A coworker of mine teaches test prep for the LSAT. He mentioned in passing that there are law schools where great scores on the LSAT can, all by themselves, earn you a full ride scholarship.
A. Is this true?
B. What schools are these?
C. Are they any good?
D. Of course it varies, but beyond tuition etc., what kind of stipend often comes with such a scholarship?
I’ve heard that LSAT and undergrad GPA are the two key factors. Some schools give more weight to GPA while others give more weight to LSAT, but I don’t know of any school that solely looks at LSAT…
I don’t know about LSAT-only scholarships, but there are definitely some law schools that offer (or used to offer) full tuition scholarships. I don’t think they include any living stipend. Some examples that I can think of are Vanderbilt, Indiana, Universtiy of Texas (maybe for residents only), and Duke. These are good schools. I’m sure there are other schools that do this.
Scholarship selection is usually based on a combination of grades, LSAT, essay writing and personal interview. Some of these scholarships are merit based, and some are a combination of merit and need.
Looks like you can get into Cooley Law School and get a scholarship based solely on a high LSAT score:
http://www.cooley.edu/prospective/requirements.html
http://www.cooley.edu/prospective/scholarships.html
A high LSAT score can get you a full scholarship or close to it for your first year at some schools, generally from schools who want to improve their median LSAT scores and/or bar passage rates. Just to pick an example at random, one that sticks in my mind from back when I was applying was Thomas Jefferson Scool of Law in San Diego. Their student guide says that a score of 150 or over will earn a first year scholarship, with scores of 160 to 180 earning a full first year scholarship subject to renewal. Schools offering scholarships like these are often less prestigious schools trying to attract better students, so you may have to balance attending a lower ranked school against free tuition.
I have never heard of this . . . .
It was part of the process for the scholarship that I got.
Great schools (top 14) want great GPA and great LSAT and don’t give scholarships.
Good schools want great GPA and great LSAT and will give scholarships to lure people away from the top 14.
OK schools will take someone just for their great LSAT with a bad GPA to bring up their stats and might give a scholarship.
I didn’t even go to an OK school, I went to a non-ABA night school. I received a scholarship amounting to 1 free semester for having the best LSAT school of the freshman class. I didn’t know about it until I received it, so it wasn’t used to lure me in. In fact, the school doesn’t even require an LSAT score on the application, so sometimes I wonder if I was the only person who took it, thereby winning the scholarship by default.
The real story about scholarships is much much more complicated. Here’s how it works in practice:
The school (any school) is looking for a combination of three factors that increases the rankability of their student body. In practice, that means they want LSAT, GPA, and diversity. The particular combination doesn’t really matter as much as you would think, although high LSATs are more rare than high GPAs and consequently valued more by most schools. Boalt is one of the few schools that goes for GPA over LSAT.
The other factor is what the school needs based on the offers made and the probability that the student will accept the offer. This is actually what drives scholarships. Every school offers merit based scholarships, which are actually more like bribes to the student. Merit in this case means “scores that will raise our ranking”.
So schools like Harvard do offer the scholarships, and tuition waivers of varying amounts. However, having a high LSAT and low GPA is less likely to attract money at the 10 - 15 top ranked schools simply because they have a virtually endless supply of candidates with high GPA and LSAT.
At schools trying to increase their rankings, there is money available to people with only one high score, but it depends entirely upon the school’s needs. The key is to have your LSAT be higher than their target, so if you have, say, a 175 (unlikely), you will be above the target at every school, including HYS, by a good amount. In that case, even Harvard might offer you a discount.
The bottom 100 or so schools tend to offer a lot more full rides, but they generally offer a lower median of scholarship money.
As for full rides in general, they are somewhat rare, and yes, if you get high score on the LSAT with a low GPA, plenty of tier 3 and 4 schools will give you a full ride, which you would be an idiot to take. You can get them at better schools with good negotiation, but the truth is that in almost every case, the ranking hit you will take for a full ride isn’t worth the money saved.
As far as needs-based money goes, it is pretty rare. Loans are easily available for almost any school, and anyone can afford to go to law school on the loans. Sure, you have a lot to pay back, but unless you have a bunch of kids or have to support an elderly family member (which generally means you aren’t going to perform as well on the LSAT or on your undergrad GPA, so the issue is probably moot), you can afford to live during school, and after you will at some point make decent money, plus there are many repayment programs, etc. Harvard has a needs program, I think Columbia does, and a few of the top 30s also do, but they are mostly for small amounts.
Finally, the interview and the essay are not going to get you into a school. What they will do is keep you out of a school if you mess them up. There are some very rare cases where a well-written essay can explain away a bad facet of your app (I have a crappy GPA because I was battling cancer/drugs/religion/the internet). Most people don’t have a big split, because both GPA and LSAT correlate fairly well with academic ability, so if you’re dreaming of taking the LSAT and getting into Yale after you graduate with a 2.0 from DeVry, you’ll be disappointed. But if you have a fantastic LSAT and an average GPA (3.4-3.6), you will have good results, though it is unlikely you will get a full ride at the level of school you should be attending.
to follow up on ivn1188’s comment, I had a fantastic LSAT, what he listed as an average GPA, and got into a top-14 school with some scholarship help. I guess it was 1/4 to 1/3rd of my tuition? I don’t really remember the numbers. I also had a pretty compelling backstory but I’m not a minority.
To clarify this, diversity in the apps game is more than race/ethnicity. Anything you can do to make yourself stand out gives you a few extra points that might put you above another equal candidate – gay, raised in some weird religious compound, growing up in Uzbekistan, political refugee from the Congo, being a poor farm kid, or anything else that you can play up. Schools love to have a wide variety of students to put on their brochures that make the school look more like a Benetton ad.
Yes and no. Being on the archery team or from Idaho or first in your family to go to college will operate, in some events, as a tipping factor – it’ll potentially put you over the edge when up against someone with just about the same numerical metrics. But there have never really been any quotas or quasi quotas for archers or Idahoans (though I’ve gotten the vague sense most schools would like to have as many home states represented as possible). Race-based affirmative action, as applied, has involved working backward from target numbers of ethnic-group students, and/or adopting a two-tiered set of numerical standards (the Fifth Circuit found in Hopwood that the same LSAT/grade combo that would get a black student presumptively admitted would get a white student presumptively denied). No one’s ever systematically added 20 points to someone’s score for being from a farm or growing up Quaker.
I didn’t say that it would systematically add anything, just that it can make the difference between two otherwise equal candidates.
The schools in top demand, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc have plenty of applicants in the top percentile and don’t need to offer LSAT based scholarships. ABA accreditation requires bar passage rates of a minimum percentage, so schools without the big name pull need top students and they will offer full or partial scholarships for one or more years to entice the students most likely to pass the bar away from the more expensive schools.
My college roommate had a 3.97 average and was above the 99th percentile in the LSAT and went to Harvard Law without scholarship. Quickest thinker I’ve ever met. On the other hand, he was dumb enough to room with me, and I snore, and he knew it in advance. I had a 3.25 average and an 80th percentile on the LSAT and went to a third tier school w/o scholarship. I was offered a half scholarship at a less prestigious school (yes Virginia, there are fourth and fifth tier schools) but turned that down.
Here is a good site:
http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com/
Put in your LSAT and GPA and see your chances. Also see what others with numbers similar to yours received.
ZOMG. Can we all admit that “Top 14” was coined by some douche at Georgetown, which has been the–wait for it–14th ranked law school since Jesus.
If you’re not Ivy, you’re trash.
I need to know whether to file that under “uninformative–tongue in cheek” or “uninformative–other.”
I’d say it satisfied all the Gricean maxims.
info covered above