Asking for Fee Waivers

One of the things I talked about in my last post was picking and choosing which schools to apply to. One of the main reasons we talk about limiting the scope of your applications is because the application fees can add up. Really quickly. At between $50 and $80 a pop, not to mention the $12 LSAC reporting fee (what a racket, my god!), your pockets can empty on the LSAC website faster than mine at a J. Crew sale.

If you have demonstrated financial need, you can apply for a fee waiver through LSAC. You have to send in your tax and income documents, as well as a few other supplements, and they don't give out that many, from what I understand. But, should you get an LSAC fee waiver many schools will honor them and waive their fees as well (you just need to email them ahead of time to get a code).

However, if you don't make the cut financially, it doesn't mean you need to break the bank to apply. You can ask for merit fee waivers to any school you want to apply to. Some of the times the school will ask for the documentation, or say they only give fee waivers to those who have received LSAC fee waivers.

However, if your numbers (or really, just one number) are competitive, they will often just send you a code, or enter you into the system, and then VOILA, free app (well, free +$12 for the LSAC reporting fee. Grrrr).

The best way to go about getting an individual merit-based fee waiver is to email the admissions office directly. Find the school you're interested in applying to online, click on to their "Admissions" page, and fish around for a general "Contact Us" email address. Then just send them an email with all of your pertinent information and wait for a response.

Want a sample email? Here you go:

Dear Admissions Office,

My name is XXX, and I recently obtained my bachelors degree from XXX University (Class of 20XX). I scored a XXX on the December 20XX LSAT and I am working on completing my law school applications. XXX School of Law has an excellent academic reputation, which, along with its location in XXX, makes it one of my top choices to continue my legal education.

Unfortunately, the cost of applications has delayed my application process and restricted the number of schools to which I am able to apply. Therefore, I am writing to request an application fee waiver from the School of Law. I believe my scores and experience make me an ideal candidate for the J.D. program, and know that I will make a positive contribution to the class. I have had over a year of work experience at a mid-sized law firm in XXX.

My LSAC account number is LXXXXXXX. Please let me know if you require any additional information. As I mentioned, I am really interested in XXX School of Law and look forward to applying as soon as possible.

Thanks,

XXX

See, it really is simple. You can substitute your GPA for LSAT score if you're a reverse splitter, or include both of your numbers if you're above both of the school's medians. And it works more often than not in my experience (then again, I wasn't asking Harvard or Yale for fee waivers). This helped me really spread my applications around, which is important for a splitter. Now I haven't actually told this to anyone who's asked, because it's super-embarrassing, but I applied to a whopping (gulp) 33 schools. I was honestly positive I wasn't going to get in anywhere! And I only paid for one full application fee!

But watch out, those $12 fees can really add up!

Picking Where to Apply

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

At times this quote has been the bane of my existence. At other times I have used it to torture my less-than-motivated friends. Even though it's not something you (necessarily) want to hear, that cliche will always ring true. And so that is the method to my madness when deciding where, or where not, to apply to law schools.

The thing is: law school applications are effing expensive. Running between $50 and $80 each application, you're not going to get too many shots at getting in to a great school before you run out of cash (unless you're lucky enough to win some serious cash at keno, or have a Daddy Warbucks. In either case I don't begrudge you. I'm just jealous.). So, it comes down to deciding which shots you can afford NOT to take.

One very handy tool that I utilized when narrowing down my (sizable) potential application list was LSP. It's awesome. You just punch in your LSAT Score and your LSDAS weighted GPA and then hit "Agree to Terms." It populates a list of all of the ABA-accredited law programs in the US (and Puerto Rico) and calculates your chances on getting in to each school. Then it identifies them using a very user friendly, color coded method:

• Admit (Green) - Your numbers mean will most likely be admitted to the school.
• Strong Consider (Lighter Green) - Your numbers don't make you an auto-admit, but you are very likely to be admitted.
• Consider (Yellow) - Your numbers fall in the middle, but you are a viable candidate for admission to the school.
• Weak Consider (Orange) - Your numbers are not as competitive as the school would desire, and you are not likely to gain admission without amazing softs and LORs, although your application will be considered.
• Deny (Red) - Your numbers mean you are not likely to be admitted to this school.

It also gives you handy statistics, like your index number for a school, which you can read more about on the LSP site, and the percentage of students at or below your numbers that gained admission to the school, based on the last several years' worth of available data.

The ideal way to decide which schools you should apply to is to determine what your budget is. It's VERY easy to spend butt-loads of money on apps, so sit down with a firm number in mind. Say you want to spend $300. That's about 5 schools. So depending on how much of a risk taker you are you could take the data you get off of LSP and make some decisions based on budget and likelihood of admission. Just like when you were applying for law schools, you should have a few safeties and a few reaches, and some in between. If you could only apply to 5 schools, my recommendation would be to apply to 2 safeties (1 admit and 1 strong consider), 2 targets (2 considers) and 1 reach (either a weak consider or a deny).

At this point in the application process it's really important to, to borrow a phrase from Oprah, be real with yourself. If you have a 3.2 and a 164 you have a decent shot of getting in to a LOT of great schools, but barring you being a Nobel Peace Prize winner you don't have a shot in hell at getting in to Harvard. So why waste the $70 just to say you applied? Not worth it.

Another thing you have to be real with yourself about is the geographical area in which you'd like to practice. If you go to what are commonly referred to as the top 14 law schools (the T14), odds are you can find a job pretty much anywhere in the US. Everyone has heard of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, etc. But odds are that without a 3.5+ and a 170+ your application won't even be looked at by the admission committees at those schools.

