Top Law Schools

I got offered a merit scholarship at a regional school I'm interested in attending. I'm above their 75th percentiles for both LSAT and GPA, but I was only offered about 1/3 of the tuition. I'm in-state, so tuition is relatively low, but with a high COL 3 years still adds up to a lot. I feel like I should be able to ask for more merit scholarship money, but when do I do it?

Should I wait until I have offers from other schools to use as leverage? That sounds reasonable, but is it better to ask for more money right away, before they offer scholarships to other people and there's theoretically less money to go around? I've read some threads on TLS and they suggest using other offers as leverage, but I don't want to wait too long, especially since I'm above the 75th percentile for LSAT and GPA, and that would seem to justify some bargaining...

Any advice with regards to timing would be greatly appreciated!

JennBNYC wrote:I got offered a merit scholarship at a regional school I'm interested in attending. I'm above their 75th percentiles for both LSAT and GPA, but I was only offered about 1/3 of the tuition. I'm in-state, so tuition is relatively low, but with a high COL 3 years still adds up to a lot. I feel like I should be able to ask for more merit scholarship money, but when do I do it?

Should I wait until I have offers from other schools to use as leverage? That sounds reasonable, but is it better to ask for more money right away, before they offer scholarships to other people and there's theoretically less money to go around? I've read some threads on TLS and they suggest using other offers as leverage, but I don't want to wait too long, especially since I'm above the 75th percentile for LSAT and GPA, and that would seem to justify some bargaining...

Any advice with regards to timing would be greatly appreciated!

Well personally, I don't think it makes sense to ask WITHOUT other offers. If you're just like "Uh, my numbers obviously justify me getting more aid" (albeit in a more polished fashion), I think they'd be like "Who the hell does this person think she is?" Whereas if you can say, "Well I really would like to go to your school, but I got 60,000 from this better ranked school, 90,000 from a peer school, etc." that's a different story. So I'd say wait, only because leveraging by definition requires something to leverage with.