Negotiating Scholarships: Dollar Amount vs Percentage Forum

[nathaned]

Good afternoon everyone,

I had a question I was hoping someone could help me with.

I will lay out the details first:

Currently, I have been accepted to two law schools.

Law School A (top choice) is about $30k a year and has offered me 25% off scholarship. Putting the price of tuition a year at about $22.5k a year.
Law School B (fall back) is about $37k a year and has offered me a 50% off scholarship plus an extra $10k scholarship for the first year. Putting the price of tuition a year at about 18.5k a year (ignoring the $10k).

Law schools A and B are peer schools. Law school B is ranked ever so slightly higher than law school A. Both are T2 schools. All scholarships mentioned are merit based.

My hope is to use Law School B's tuition as leverage to get 50% off of Law School A's.

My question is do I face a counter argument by Law School A's stating that their tuition is cheaper than Law School B's when I go to negotiate the scholarship? And if so, does anyone happen to have a tip for me to get them to focus on the percentage over the actual dollar amount?

Thank you for your time.

[BigZuck]

I'd read this thread for scholarship negotiation stuff:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... s#p9151334

When I did this I didn't focus too much on percentages or anything, I just asked them to reconsider and showed them my other offers.

I'm guessing that if your school of choice views the other school as a peer and they want to play ball, they'll just make the cost of attendance the same as the other school.

I guess you could try the "If you give me X amount of money, I will attend" approach at your school of choice.

As a general matter, I don't think you should pay any tuition at T2 schools if it means ending up with a debt load over around 60K (which is pretty much just cost of living loans). Sounds like you'll be at least 100K+ in debt which is far too much at schools like these IMO.

[nathaned]

Thanks for the help and advice, BigZuck.

After reading your comment and the negotiation thread you sent, I've decided that I'll try to push for full tuition. I'm going to talk to the admissions of each school and see how plausible a full-tuition scholarship is if I retake the LSAT in June and score higher.