Why do so many students pay sticker at UVA? Forum

[PrezRand]

Is it because they are very splitter friendly or what?

[BigZuck]

Sick softball games too

[Eldon Tyrell]

People are idiots.

[jbagelboy]

Yea, part of it is their very popular early decision program, which feeds into them accepting a lot of folks who are either high LSAT/very low GPA or high GPA/low-160s LSAT who aren't eligible for scholarship consideration and wind up being faced with sticker at UVA or a substantially less well-ranked school for less money. UVA is admitting persons (mostly ED and some RD) that aren't getting offers from Duke or Cornell or Michigan or other peer institutions.

Embarrassingly enough, that's why in the dark ages of law school applications (circa 2010-2012), the common advise on this website was ED UVA and pay sticker. Thankfully people woke the fuck up.

[dabigchina]

they pay sticker at UVA for the same reason they pay sticker everywhere else. Because they have family money or don't do the math on what repayment is like.

edited to be less bitchy

[Socratease]

they pay sticker at UVA for the same reason they pay sticker everywhere else. Because they have family money or don't do the math on what repayment is like.

edited to be less bitchy

As a splitter who is hoping to get admitted to the lower t14 but likely won't receive scholarships, what is the math on repayment on UVA at sticker? Genuinely curious.

edit: the general consensus on TLS seems to be: go to the best law school that accepts you. Get the best score on the lsat, go to the best school, use that glorious prestige to get the best job. Do you really turn down UVA w/o money for vandy/wustl with a partial scholly?

[cavalier1138]

they pay sticker at UVA for the same reason they pay sticker everywhere else. Because they have family money or don't do the math on what repayment is like.

edited to be less bitchy

As a splitter who is hoping to get admitted to the lower t14 but likely won't receive scholarships, what is the math on repayment on UVA at sticker? Genuinely curious.

edit: the general consensus on TLS seems to be: go to the best law school that accepts you. Get the best score on the lsat, go to the best school, use that glorious prestige to get the best job. Do you really turn down UVA w/o money for vandy/wustl with a partial scholly?

According to LST, if you took out loans for everything at UVA, your total debt at graduation would be $272,282. On a 10-year repayment plan, you'd be paying $3,103 a month. That's manageable on a biglaw salary, but the chances of you working in biglaw for ten years are pretty slim. If you know you'll be doing PI for at least 10 years, then you can rely on LRAP/PSLF (as long as you're comfortable doing that).

And the general consensus is not "go to the best school that accepts you". Not even close. Most people here would recommend a full ride at NYU over Harvard at sticker. To answer your particular question: you probably will get much more than a partial scholarship at Vandy and WashU if you can get into UVA, but in your given scenario, it would really depend on your career goals and tolerance for debt.

[Paul Campos]

If you debt finance attendance at UVA you will owe close to $300,000 at repayment (LST estimates $284K for the entering class of 2015, and you can tack a few thousands dollars more for the entering class of 2017, which will be paying more than $60,000 sticker tuition alone).

The consensus on this site is certainly not to go to the highest ranked law school you can get into no matter what. To the contrary almost no one recommends going to any law school at the sticker price, unless you come from so much money that it doesn't matter how much you overpay for things. (A category which includes about 30%-40% of the students at elite schools).

[UVA2B]

I think it's probably a bit myopic to think UVA is notoriously different than any other school where a student pays sticker. The ED option certainly allows for some applicants to punch above their weight numbers-wise, as others have mentioned. But I also think it's a likely reality that these decisions are made across the spectrum and they're no less ill-advised than picking UVA at sticker. It's not like 90% of UVA are going without any scholarship money, and nominal scholarships can inflate a given institution's % receiving aid while not drastically impacting the overall value of the degree.

The daunting number most students pay for preftige across the spectrum shows more the general confirmation bias youth and optimism has in trusting that things will work out for me because they always have.

To say students at UVA are unique in this problem is pretty incomplete.

[Socratease]

I guess I'm having trouble with the post because the answer to OP's question seems obvious to me. The students pay sticker at UVA because it was the best law school to which they were accepted. Because they want to be a biglaw fancy corporate lawyer and they'd rather spend the 300k at UVA than 150k at a t20.

[mudiverse]

Why is it assumed that many students pay sticker at UVA? How do we know this or am I missing something?

