Pritzker School of Law

Information about applying for financial aid, including priority deadlines, can be found in the Application Steps section.

Financial aid, including loan assistance, generally disburses to a student's tuition account at the university within 5 days of the official start of the academic term. Once charges on the university tuition account are paid in full, students may request a refund via CAESAR for any credit to use toward living and other academic expenses.

In general, financial aid cannot be approved to cover periods of time when a student is not actively enrolled and attending coursework required for their degree program.

Yes. Students must submit all of the required application documents each year they wish to receive financial aid.

The Office of Financial Aid can not guarantee an award and funds will be posted to your account by the first day of classes. This may result in late fees, registration holds, and not receiving a living/book expense refund in a timely manner. If you are passed the deadline, please submit the missing items immediately. The sooner these are in the sooner you will receive an award. We ask that you allow 4 to 6 weeks to process an award after all of your financial aid documents are in. Please be sure to view your checklist to be sure no further information is required and all documents are received.

Students will be offered financial aid to cover 100% of their cost of attendance for the academic year. This may be offered in a combination of loans after any scholarship funding offered by the Office of Admission.

The admissions office at the Law School make these decisions based upon both need and merit. For more information in regards to scholarships, please contact the Office of Admissions. The Office of Financial Aid lists links to outside scholarships on their website and also has information available in their office. Students may also look for outside scholarship assistance on the web at websites such as www.fastweb.com, www.scholarships.com or any other scholarship search engine. Please keep in mind that students should not be required to submit any form of payment in order to apply for outside scholarships.

International students are generally offered financial aid through private loan programs approved for international borrowers. These loans generally require the student to have a credit-worthy cosigner who is a US citizen or permanent resident.

No. Students may not request a refund via CAESAR until funds officially disburse to their account, no more than 5 days prior to the start of the term.

If a student has completed all required documents and their term has officially started but their funds have not disbursed, they may come to the Office of Financial Aid with their Wildcard to request a cash advance. The maximum amount of cash advance per month varies per program. The cash advance will appear as a charge against the student's anticipated credit.

Yes. Students who wish to reduce or cancel their loans can email the Office of Financial Aid from their NU email account and request to reduce their loan assistance. Students must include their name and student ID number and state the loan program they wish to reduce or cancel. If they wish to reduce the loan and not completely cancel it, they should state the amount to which they want the loan reduced.

If students rejected a portion of their loan assistance at the beginning of the year and decide later that they need those funds, they can request that the Office of Financial aid reinstate their originally offered loan amounts. Students may be required to complete additional loan applications or documents depending on the loan type. If students accepted 100% of the aid they were offered in their financial aid award, they are generally not eligible to receive additional funding unless they can document extenuating circumstances (i.e. medical bills not covered by insurance). For more information on requesting additional funding for extenuating circumstances, please contact the Office of Financial Aid.

Students should notify the Office of Financial Aid as soon as they are notified that they are a recipient of an outside scholarship. If we receive notification before your initial aid award is released, the outside scholarship will be included in your initial aid award. If a student is notified after they receive their initial aid award, they should e-mail the Office of Financial Aid and notify us of the name of the scholarship and the amount of the award. If a student has accepted 100% of their loan assistance, the Office of Financial Aid will be required to cancel an equal portion of their loan assistance to make room in the cost of attendance for the outside scholarship. If a student has declined a portion of their loan assistance equal to or greater than the amount of the scholarship, their other aid will not be affected.

Scholarship checks should be sent to the Office of Financial Aid at 710 N. Lake Shore Drive, Suite 629, Chicago, IL 60611.

We will need a copy of your soon-to-be spouse's tax information (federal tax return and W-2s) if you are an admitted student. The Office of Financial Aid will consider you as married and will calculate your need index number, used in scholarship determination, based on your combined income.

The Financial Aid Office will need confirmation from your spouse's registrar's office. Please have them fill out the Verification of Family Member in College form, found on our Forms webpage. You will need to fill out the first section and your spouse will need to fill out the second section. The Registrar's office will need to fill out the third and final section and send back to our office. If your spouse is another Northwestern student, let us know and we can verify this internally.