How to negotiate a scholarship? Forum

[Scutrules]

Can someone outline the process of scholarship negotiations? Just the general of what is required and how to go about the process? Thanks!

[KunAgnis]

Can someone outline the process of scholarship negotiations? Just the general of what is required and how to go about the process? Thanks!

I wouldn't say there is an outline, but from how I did it, you want to have competing offers. You also want to initiate earlier on in the cycle - by the mid/end of application cycles, a lot of schools have already given out scholarships (unless you're talking about T13 like Columbia's Hamilton but iirc you apply for those separately).

So ideally you want to have some offers from various schools (you want the competing offers to be from peer schools - WashU wouldn't give two shits if you have a full ride from T3, for instance.) and you want to ask early on, say around October/November. That's ideal. You'd probably send over proof of other offers, and ask that they consider increasing your scholarship. That's how I did it, and that worked for me. YMMV.

[Scutrules]

Does that mean I'm way behind the curve on asking?

[KunAgnis]

Does that mean I'm way behind the curve on asking?

As of now you're a bit behind, I think. There should be some schools who have budgets left but yeah. I mean I asked in early January and I know for a fact that had I asked with the same stats in November I probably would have gotten a lot more. At this point you can still try and see what happens.

[cavalier1138]

As of now you're a bit behind, I think.

I don't think that's true at all. A number of schools haven't even sent out scholarship offers at this point, and the final round of acceptances hasn't gone out. We're nowhere near the finish line for acceptance, let alone negotiation.

[KunAgnis]

As of now you're a bit behind, I think.

I don't think that's true at all. A number of schools haven't even sent out scholarship offers at this point, and the final round of acceptances hasn't gone out. We're nowhere near the finish line for acceptance, let alone negotiation.

Admissions is a rolling process, and schools don't necessarily wait to send out every acceptance before sending out scholarships. As an example, plenty of students each year come off of schools internal wait lists and get late acceptances. That doesn't mean that scholarships haven't gone out.

Objectively speaking, schools roll out acceptances from October on, and it's already January (see this link for proof: https://abovethelaw.com/career-files/la ... aw-school/). More importantly, out of these admitted students, earlier acceptances tend to reflect the applicants' superior caliber - therefore, it's obvious that schools will have started offering scholarships to attract these acceptees.

Consequently, considering that it's already 3 months after when acceptances have begun, a lot of schools' budgets will be limited. I'm sure there may be space, but given that earlier acceptees will have attempted to negotiate as well, OP will be weighed against these. I'm not sure why you think I meant that we're near the finish line, lol.

[QContinuum]

As of now you're a bit behind, I think.

I don't think that's true at all. A number of schools haven't even sent out scholarship offers at this point, and the final round of acceptances hasn't gone out. We're nowhere near the finish line for acceptance, let alone negotiation.

Admissions is a rolling process, and schools don't necessarily wait to send out every acceptance before sending out scholarships. As an example, plenty of students each year come off of schools internal wait lists and get late acceptances. That doesn't mean that scholarships haven't gone out.

That's all true, but none of that leads to your conclusion that OP is "behind" on negotiating. You don't cite any data regarding when scholarship negotiations typically begin and end. Nor do you cite any data regarding how schools typically handle scholarship reconsiderations. A school may, for instance, very well not wish to bump up any applicant's scholarship offer in November, because it wants to wait to see how the rest of the applicant pool looks.

Objectively speaking, schools roll out acceptances from October on, and it's already January (see this link for proof: https://abovethelaw.com/career-files/la ... aw-school/). More importantly, out of these admitted students, earlier acceptances tend to reflect the applicants' superior caliber - therefore, it's obvious that schools will have started offering scholarships to attract these acceptees.

Certainly OP would be late to the game if they were applying now. But it's not at all clear that they're late to the negotiating table.

I mean I asked in early January and I know for a fact that had I asked with the same stats in November I probably would have gotten a lot more.

I'm not really sure how you "know" this "for a fact." Was that what your school's fin aid office told you, that you would've gotten more $ in November? Or was that just an assumption on your part?

Even if it's actually true that your school exhausted its scholarship funds in November, I don't think we can say with any certainty that that's standard practice across all U.S. law school. I would go so far as to say it would strike me as unusual for a law school to exhaust its scholarship funds that early in the cycle.

[KunAgnis]

As of now you're a bit behind, I think.

I don't think that's true at all. A number of schools haven't even sent out scholarship offers at this point, and the final round of acceptances hasn't gone out. We're nowhere near the finish line for acceptance, let alone negotiation.

Admissions is a rolling process, and schools don't necessarily wait to send out every acceptance before sending out scholarships. As an example, plenty of students each year come off of schools internal wait lists and get late acceptances. That doesn't mean that scholarships haven't gone out.

That's all true, but none of that leads to your conclusion that OP is "behind" on negotiating. You don't cite any data regarding when scholarship negotiations typically begin and end. Nor do you cite any data regarding how schools typically handle scholarship reconsiderations. A school may, for instance, very well not wish to bump up any applicant's scholarship offer in November, because it wants to wait to see how the rest of the applicant pool looks.

Objectively speaking, schools roll out acceptances from October on, and it's already January (see this link for proof: https://abovethelaw.com/career-files/la ... aw-school/). More importantly, out of these admitted students, earlier acceptances tend to reflect the applicants' superior caliber - therefore, it's obvious that schools will have started offering scholarships to attract these acceptees.

