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Say you don't get a merit-based scholarship at a school you really want to go to? If you get good grades your first year can you apply for merit-based scholarships? I sound stupid I know.... Any thoughts are welcome! I'm waitlisted at my top choice school and I'm really considering going at sticker price if I'm accepted and offered no aid >.<

gatorgirl2012 wrote:Say you don't get a merit-based scholarship at a school you really want to go to? If you get good grades your first year can you apply for merit-based scholarships? I sound stupid I know.... Any thoughts are welcome! I'm waitlisted at my top choice school and I'm really considering going at sticker price if I'm accepted and offered no aid >.<

There may be scholarships available for 2L and 3L. You need to ask each school individually about this. All the schools I have asked claim to have scholarships available, but of course you never really know what you might get until the time comes. I am sure that most tlsers would caution you against going to a school for sticker and banking on getting $ later. It is a very risky plan.
Also, if you are waitlisted you generally have less chance at merit aid. Presumably if they wanted you badly enough to bribe you with $ they would have accepted you outright in the first place. Of course, this is not always the case. There certainly are stories where people have gotten lucky and received significant $ after they were accepted off the waitlist. However, I wouldn't hold your breath.
My motto is "expect the best but plan for the worst". If you can afford the worst case (reasonable) scenario, then you can afford law school.

One way to get such scholarships is to apply to transfer, get accepted at a better school, and then use that threat of transfer to negotiate a scholarship with your existing school. It's rare, but it does happen.

B90 wrote:

gatorgirl2012 wrote:Say you don't get a merit-based scholarship at a school you really want to go to? If you get good grades your first year can you apply for merit-based scholarships? I sound stupid I know.... Any thoughts are welcome! I'm waitlisted at my top choice school and I'm really considering going at sticker price if I'm accepted and offered no aid >.<

There may be scholarships available for 2L and 3L. You need to ask each school individually about this. All the schools I have asked claim to have scholarships available, but of course you never really know what you might get until the time comes. I am sure that most tlsers would caution you against going to a school for sticker and banking on getting $ later. It is a very risky plan.
Also, if you are waitlisted you generally have less chance at merit aid. Presumably if they wanted you badly enough to bribe you with $ they would have accepted you outright in the first place. Of course, this is not always the case. There certainly are stories where people have gotten lucky and received significant $ after they were accepted off the waitlist. However, I wouldn't hold your breath.
My motto is "expect the best but plan for the worst". If you can afford the worst case (reasonable) scenario, then you can afford law school.

Regarding being waitlisted and scholarships. Does the same thing happen with being deferred as well?

Thank you, your comments are helpful!!

It's still early for me to make decisions but I'm trying to figure out if I should settle somewhere that gives me a scholarship and try to transfer OR if I should just go sticker price at my top choice if I get off the waitlist, hoping it gets a bit cheaper over time :/ my thing is job security is so much better at my top choice >.< but really, it's premature for me to be considering all of this. I hate the waiting game; so much time to consider the many possibilities!

Two things:
1) it's rare to get a scholarship after your first year unless you have an acceptance in hand somewhere else and can use that for leverage in negotiations.

2) if you're waitlisted that doesn't mean you won't get a scholarship. It really depends why you were waitlisted. I was waitlisted at my second choice because it was a state school requiring x% of students instate, but my numbers were ok so they matched my other scholarships.

I got no aid on acceptance, but was awarded a 50% scholly at at T1 after first semester 1L grades were released. After my 2nd semester 1L grades, I got an additional 20% scholly. I have no idea how common this is. Each award was a nice surprise for me. Unexpected but welcome. I would not count on this happening though. I suspect it is rare.

You usually have to be around top 10% or better to transfer, and you'd probly need a transfer acceptance to leverage money, so going and hoping for a 2L scholly is like banking on being top 10%, which is objectively stupid to do. If you wouldn't be ok with paying sticker for three years, don't go.