Cooley Law School

Required, and the FAQ says so in the same breath as ruling letters out: 'Cooley does require a personal statement, however letters of recommendation are not required as part of our admission process. We ask that applicants simply complete all portions of the application for admission through LSAC.' NO PROMPT, NO LENGTH, NO FORMAT IS PUBLISHED ANYWHERE. The apply page, the FAQ, the prospective-students page, the schedule-options page and the admissions-standards page were all fetched; none carries a question to answer, a page or word count, or a formatting rule. That is a genuine absence rather than a gap in this file's research, and it is unusual -- most schools at this tier at least cap the length. WHAT COOLEY DOES SAY ABOUT WRITING is attached to the LSAT instead: 'Cooley Law School will, in some cases, score the writing sample. It is important that you do your very best to demonstrate your ability to write clearly and logically.' NO WHY-COOLEY QUESTION, no perspective statement, no optional essay and no resume requirement is published, so those types are omitted rather than recorded as absent -- the FAQ's 'simply complete all portions of the application' is the school's whole account of what to send.

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CHARACTER AND FITNESS IS THE ONLY CONDITIONAL WRITING OBLIGATION COOLEY PUBLISHES, and it demands documents as well as prose -- recorded here because the taxonomy in docs/DATA.md has no character-and-fitness type. 'Please answer each question candidly. Your law school application is your first step in your admission to the practice of law. If you answer 'yes' to any of the character and fitness questions, (other than minor traffic violations not involving drugs or alcohol), you must submit: a personal explanation disclosing the details of 'who, what, when, where, and why'; court/official documents verifying that your disclosure had a final disposition and proof that all court-imposed fines and penalties have been satisfied.' Two things to read carefully: minor traffic violations are carved out unless drugs or alcohol are involved -- narrower than the blanket disclosure some schools demand -- and the second bullet requires proof that fines and penalties are actually satisfied, not merely that a matter closed. A NON-TRUTHFUL ANSWER IS RECLASSIFIED RATHER THAN MERELY PENALISED: 'Any question not answered truthfully at time of application will be considered a 'late disclosure.'' And the consequence reaches past admission: 'Admission can be denied or limited based on character and fitness disclosures made during and after the admissions process.' No page or word limit is published for the explanation, and no general-purpose addendum slot is offered for anything else -- an applicant with a score or transcript to explain has no published home for it here. Required is false because the obligation is conditional on an affirmative answer.

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THE LSAT IS REQUIRED OF EVERYONE, WITH NO EXCEPTIONS OFFERED AND AN UNUSUAL REASON GIVEN: 'Do I need to take the LSAT? Yes, because it is required by the American Bar Association Standards for accreditation of law schools. You must take the LSAT regardless of life experience and other academic credentials.' The second sentence is aimed squarely at the career-changer population Cooley's part-time schedules are built for. HIGHEST SCORE, NOT AVERAGED, WITH A FIVE-YEAR WINDOW: 'If I take the LSAT more than once, does Cooley Law School 'average' the scores? No, we will use the highest LSAT score as long as it is not over five years old.' A RETAKE CAN RAISE A SCHOLARSHIP RIGHT UP TO MATRICULATION, which is a genuinely valuable and rarely published allowance: 'If your LSAT score is received by the law school from LSAC prior to your first day of matriculation, we will use your highest score to determine your scholarship.' The five-year window also governs deferrals: 'your LSAT score must be active (not more than 5 years old) at the time you request a deferment.' THE FILING AND THE SITE DO NOT AGREE ABOUT JD-NEXT, recorded not resolved. Cooley's 2025 509 reports 6 JD-Next enrollees (1 full-time, 5 part-time) alongside 231 LSAT admissions enrollees -- and JD-Next reporting requires an ABA Standard 503 variance, so the filing is asserting a route the school holds. Yet no Cooley page mentions JD-Next at all, and the FAQ says flatly that the LSAT is required 'regardless'. The two are reconcilable if JD-Next is a supplement to a required LSAT, as it is at Akron and Atlanta's John Marshall -- the enrollee counts do not distinguish the cases -- but Cooley does not say so. This is the same shape as the Hofstra entry in docs/CURATION.md. NO GRE ROUTE: the GRE is not mentioned anywhere and no GRE row appears in the 509. THE APPLY PAGE ADVERTISES AN 'Outcome-Based Admissions Process' AND THE PAGE IT LINKS TO DOES NOT DESCRIBE ONE -- the destination carries only a pointer to the 509 and a character-and-fitness note. Recorded as a dead end rather than guessed at.

