Upper Year Admission Standards

Only applicants who have attained at least a “B” average in their previous years of study in law will be considered for admission in all upper-year categories. An applicant who has failed one or more courses in law school or in the NCA process will not be considered for admission. At least one academic letter of reference must be provided from a law professor who can comment on the applicant’s academic abilities.

For transfer and letter of permission applicants, a letter is required from the Dean or Associate Dean Academic of the current law school attesting that the applicant is in good standing and has not been the subject of any disciplinary sanction on academic or non-academic grounds nor otherwise been found to have engaged in misconduct.

Provided that the application is competitive on academic factors, priority will be given to the admission of transfer or letter of permission applicants who are seeking to return to their home province from a Canadian law school outside Ontario and to applicants seeking to transfer between Ontario law schools. Curriculum-related grounds and career-path reasons supporting the application will be considered. Consideration will be given to compelling compassionate or personal grounds supporting the application. In this regard, priority will be given to transfer and letter of permission applicants whose own ill health or the ill health of a close family member or child-care responsibilities necessitate closer proximity. Documentation corroborating the grounds should be provided to support the application.

English Language Proficiency and TOEFL

An excellent command of spoken and written English is essential to success in law school. A TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) score is required for applicants who are not fluent in English. Applicants who have completed at least three years of full-time study at a recognized university taking courses for which English is the official language of instruction, may request exemption from the TOEFL requirement. Such a request for exemption must be supported by an academic letter of reference attesting to the applicant’s fluency in written and spoken English.

Test results from the new iBT TOEFL are preferred. Standards for the new TOEFL iBT are a minimum total score of no less than 100, with a minimum of 24 on the Writing section, no less than 22 on the Speaking section, no less than 24 on the Reading section and no less than 20 on the Listening section. Under the old TOEFL scoring system, no applicant with a TOEFL score of less than 600/250 and a TWE of less than 5.0 was considered. The institution code for Queen’s University is 0949. For further information, please see the TOEFL website at http://www.ets.org/toefl/.