Application and Admissions

To be considered for the CPRL scholar award and/or housing support, please indicate your interest in the CPRL Application

CPRL Scholar Awards:

All CPRL awards are distributed as awards of last resort and will always take into consideration any other educational aid which students have already been (or will be) awarded. The CPRL Scholar Award Application is optional. You can read more about the requirements here.

Please carefully read the application requirements below, noting the next steps most relevant to you to apply for a CPRL Scholar Award:

1. Indicate interest in the CPRL Scholar Award in their CPRL Application
2. Work with their home institution's Financial Aid Office to return a completed and signed Financial Aid Data Form by the posted deadline. The form must come from the home institution's Financial Aid Office and must be signed in order for your Scholar Award application to be considered complete.

Housing Support:

Any CPRL applicant from a home institution outside of New York may apply for housing support. 

Check out our Housing Guide! 

Most non-Columbia students do not pay extra tuition to participate in the program. With the one exception noted below, the tuition and other financial arrangements students have with their home professional school remain intact throughout the course of students’ participation with CPRL. However, visiting students are required to pay to Columbia the same facilities, student activities, and health services fees that Columbia students pay, which is typically $1,500 in total. To account for this, non-Columbia universities and graduate programs with which CPRL partners typically waive their comparable fees for the semester in which their students are in residence at Columbia.

CPRL students receive a semester’s worth of course credits and often only enroll in this course or enroll in this course and one additional course of no more than three credits.

Students can expect to spend at least 40 hours each week on CPRL-related activities, spanning seminar, skills training, and the project. Over the course of the semester, students spend roughly 55 hours in seminar and 25 hours in skills training. At the beginning of the semester, project work typically involves 10 hours per week. As the semester continues, project work becomes full time (i.e., approximately 40 hours per week) as the time commitments for seminar and skills training declines.

Law students receive all the credits needed to meet the American Bar Association (ABA) experiential learning requirements.

The application for Summer 2026 is now closed. 

Your application must include the following 4 documents:

1. Your CV or resume
2. An unofficial graduate transcript
3. A cover letter, which should include an explanation what attracts you to CPRL and what skills, experiences, interests, and aspirations you would bring to the summer.
4. A work sample and optional short description:
   1. Please submit an existing work product you created recently that best represents the skills and strengths you would bring to our program. This can be a project, report, presentation, memo, paper, lesson plan, or any other artifact that you believe best exemplifies your capabilities. We understand that many work products may contain confidential or proprietary information and will be redacted accordingly before submission.
   2. In 250 words or less, attach an optional description of why you chose this work product, who the audience was, whether it was edited and/or includes contributions from anyone else (e.g., team members, advisors, etc.), and if so, the extent of their contribution, and any other relevant information for understanding your submission.

Questions? Email [email protected]