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CAS IS REQUIRED FOR US, TERRITORY AND CANADIAN STUDY, AND THE SWEEP OF WHAT MUST BE SENT IS WIDER THAN MOST: 'You must register with CAS if you attended a university in the United States, its territories, or Canada. After you register for CAS, you must have a separate transcript sent to LSAC directly from each undergraduate and graduate institution you attended in the US, its territories, or Canada. This includes all classes taken at the undergraduate level, even one or two classes, and whether it was applied toward your degree or not. This also applies to college courses taken while in high school.' Dual-enrollment high school coursework and abandoned single courses both count -- an easy omission that would surface later as a discrepancy. FOREIGN-EDUCATED APPLICANTS ARE ROUTED AWAY FROM CAS BY PREFERENCE, WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF MOST SCHOOLS: 'Cooley does not require foreign-educated applicants to utilize the JD CAS service provided by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) but Cooley will accept the JD CAS service in certain circumstances. Cooley Law School recommends that foreign-educated applicants have their undergraduate and graduate transcripts sent to World Education Services, Inc. (WES) for transcript evaluation. WES will assign a cumulative undergraduate grade point average as well as evaluate and determine U.S. equivalency for your course work. When using WES, Cooley requires the Comprehensive Course-by-Course Report.' Note the WES report is a paid service with its own fees, and the Comprehensive Course-by-Course grade is the specific product required. THE DEGREE TRANSCRIPT IS A CONDITION OF ENROLLMENT WITH A DISMISSAL ATTACHED, and the sequence is worth reading in full: 'Before you begin classes, we must have an official copy of your undergraduate transcript in your file. This offer of admission and subsequent enrollment is conditional upon receipt of the official transcript posting the baccalaureate degree and the date it was conferred.' The one carve-out is narrow -- 'for those whose degree is conferred just weeks prior to starting law school' -- and the consequence is stated: 'If the official transcript posting your bachelor's degree is not in your file prior to your first semester's final exams, you risk being dropped from classes, and dismissed from school.' 'You must have earned the bachelor's degree prior to beginning classes.'

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LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION ARE NOT REQUIRED AT COOLEY, DENIED IN SO MANY WORDS: 'Cooley does require a personal statement, however letters of recommendation are not required as part of our admission process.' Under docs/CURATION.md that is an explicit denial rather than silence, which is why this is recorded at all rather than omitted. Note what the school does not say: it neither invites letters nor caps them, so no count_accepted is recorded, and there is no published guidance on who might write one or whether an unsolicited letter would be read. For an applicant budgeting time across a list, this is one of the more consequential facts in the file -- Cooley asks for the application and a personal statement and nothing else.

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NO APPLICATION FEE. Cooley's admissions pages never mention one in either direction; the school's 2025 ABA Standard 509 certifies 'Application fee 0', so the filing is the source and is cited as such. No waiver process is published, which follows from there being nothing to waive. LSAC's own CAS fees are separate -- and note that foreign-educated applicants are steered to WES instead, whose Comprehensive Course-by-Course Report carries its own charges that Cooley does not cover or discuss. THE FIRST MONEY IS A $525 DEPOSIT, AND $25 OF IT IS GONE IMMEDIATELY: 'To reserve your seat, please complete the Intent to Enroll Form and pay the $525 deposit. That deposit includes a $25 non-refundable enrollment fee with the remaining $500 being applied towards the tuition of your incoming term.' Financial aid is gated on it: 'Once the deposit has been paid, the Financial Aid Office can proceed with processing your financial aid.' The FAQ also flags that the form's terms change for late applicants -- 'Carefully read the language on the Intent to Enroll form if your application was processed after the posted deadline date' -- which is the only place on the whole site that a posted deadline is referred to at all.

Verified 2026-09-15 · source page