buses
run frequently throughout the surrounding
neighborhood, providing transportation to
and from residences and the Law School.
Public transportation is easily accessible
to other neighborhoods in Chicago.
Admission
Each year we
seek to create a community from among the
best and brightest law school applicants. We
want students who are intellectually
curious, lively, collegial, and rigorous in
their academic approach. We want students
who will take their legal education
seriously but not take themselves too
seriously. And because we are preparing
students to enter a multifaceted profession,
we want multidimensional students with a
wide range of talents, backgrounds,
experiences, and accomplishments. We do not
use indices, formulas, or cutoffs.
Financial Aid
Your Chicago
legal education is an investment in your
future. Because many students will not have
sufficient personal resources to make this
investment, Chicago provides generous
financial aid. Approximately 50 percent of
the students receive scholarships and most
of these are supplemented if the student
engages in public interest work during the
summer after second year. The law school
also guarantees funding for students who
work in public interest positions during
their first year summer. After graduation,
the Law School provides financial assistance
to graduates who enter careers in public
interest legal work through our generous
Hormel Public Interest Program.
Applicant Profile
We seek to
create a community from among the best, the
brightest, and the most interesting law
school applicants. We do not believe that
the LSAT and GPA alone provide us with
sufficient information to evaluate an
applicant’s likely contributions
to our community; therefore, we do not use
any formulas, indices, or numerical cutoffs.
We do not provide an applicant profile here,
because it would be based solely on the LSAT
and GPA. |
