2024 Best Value Colleges for Legal Research in District of Columbia

When it comes to choosing a college, students have a lot of options - but not all of them are good. At College Factual, we’re committed to helping you make that decision by providing information such as that found in our “Best Value Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia” ranking.

Legal Research is the 114th most popular major in the country with 6,874 degrees awarded in 2020-2021. In 2019-2020, legal research graduates who were awarded their degree in 2017-2019, earned an average of $66,544 and had an average of $26,000 in loans still to pay off.

Across District of Columbia, there were 481 legal research graduates with average earnings and debt of $82,283 and $0 respectively.

For this year’s “Best Value Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia” ranking, we looked at 3 colleges that offer a degree in legal research. This ranking identifies schools with high-quality legal research programs that also have a lower cost than schools of similar quality.

To come up with these rankings, we looked at factors such as the cost to attend the school after aid is awarded and overall quality of the legal research program at the school. For more information, check out our ranking methodology.

More Ways to Rank Legal Research Schools

When choosing the right school for you, it’s important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we’ve created a number of major-specific rankings, including this “Best Value Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia” list to help you make the college decision.

You can create your own custom comparison that focuses on the factors most important to you using our tool, College Combat. Test it out by comparing your favorite schools against others you are considering, or bookmark the tool so you can experiment with it later.

Best Value Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia

The colleges and universities below are the best for district of columbia legal research students.

Top 3 Best Value Colleges for Legal Research in District of Columbia

1

George Washington University
Washington, District of Columbia

#2 in overall quality

$32,563 Average Net Price

$65,148 Average Early-Career Earnings

Out of the 3 schools in the Best Value Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia that were part of this year’s ranking, George Washington University landed the #1 spot on the list. Washington, District of Columbia is the setting for this large institution of higher learning. The private not-for-profit school handed out ’s legal research degrees to 74 students in 2020-2021.

GWU also made our “Best Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia” list, coming in at #2. The estimated yearly cost for George Washington University is $32,563 for District of Columbia Legal Research students.

Students who start out at the school are likely to stick around. The freshman retention rate is 91%. The low undergrad student loan default rate of 1.3% is a good sign that students have an easier time paying off their loans than they might at other schools. For comparison, the national default rate is 10.1%.

Read full report on Legal Research at GWU

2

American University
Washington, District of Columbia

#3 in overall quality

$40,088 Average Net Price

$50,575 Average Early-Career Earnings

You’ll be in good company if you decide to attend American University. It ranked #2 on our 2024 Best Value Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia list. The American University is a fairly large school located in Washington, District of Columbia that handed out 88 ’s legal research degrees in 2020-2021.

The American University did well in our major quality rankings, too. It placed #3 on our “Best Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia” list. The estimated yearly cost for The American University is $40,088 for District of Columbia Legal Research students.

The low undergrad student loan default rate of 1.7% is a good sign that students have an easier time paying off their loans than they might at other schools. For comparison, the national default rate is 10.1%. The school has an excellent freshman retention rate of 90%, which means students like the school well enough to return for a second year.

Full The American University Legal Research Report

3

Georgetown University
Washington, District of Columbia

#1 in overall quality

$32,108 Average Net Price

$69,885 Average Early-Career Earnings

Out of the 3 schools in the Best Value Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia that were part of this year’s ranking, Georgetown University landed the #3 spot on the list. This large school is located in Washington, District of Columbia, and it awarded 317 ’s legal research degrees in 2020-2021.

Georgetown also took the #1 spot in our “Best Legal Research Schools in District of Columbia” ranking. The yearly cost to attend Georgetown is $32,108 for district of columbia legal research students.

The school has an excellent freshman retention rate of 98%, which means students like the school well enough to return for a second year. The undergrad student loan default rate at the school is 0.7%, which is quite low when compared to the national default rate of 10.1%.

Full Georgetown University Legal Research Report

• Best Value Colleges for Legal Research in the Middle Atlantic Region
• Best Value Colleges for Legal Research

Notes and References

References

• The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of our data about colleges.
• Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
• Information about the national average student loan default rate is from the U.S. Department of Education and refers to data about the 2016 borrower cohort tracking period for which the cohort default rate (CDR) was 10.1%.

Read more about our data sources and methodologies

Footnotes

• *Average salary, average net price, and average tuition and fees are for the top schools only.
• Some schools otherwise deserving of recognition may have been removed from this ranking in the event that new data identified post-publication warranted it, or at the request of the school.