Florida International University College of Law

'The Admissions Committee requires a personal statement.' Formatting is prescribed in the prompt itself: no more than three typed, double-spaced pages. No font or margin requirement is published, and nothing is said about generative AI. The five lines after the first sentence are a bulleted list on the page; 'Discrimination Economic or family hardship' is reproduced as published — two examples run together on one bullet in FIU's own markup, not a transcription error here. THIS PROMPT ABSORBS WHAT OTHER SCHOOLS SPLIT OUT: FIU asks for no perspective or diversity statement and no why-school essay, but invites obstacle material inside the personal statement, and its 'Committee Decision Making Process' section says the same factors are weighed — 'Evidence of obstacles that an applicant may have overcome (English is not the applicant's native language, discrimination, economic or family hardship, severe medical condition) are also considered.' The committee describes its overall approach as: 'A prospective student's academic record (undergrad GPA and LSAT or GRE score) weighs heavily in the evaluative process. In addition to these academic markers, the Admissions Committee also considers other factors, including leadership ability, commitment to public service, command of global issues, work history, military service, and any history of criminality or academic misconduct.'

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OPTIONAL, AND CAPPED AT ONE — the lightest letter requirement in this data set, and the opposite of the two-or-three-letter norm. 'Applicants have the option of submitting one letter of recommendation. For current college students or recent graduates, the letter must be an academic recommendation. Letters of recommendation should attest to the applicant's character and preparedness for law school. FIU Law prefers that all letters of recommendation be submitted through LSAC.' Note the conditional inside the option: an applicant who is a current student or recent graduate and chooses to submit a letter does not get to choose its type — it must be academic. count_required is omitted rather than set to zero because no letter is required at all. Routing is a preference, not a rule ('prefers'), so a letter sent outside LSAC is not said to be rejected.

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OPTIONAL, and it substitutes for parts of the form rather than supplementing them: 'Applicants have the option of submitting a resume/curriculum vitae in lieu of completing Parts C and D of the application.' An applicant who skips the resume must therefore fill out those sections by hand instead. Content guidance, published as a list: 'Your résumé or CV should include examples of professional, academic, civic and extracurricular accomplishments, such as: Employment history / Honors and awards / Community service / Extracurricular activities / Foreign language proficiencies / Military service.' No page limit or format requirement is published, so none is recorded.

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'All candidates must have been awarded a baccalaureate degree from an accredited four-year institution. Official transcripts from each undergraduate, graduate and professional school you attended must be sent directly to LSAC.' A SECOND OBLIGATION AFTER ADMISSION: 'Prior to matriculation, admitted students must request that their undergraduate, graduate and professional schools submit a final official transcript to LSAC.' No date is attached to it. FOREIGN CREDENTIALS: 'Foreign transcripts must be submitted to the Credential Assembly Service of the Law School Admission Council for transcript authentication and evaluation.' ENGLISH PROFICIENCY, with a waiver route that is unusual and worth knowing: 'If English is not your first language, you must take the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Scores must be sent directly to the FIU College of Law Office of Admissions. Candidates who receive a 158 LSAT score or better may request a waiver of the TOEFL examination from the Office of Admissions.' So a strong LSAT can remove the TOEFL entirely, on request. Note the routing difference: transcripts go to LSAC, but TOEFL scores go directly to FIU. No minimum TOEFL score and no IELTS alternative is published, and no minimum GPA is published.

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EITHER TEST, with no preference stated: 'All applicants seeking admission to FIU law must take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) or Graduate Record Examination (GRE).' GRE mechanics: ETS school code 4431, and 'If you have already taken a GRE General Test, make sure there is a reportable GRE General Test score in your ETS account and order an Additional Score Report to be sent to FIU Law.' MULTIPLE SCORES — FIU is explicit where most schools are not: 'The Admissions Committee will consider your highest GRE score, but will see all reportable scores (including both the GRE and LSAT).' An applicant cannot show one test and hide the other. TIMING applies to both tests in identical words: 'Students must sit for the LSAT no later than June to be considered for admission in August of the same year' and 'Students must sit for the GRE no later than June to be considered for admission in August of the same year.' LSAT SCORE FLOOR BY DATE: 'Please note FIU Law will not accept LSAT scores earned prior to June 2021' — the five-year window that this file also uses to date the cycle (see the June 30 deadline entry). No equivalent age limit is published for the GRE. JD-NEXT, and FIU is one of the few schools in this data set that both accepts it and has a Standard 503 variance to report it: 'Applicants are encouraged to supplement their LSAT or GRE score with their JD-Next course completion. FIU Law will consider successful completion of the JD-Next course as part of the law school's holistic decision-making process. If you plan to include the JD-Next scores as a part of your application, please email us at lawadmit@fiu.edu to hold your application until the scores are received.' It supplements, never replaces, the LSAT or GRE. FIU's 2025 ABA Standard 509 report bears this out: it prints a JD-NEXT row (1 enrollee, full-time) alongside 174 LSAT admissions enrollees out of 175 first-years, and prints no GRE row at all — so the GRE is accepted in policy but produced no reportable cohort that year.

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$20, the lowest fee in this data set, and non-refundable: 'A completed Application for Admission must be completed in full, signed and accompanied by a $20.00 nonrefundable application fee.' FIU's 2025 ABA Standard 509 report independently lists the application fee as $20. NO FEE-WAIVER PROCESS IS PUBLISHED — recorded as a silence, not as a refusal; no FIU page fetched on 2026-08-18 mentions an application fee waiver, need-based or otherwise. The only fee-reduction FIU points to belongs to a test rather than to its own application: 'You may qualify for the GRE Fee Reduction Program based on financial need.' Applications are accepted only through LSAC ('FIU Law only accepts applications submitted via LSAC'), so LSAC's own CAS and registration fees are separate and are not addressed by FIU's pages.

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EXPLICITLY NOT PART OF THE EVALUATION — an explicit denial rather than a silence, and stated in the FAQ on the how-to-apply page: 'Do I need to do an interview to apply? No, interviews are not required for admission consideration and will not be factored into any final application decisions. However, we do encourage you to schedule a visit.' The second clause is the useful half: even an interview that happens carries no weight, so a campus visit or a conversation with the admissions team is informational only. FIU does invite visits separately, run by its Student Ambassadors.

Verified 2026-08-31 · source page