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When it comes to choosing a law school, there are some schools that are more popular among admitted students.
One indicator of a school’s popularity is its yield rate — the percentage of students who enroll at the school after being admitted.
Yale Law School, which ranks No. 1 in the 2018 Best Law Schools and accepted 9.5 percent of applicants for fall 2016, topped the list of ranked institutions with the highest yield. The Connecticut law school had an 81 percent yield rate for students starting in fall 2016, according to data submitted to U.S. News by 195 ranked law schools in an annual survey.
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Brigham Young University’s Clark School of Law, a school affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that offers lower tuition to church members, claimed the second spot on the list. Of the 191 students accepted by Clark in 2016, 138 enrolled. Those figures represent a 72 percent yield.
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Among all 195 ranked schools that submitted these data to U.S. News, the average yield was about 24 percent. In comparison, the average yield was much higher among the top 10 schools on the list: 54 percent.
At the other end of the spectrum, the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth and Western Michigan University’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School had the lowest yields among law schools, at 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
Below is a list of the 10 law schools with the highest yield rates for the 2016-2017 school year. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.
| School (name) (state) | Students accepted (fall 2016) | Students enrolled (fall 2016) | Yield | U.S. News rank |
| Yale University (CT) | 259 | 210 | 81.1% | 1 |
| Brigham Young University (Clark) (UT) | 191 | 138 | 72.3% | 46 (tie) |
| Harvard University (MA) | 908 | 563 | 62% | 3 |
| University of North Dakota | 185 | 89 | 48.1% | 142 (tie) |
| Appalachian School of Law (VA) | 79 | 38 | 48.1% | RNP* |
| University of Nevada–Las Vegas | 204 | 93 | 45.6% | 62 (tie) |
| University of Arkansas–Little Rock (Bowen) | 232 | 105 | 45.3% | 134 (tie) |
| Stanford University (CA) | 409 | 180 | 44% | 2 |
| Washburn University (KS) | 257 | 112 | 43.6% | 127 (tie) |
| Indiana University–Indianapolis (McKinney) | 429 | 184 | 42.9% | 88 (tie) |
* RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of all law schools. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.
Don’t see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Law School Compass to find enrollment data, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.
U.S. News surveyed 203 schools for our 2016 survey of law programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News’ data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Law Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News’ rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The enrollment data above are correct as of March 28, 2017.
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10 Law Schools Where the Most Accepted Students Enroll originally appeared on usnews.com
Correction 03/31/17: A previous version of this article misstated the number of law schools surveyed by U.S. News.
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