Top Law Schools

3.78 LSAC GPA
LSAT 160 (2005), 166(2009), 168(2010)
Softs include: Phi Beta Kappa, Magna cum laude, 4 years work experience abroad, a few academic honors and prizes, a state level position with the College Republicans, very strong letters of recommendation, and some other incidentals

Applying to: Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Vanderbilt, UCLA, and the University of Washington

My current list is obviously top heavy with a couple of very likely rejections. So, I am looking to add a few schools to this list at which I stand a good chance for getting decent scholarship money and that have a decent quality of student life, i.e. don't know that I would want to go to Hastings though I am not dead set against it. I am from Oregon and will probably look to practice in either California or Seattle. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

And you needn't comment on my chances at the above schools, as I have already either applied or will be doing so within the next two days.

EDIT: Thoughts on Notre Dame? I am not religious but nor do I have any problem getting along with those who are.

Scholarship money is going to be harder to come by this late in the game. Nevertheless...

USC • I would apply to USC if you are considering Southern California, or California generally. You should get in and you will probably get $$. You are above both their medians. You'd have to compete against Stanford, Berkeley, & Hastings grads in the Bay area (if that's where you want to go), but I still think a USC degree is pretty portable anywhere in California.

Michigan • I would send an app to michigan. It's something of a reach, but you never know, and you can take that degree most anywhere in the nation.

Notre Dame has national name recognition, but it's not going to be as portable as your T14 schools, nor will it compete well against UCLA, USC, Berkeley, or Stanford in California, and probably won't do well in Seattle either. I haven't looked at statistics, but intuition tells me Seattle firms probably don't come out to Notre Dame OCI too much. But maybe someone else can give you more information, but this wouldn't be my top pick.

You have a good shot at Vandy, UCLA, Washington, ND. Like the other poster said, you never know about money this late. Also, your 160 is irrelevent now b/c it's been over 5 years. If you care about money then apply to schools in the 20-35 range. Likely difficult to go back to the area you wanna practice though so if you really wanna be in Seattle or CA, apply to lower ranked regionals that will give you a lot of money. To look up OCI, check out the NALP site and do an advanced search for it based on schools and location.

Thanks for the advice. I went ahead and applied to USC today, which was a really good recommendation. By no means a safety, but I also applied to Virgina, and I think I will apply to Michigan as well. I was on the fence before. I am pretty excited to see how this all plays out

Edit: Still on the fence with Notre Dame. I have a fee waiver, but I don't want to waste their admissions department's time without doing some more research on how the school fits for me.