How safe should your safety school be?

[ahnhub]

I'm a 170/3.88. Fordham, Minnesota, and Illinois are my 'safeties,' and I'm sending out a bunch of apps-about 16. I'm pretty dead-set on going to law school, but if I were shut out of those schools I'd probably give the whole thing some serious reconsideration. It's a little hard to gauge because it seems that most people with these numbers gets into at least one T-14, but there's no shoo-in with any of them.

Also, am I done paying LSAC now that I've paid all their CAS registration stuff? I thought I was, but now it looks like I may have to pay 15 bucks or something to LSAC for each app? Any thoughts would be appreciated, as always.

[descartesb4thehorse]

Barring a red flag on your app (DUI, caught cheating as an undergrad), you'll get in to some of MVP, most of the bottom 14, and all of your "safeties", with a good shot at T6.
And you're right, if you don't get into those, you should probably reconsider LS.

[Bildungsroman]

Yeah, LSAC charges you $16 for every application you send through them. And for safeties, just don't apply to any schools you wouldn't attend; some people get so caught up in the game of tiers and ranking that they apply to school as "safeties" that are safe but also not schools that they would attend. You can save some money by being selective now rather than later. If you don't get into at least a couple T14s and some T20s with serious $$ then you did something terribly wrong on your apps, so don't feel the need to fill out the bottom of your app list with more than a couple of safeties you'd like to attend with $$.