Top Law Schools

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I believe there are some scholarships in the T14 (and maybe T20) that may offer stipends as part of the scholarship. Usually its like full ride + stipend (Darrow @ UMich comes to mind and I'm SURE there are quite a few others)

Pozzo wrote:I realize I'm putting the cart about a mile before the horse as I don't have an LSAT score yet, but humor me?

Let's say someone has a compelling reason to go to law school with numbers to get scholly at T14 or a shot at HYS. But this person has a family and spouse stays at home with the kids. Am I right to assume that the "full rides" at T14 cover tuition only, leaving student/spouse to cover living expenses with loans and/or income? If that's the case, and there are no other sources of income, might one be better off taking out the base loans at HYS and letting their grant money cover the difference? Or do other T14 schools offer grants to scholarship recipients as well?

I'm new to the game, so feel free to point out how wrong I am.

How would loans for HYS be "better" than COL loans if you have a full tuition scholarship (assuming you mean financially)? I'm genuinely confused by the bolded and a clarification might help others answer your question

Yeah I have no idea what the question is here. Grants and scholarships are the same thing for practical purposes. The difference is that there arent full tuition grants at hys but there are at the rest of the t14.

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I'm still not following 100% and it may just be the way it is being presented. Hypo: Duke costs 50k tuition. You get full tuition scholly. You pay for insurance, gym fees, living expenses. You take 20k/year to do that. You take out 20k in loans to pay for that. You get into Harvard. Also 50k/year in tuition and 20k/year living expenses. While Duke gives full tuition scholarships (merit based), Harvard does not. You get a portion of tuition at H covered by need based scholarship and the rest you have to cover in loans (20k tuition+20k living). You pay less to go to Duke than Harvard.

Someone please correct me if I'm off, but that is just a down and dirty hypo.

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On phone...double post...see below

Pozzo wrote:

lymenheimer wrote:I'm still not following 100% and it may just be the way it is being presented. Hypo: Duke costs 50k tuition. You get full tuition scholly. You pay for insurance, gym fees, living expenses. You take 20k/year to do that. You take out 20k in loans to pay for that. You get into Harvard. Also 50k/year in tuition and 20k/year living expenses. While Duke gives full tuition scholarships (merit based), Harvard does not. You get a portion of tuition at H covered by need based scholarship and the rest you have to cover in loans (20k tuition+20k living). You pay less to go to Duke than Harvard.

Someone please correct me if I'm off, but that is just a down and dirty hypo.

That's essentially what I'm asking, yes. But the wrench is if you're doing it with a family, which increases cost of living. So let's do down and dirty hypo #2 (changes in Bold): Duke costs 50k tuition. You get full tuition scholly. You pay for insurance, gym fees, living expenses for you, spouse, and 2 kids. You take 50k/year to do that. You take out 50k in loans to pay for that. You get into Harvard. Also 50k/year in tuition and 50k/year living expenses. While Duke gives full tuition scholarships (merit based), Harvard does not. You take out the base loan package at Harvard at 45k/year. The remaining 55k is covered with need based scholarship. You pay less to go to Harvard than Duke.

I realize this is mostly an exercise in futility b/c of so many unknowns, but I am curious.

Also, let's table that law school with two kids is probably an abysmal idea under any circumstances.

I think it's the order that you're putting it in that was confusing me. I guess I don't really know 100% how Harvard distribute money, but generally you get the scholarship offer and that defines how much is remaining to take in loans. But yea. If you get more scholarship aid from H than you do Duke then it's cheaper to go to H, assuming equal COL

Will harvard actually go up to a 55k/yr need based aid award? I was under the impression the cap was like 30k/yr, but maybe thats just for single students, not those with families.

Clemenceau wrote:Will harvard actually go up to a 55k/yr need based aid award? I was under the impression the cap was like 30k/yr, but maybe thats just for single students, not those with families.

I don't think that schools consider a student's family when granting need-based aid. I don't think your whole family can live off your educational loans-at that point its not really for your education.

mt2165 wrote:

Clemenceau wrote:Will harvard actually go up to a 55k/yr need based aid award? I was under the impression the cap was like 30k/yr, but maybe thats just for single students, not those with families.

I don't think that schools consider a student's family when granting need-based aid. I don't think your whole family can live off your educational loans-at that point its not really for your education.

Looks like Harvard does give considerations for students with spouse and kids, but idk exactly how that plays out in scholarship aid and loan calculating.

And correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I don't think that law schools or the government give out grants as I think you are trying to say. Grants, such as Pell grants, are for UG only. I'm pretty sure your sources of financial aid/income for LS is student loans, scholarships (from your LS or outside organizations that you apply to), and your own savings that you contribute.

E: as someone said above, some full ride scholarships also include a living stipend.

What on earth is going on in this thread?

All schools allow you to take out loans for what they consider the full cost of attendance, that is, tuition plus living money. The living money ain't enough to let your family live on--it's barely enough to live on yourself, and schools generally don't make an adjustment in the amount you can take out to cover that.

If you get a full ride, that'll take out the tuition part of your loans. If you go to Harvard, they'll give you some amount of aid, so you'll be taking out more loans than if you to to some other school on a full ride, but still don't have the money to feed your family. Harvard doesn't give you 35K/yr that you can either decide to spend on tuition or "take all in cash." There is a fixed upper limit to the amount of loans you can take out: the full cost of attendance. Any aid you get, at any school, will be applied towards that amount--but not raise it. If the full cost of attendance is, say, 80k/year, a full ride will mean that you only need to take out (say) 25k/year of that amount, to cover living expenses. The exact same thing happens at Harvard, except it won't cover all of your tuition: you cannot take out more loans in virtue of getting aid. What is there not to understand about this?

I feel like people are giving out advice without actually knowing how financial aid works at HYS.

I can only really speak to H, so hopefully someone can help you out OP for the other schools.
At H, they are more lenient on your financial-aid wise if you have a spouse and/or dependants, but the allowances they calculate can only be subtracted from your income contributions to your yearly student budget. They do not make your student budget bigger. So if you and your spouse had literally no income in the last year (say, you're both students) and therefore your income contribution is $0, then the extra allowances wouldn't help you at all.
At the end of the day, either way, you're still going to have more loans at H than if you got a full ride somewhere else.

You can read more about how H calculates spouse and children allowances here.

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I'm at Harvard going completely on loans, due to minimal savings and how they calculated my estimated parental contribution. I am not receiving any money from my parents. In this situation, would I be likely to get some need-based aid if I got married (assuming student parter or low-income partner)?

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AnMzungu wrote:I'm at Harvard going completely on loans, due to minimal savings and how they calculated my estimated parental contribution. I am not receiving any money from my parents. In this situation, would I be likely to get some need-based aid if I got married (assuming student parter or low-income partner)?

If the partner is also a full-time student, you will continue to have the same budget as a single student.
If the partner does not work and has no asset, your student contribution remains the same. But you get some additional living allowance. This may or may not be enough to push you into the grant territory, depending on what your EFC was.
If the partner has income, he/she is expected to contribute a % of it, minus some allowances, toward your tuition. So your loan amount (and grant, if you had any) would simply decrease by the amount of spousal contribution.
When you have a kid, you also start getting childcare allowances that deduct against your student/spousal contribution AND potentially increase your budget.

I had to look into this myself and ask SFS because I was getting married while in HLS. This page speaks more specifically to marital situations:
http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/sfs/financi ... n/#Working

Thanks for the responses!