Odds are that as a graduate from a mostly regional law school, the firms that are most likely to offer you jobs are firms in the general vicinity of where you got your JD, because your degree will actually mean something to them. So if you can't get in to the T14 (and there's no shame in not being T14 material, I'm DEFINITELY not), you're going to have to identify where you want to practice for the next few years, because that's probably where you'll be stuck -- I say stuck with all possible affection, I swear.

If you know you want to move to California, then look at schools that have good regional reputations. Conversely, if you are from California and know you DON'T want to live somewhere cold for the next seven to ten years, DON'T go to school at St. Thomas in Minnesota. When you try to move back to California you'll be interviewing with hiring partners who will have to ask you, "Where is that, again?" and who are interviewing a graduate from their alma mater in forty-five minutes. So narrowing down the geographic location in which you think you would be happy to live is another big thing to consider when deciding which schools to apply to.

Lastly (for purposes of our discussion, not in the end-all, be-all of law school applications), you should consider the employment statistics and specializations offered by your prospective schools. If you studied chemistry in college and want to go into IP and Patent Law, then why would you go to a school top-ranked in trial advocacy but lacking in serious IP professors? And if you're going to be taking out over $100k in loans to cover your law school education, don't you want to go to a school that will at least prepare you for a job in which you will earn enough money to make your loan payments every month? So check the employment statistics of each school - both 9 months out of school (the most commonly published number) AND the % of students employed upon graduation. And make sure you see what the median salary for new grads from the school is, and compare it to the cost of living in the area.

Aside from LSP, a handy tool I used quite a bit to get the statistics and information I needed was the Princeton Review's Best 172 Law Schools. It has surveys from current students talking about all aspects of campus life - quality of buildings, competitiveness, strength of professors and programs - from many of the ABA-accredited schools in the US.

SO, to sum up:

• Predict your chances at a given school using LSP (or another prediction website).
• Make sure you apply only to schools in geographical locations that you would be comfortable living and practicing in.
• Identify school specializations and areas of study that you are interested in and focus on those schools.
• Make sure that the school and career services offices are adequately preparing and promoting their graduates by checking employment statistics.
• Pick up a copy of the Princeton Review's 172 Best Law Schools.

I just peed a little.

Okay, this is out of order (I'm trying to go back and do this blog a little chronologically), but I'm just so stoked I HAD to share:




I GOT IN TO SANTA CLARA! It's my top choice school, and I wasn't really sure if I would get in, but I did!!! I've been a little neurotic since Tuesday because it showed me as "Decision Letter Sent" but still "In Committee," but it updated this morning! Stoked.

Okay, that's all. Resume your normal lives.

(Unless you want to celebrate with me tonight).

But I really wanted to be...

Okay, everyone goes to law schools for different reasons. But most law students, let's face it, didn't ACTUALLY want to go to law school for their whole lives (no matter what they may say). So every now and again I'll let you know what I really wanted to do with my life by posting a picture of what I actually wanted to be (at some point in my past).

So, yes, I'm going to law school. But what I really wanted to be was:

Engaged to a prince.

The Birth of Yet Another Twenty-Something Rambling

Okay, so I was sitting here at my desk, thinking about how I wished I remembered which exact day it was that I noticed one of my status checkers changing, and I realized that even if I was the ONLY one to read it, it might be helpful for me to start up a blog specifically about the law school application process and, hopefully, in the months and years to come (I've always been ambitious) about the process of actually being a law student.

Voila, the birth of this blog!

I'll post my comments, thoughts, ramblings, and updates about my quest for a law school that will take me, picking the right law school for me, any and all campus visits I go to, and eventually the process of getting ready to leave home and move away to start my dreaded 1L year.

A little about me: I graduated from a small liberal arts college in Central Ohio (there are a million there) in 2009 with a B.A. in Communications and a minor in Political Science. Since I was little everyone has told me I should definitely consider a career in law. Don't worry, that's not my only reason for going to law school. Since then, I've often found myself fascinated by the intellectually stimulating and often complex problems that the law examines, and as such, I've decided that, yes, this is actually the course I want to take in my life.

But, just to make sure, I took two years off of school between my undergrad and now and have been working at a law firm. When I first started at this firm, I worked in the transactional (mostly real estate) department. I moved from there into the bankruptcy department, moved from there into business litigation, and am currently back in the bankruptcy department. I like it here, the work is interesting but not that bad (at least, MY work), and it's an enjoyable place to be...as long as it's not permanent (thankfully, I know it's not).

Before working at the law firm, I was considering getting my masters in communication, something my friends in law school advocated passionately as a much better alternative to law school. I worked in the communication (graphic and development) field for about 9 months, and I was good at it, but ultimately would find this crazy path I'm setting down to be more rewarding.

So, after much consideration, and one retake of the LSAT, I decided it was time to get all of my applications out. Most law schools have priority deadlines in mid-February, regular deadlines in April. I, however, am what is known as a splitter: my LSAT is often at or above the 75th% of my target schools, while my GPA is at or below the 25th% -- I had a LOT of fun in college. As a splitter, my chances for admission are increased the earlier I apply. So 90% of my applications were in at the schools I've chosen to apply to by the middle of November.

Hopefully this means adcomms (admission committees) can overlook my dismal LSDAS GPA.

The process of picking which schools to apply to can be daunting and difficult, but I'll discuss how I came to my conclusions in my next blog.

If you want more solid information (from the intrawebz) about law schools and the process of applying, check out these sites that I've found helpful, even if they do tend to feed my neurotic and obsessive tendencies: Top Law Schools (TLS), Law School Numbers (LSN), and Law School Predictor (LSP).