[UVA2B]

Why is it assumed that many students pay sticker at UVA? How do we know this or am I missing something?

According to LST, 56% are paying full tuition.

https://www.lstreports.com/schools/uva/

[guynourmin]

Why is it assumed that many students pay sticker at UVA? How do we know this or am I missing something?

You can see the awards received on 509 reports - Mich, Chicago, and Duke are all at 75%+; Columbia, Penn, and UVA are all around 45%; NYU is the lowest at only 38% of students receiving any aid!

[20170322]

Go Hoos

[cavalier1138]

Why is it assumed that many students pay sticker at UVA? How do we know this or am I missing something?

You can see the awards received on 509 reports - Mich, Chicago, and Duke are all at 75%+; Columbia, Penn, and UVA are all around 45%; NYU is the lowest at only 38% of students receiving any aid!

To be fair, you also need to account for the amount of aid received. Duke's 25/50/75 split is $15k/$20k/$25k,and less than 20% of students with scholarships are getting 50%+ tuition. Chicago is in a similar situation. UVA has fewer students getting scholarships, but their split is $16k/$25k/$35k, and slightly less than half of scholarship recipients are getting 50%+ tuition. NYU... just seems to have a lot of students, and they also have more full-tuition scholarships than most places, so that eats up a large chunk of funding.

[Specter1389]

The 509 reports can be misleading though. They don't take into account people on the GI Bill, outside scholarships, etc. For instance, I will have 60% of the GI Bill and a scholarship/grant I obtained from an outside source that provides $15,000 per year. So overall I'm looking at the equivalent of a Dillard to attend UVA, but the 509 report would still show me as not receiving grants and thus lumped in the category of paying sticker.

[Winter is Coming]

Sick softball games too

True, if you take a scholarship somewhere else you only get to go to one sick softball tournament a year in Charlottesville.

[star fox]

A lot of people pay sticker at all the top schools. About 2/3 of students at NYU are paying sticker. A lot of people just go to the best school they get into.

[Blackfish]

.

[AvatarMeelo]

I've got an anecdote from a close friend who is a current 3L there. UVA was the top school she got into, and she ultimately ended up going for that reason plus she liked the environment. She was banking on getting into BigLaw, which she did with subpar grades. She took the gamble that paying for UVA sticker would pay off later with the BigLaw salary. Ofc, that's not to say how long she'll be in BigLaw for to be able to pay off that massive debt but she's pretty sure she'd be able to make a sizeable dent before she leaves or is forced out. She's told me she met some people with similar reasons for paying sticker or close to sticker. Other than that, they all really loved the collegiate vibe of UVA so that helped.

[BigZuck]

I was pretty debt averse before going to law school, read a lot of TLS, etc. But you really can't understand just how much it sucks to have a buttload of debt hanging from your neck until you have to start paying it back.

[Lincoln]

I was pretty debt averse before going to law school, read a lot of TLS, etc. But you really can't understand just how much it sucks to have a buttload of debt hanging from your neck until you have to start paying it back.

This x100

[jbagelboy]

I was pretty debt averse before going to law school, read a lot of TLS, etc. But you really can't understand just how much it sucks to have a buttload of debt hanging from your neck until you have to start paying it back.

This x100

[Milksteak]

I was surprised when I got to my T-14 school to learn about how many people were paying sticker. Not that I should have been given that those 509 numbers stay pretty constant. I just got most of my application advice on this site, which prompted me to take the LSAT three times until I got a score that netted me a huge scholarship.

TLS is (I think rightly) very debt-averse and very skeptical that people know they want to be corporate lawyers, but not all people share this risk aversion. If everyone thought like TLS then law schools would not be able to field classes of any size. I think the general TLS big law perspective can be summed up as:

1. Don't go to law school for the money alone. Go to a coding bootcamp or research another field that has a better ROI.
2. If you really want to go, max out your LSAT score (and GPA if it is not too late).
3. Assume you will end up no better than median at any school you get into. Assume you will last (max) 3 years in biglaw.
4. If you have good shot at biglaw from median and can pay off loans in three years, maybe you should go, depending on desired post-big law goals. Anything less certain than that is too risky, and this is still not a safe bet.

[californiauser]

Don't underestimate the amount of T14 people who say are "paying sticker," i.e., their parents/family are paying sticker for them, or who will pay living expenses for them in law school or after