Fee Waivers Forum

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El Principe

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Fee Waivers

Post by El Principe » Thu Apr 25, 2013 2:21 am

Any tips on getting fee waivers when you're barely on the wrong side of a fee waiver cutoff?

I can't remember what schools I checked, but in two of them, my parent's income was barely over the salary cutoff...

I was curious if anyone here has had experience sending emails to adcomms requesting a fee waiver, maybe including the fact that you're a minority? I think I read someone suggest that here before...

If I get a good enough LSAT score, I'll be competitive for most of T14, and I don't want to have to cherry pick schools and end up missing out on opportunities that I would miss by not applying to all of those schools.

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dawyzest1

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Re: Fee Waivers

Post by dawyzest1 » Thu Apr 25, 2013 5:18 pm

Just wait until after you take the LSAT. You will be bombarded with fee waivers from schools wonderful and not so wonderful. If you end up without fee waivers from schools you want to apply to, first check to see if they've given you a hidden fee waiver (there's a sticky on TLS somewhere that talks about how to seek this out). Penn and Duke did this for me. If there's no hidden waiver, you can write the adcomms and ask. Mention your numbers and that you're URM. That should do the trick.

El Principe

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Re: Fee Waivers

Post by El Principe » Thu Apr 25, 2013 5:33 pm

dawyzest1 wrote:Just wait until after you take the LSAT. You will be bombarded with fee waivers from schools wonderful and not so wonderful. If you end up without fee waivers from schools you want to apply to, first check to see if they've given you a hidden fee waiver (there's a sticky on TLS somewhere that talks about how to seek this out). Penn and Duke did this for me. If there's no hidden waiver, you can write the adcomms and ask. Mention your numbers and that you're URM. That should do the trick.
That would seem appropriate, except for the fact that I don't take my LSAT until October, and I wanted to get my applications in ASAP....

I'm not sure how long it realistically takes to get your scores back, but I'm guessing it would be mid to late November, and I don't want to get passed up by applying late.

Is November even too late?

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dawyzest1

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Re: Fee Waivers

Post by dawyzest1 » Thu Apr 25, 2013 8:06 pm

El Principe wrote:
That would seem appropriate, except for the fact that I don't take my LSAT until October, and I wanted to get my applications in ASAP....

I'm not sure how long it realistically takes to get your scores back, but I'm guessing it would be mid to late November, and I don't want to get passed up by applying late.

Is November even too late?
You're going to have to wait until last week of October/first week of November for your scores and I don't think any schools worth going to will grant fee waivers without seeing your LSAT (but some will just on your GPA...Tulane gave me one before I had an LSAT). I am sure there will be another wave of them in mid-November or so to snap up good candidates with an October LSAT. This should be the least of your worries.

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