Friday, March 18, 2011

Scholarship

The older I get the more I'm sure that I don't know much.  Truly, my life has been an example of "the more I learn, the less I know." 

When it came to b-school, there were precious few scholarships.  In fact, I can honestly say I've never met a person who went to b-school on scholarship.  I'm sure there are some.  Especially when you're talking about URMs, all bets are off.  I also have known very few people who were in the tippy top strata of ultra brains.  So, I'm sure there's stuff going on up there.  I'm also sure I am not privy to what it is.

In any event, I had no idea how many scholarships are available with law schools.  It's utterly amazing.  Although people want to bash the rankings, the reality is that the rankings have helped in this regard, in my opinion.  Schools want people with good gpa and LSAT.  Without them, they fall in the rankings. 

Now, lots of things have changed since I last applied to a school.  For one thing, it appears that we've discovered how to make fire and harvest wolly mammoth hides in order to fashion clothing to protect us from the cold.

The other thing is that instead of gathering up all your crap and shooting it off to schools and paying an application fee to each one, you send all your stuff to a credentials assembling service (the LSAC) and they basically gather all the info and provide it to whatever school you want.

A LOT of schools don't have an application fee.  So, literally you can apply to dozens and dozens of schools with minimal effort and expense. 

What this also means is that schools looking for students can take a peek at your stuff.  (I can't remember if you had to allow this to happen or whether that's just the default.  I think I had to select it as an option.) 

Almost daily, I'm getting e-mails from law schools around the country offerring me scholarships.  Now, you have to be careful, here.  Some of these schools cost $40,000 a year and getting a $15,000 a year scholarship, if you ask me, isn't that big of a deal.

However, most of these scholarships have been substantial.  Basically lowering my cost of tuition far below what it will likely be at UT.

So, if I had known all this going in, I would have done a couple of things differently.

First, although I was somewhat prepared for the LSAT, I really just figured I needed to do well enough to get into UT.  So, I studied for a couple days, but that was it.  I ended up with a 159, when a score of about 170 was probably more in line with how I've done on the ACT, SAT and GMAT. 

Second, Toledo didn't require a personal statement.  (Case did, so I sent them one.)

Had I known that Toledo had scholarships, I would have knocked down a much higher LSAT and turned in a personal statement.

Now, I'm sorta hosed.  I have not gotten a scholarship offer, but I have traded some e-mails and to put a finer point on it, I haven't been denied a scholarship, either.  I'm probably in that gray area where they would much rather give the scholly to somebody with better credentials, but I'm not so bad they're dismissing me out of hand.

They asked me to send a personal statement to help the scholarship committee evaluate me and I'm going to shoot one off, today.

My other option, frankly, is to pass on admission this year, then re-take the LSAT and apply next year.  I've never taken one of those prep class dealies, but it might be worth it in this case.  With the right preparation, I have no doubt I can pull down an LSAT somewhere in the neighborhood of 170.  (For some perspective, a 170 is right in line with schools like NYU and Michigan.  Basically, schools in the top 10.  Of course, my UGPA is nowhere near what's required, and that's the problem, here.)

The 170 would make me a much stronger candidate for Toledo.  They're a smallish law-school.  Maybe they admit 120 to their 1L class.  So, the 170 helps them pull up their average LSAT score.

Also, the next LSAT is in June.  Toledo has rolling admissions and their final deadline isn't until August.  I could, potentially, withdraw my current application, then submit another one in July.  Trouble is, at that point I only get in if they still have seats (I bet they will) and the odds are that even fewer scholarships will be available since they will have already used most (if not all) of the available money to attract students.

Law school is expensive, too.  Toledo is a state school and on the less-expensive side of the equation as far as this goes, but it's still 20 grand a year.  I'm looking at a $60,000 debt burden if I do this.  It doesn't take a mathematical genius to know that a burden half that size would be a lot more manageable.  It's the difference between paying off an Escalade or an Accord.  Given that the degree is the same either way, I'd rather pay off the Accord.

Okay, time to get busy on the personal statement.  I'm going to preview day tomorrow.  If I accept, I need to send them money a week from today.

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