Certainly OP would be late to the game if they were applying now. But it's not at all clear that they're late to the negotiating table.

I mean I asked in early January and I know for a fact that had I asked with the same stats in November I probably would have gotten a lot more.

I'm not really sure how you "know" this "for a fact." Was that what your school's fin aid office told you, that you would've gotten more $ in November? Or was that just an assumption on your part?

Even if it's actually true that your school exhausted its scholarship funds in November, I don't think we can say with any certainty that that's standard practice across all U.S. law school. I would go so far as to say it would strike me as unusual for a law school to exhaust its scholarship funds that early in the cycle.

My school didn't exhaust their funds in November, but they had more. That probably let them be comfortable with giving out more to other students who had the same GPA/LSAT combination that I did. So yeah, call it an assumption if you want. Honestly, neither you nor cavalier1138 is citing any data anyways and I'm the only poster on this thread to provide a link as a citation. If you truly think I'm wrong, then you should point to data instead of asking me to provide data - you've provided none so far.

How about you and cavalier1138 cite to data about when scholarships negotiations begin and end. Can't? Nobody can. The question asks for a relatively speculative answer in the first place. There is no true answer to negotiating for a scholarship at all. Not much information is published about it and so most students have to rely on others' anecdata. I provided one and did not jeopardize OP anyways, seeing as I still encouraged OP to attempt to negotiate.

[Npret]

Here’s the mega thread about negotiating scholarships. I thought it was stickied before but maybe not.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... start=2675

There are other threads as well. I just remember this one in particular.

[QContinuum]

My school didn't exhaust their funds in November, but they had more. That probably let them be comfortable with giving out more to other students who had the same GPA/LSAT combination that I did. So yeah, call it an assumption if you want. Honestly, neither you nor cavalier1138 is citing any data anyways and I'm the only poster on this thread to provide a link as a citation. If you truly think I'm wrong, then you should point to data instead of asking me to provide data - you've provided none so far.

How about you and cavalier1138 cite to data about when scholarships negotiations begin and end. Can't? Nobody can. The question asks for a relatively speculative answer in the first place. There is no true answer to negotiating for a scholarship at all. Not much information is published about it and so most students have to rely on others' anecdata. I provided one and did not jeopardize OP anyways, seeing as I still encouraged OP to attempt to negotiate.

The difference is that I am not making any assertion about whether OP is late or early to the negotiating table. You asserted, strongly and repeatedly, that OP is "behind" the curve. I don't think that assertion is correct, hence my request for you to provide corroborating evidence.

Your ATL link isn't relevant, because it merely establishes that OP would be late to the game if they were applying to law school now. It's completely irrelevant to the question of whether OP, having applied earlier, is now late to the negotiating table.

Your school may have given out more to your similarly-situated peers because those peers had better offers on the table from other schools. Perhaps they applied to more schools than you did; perhaps they had stronger softs; perhaps a one-point difference in LSAT was the cause; perhaps they had greater financial need; perhaps they simply got lucky and spoke with a different admissions officer than you did.

To the extent I'd be comfortable making a statement about OP's timing, it would be that the pace of scholarship exhaustion is school-dependent, but that OP certainly shouldn't just wait for the sake of waiting - regardless of any particular school's timeline, each school has a fixed, ever-diminishing pot of scholarship money, so there is no advantage to waiting just for the sake of waiting. (Although there may be valid reason to wait, e.g., if OP is anticipating a better offer in the near future. You generally don't want to negotiate more than once, so you have to weigh the advantage of negotiating early (or earlier) against the risk of stronger offer(s) coming in later.)

[KunAgnis]

My school didn't exhaust their funds in November, but they had more. That probably let them be comfortable with giving out more to other students who had the same GPA/LSAT combination that I did. So yeah, call it an assumption if you want. Honestly, neither you nor cavalier1138 is citing any data anyways and I'm the only poster on this thread to provide a link as a citation. If you truly think I'm wrong, then you should point to data instead of asking me to provide data - you've provided none so far.

How about you and cavalier1138 cite to data about when scholarships negotiations begin and end. Can't? Nobody can. The question asks for a relatively speculative answer in the first place. There is no true answer to negotiating for a scholarship at all. Not much information is published about it and so most students have to rely on others' anecdata. I provided one and did not jeopardize OP anyways, seeing as I still encouraged OP to attempt to negotiate.

The difference is that I am not making any assertion about whether OP is late or early to the negotiating table. You asserted, strongly and repeatedly, that OP is "behind" the curve. I don't think that assertion is correct, hence my request for you to provide corroborating evidence.

Your ATL link isn't relevant, because it merely establishes that OP would be late to the game if they were applying to law school now. It's completely irrelevant to the question of whether OP, having applied earlier, is now late to the negotiating table.

Your school may have given out more to your similarly-situated peers because those peers had better offers on the table from other schools. Perhaps they applied to more schools than you did; perhaps they had stronger softs; perhaps a one-point difference in LSAT was the cause; perhaps they had greater financial need; perhaps they simply got lucky and spoke with a different admissions officer than you did.

To the extent I'd be comfortable making a statement about OP's timing, it would be that the pace of scholarship exhaustion is school-dependent, but that OP certainly shouldn't just wait for the sake of waiting - regardless of any particular school's timeline, each school has a fixed, ever-diminishing pot of scholarship money, so there is no advantage to waiting just for the sake of waiting. (Although there may be valid reason to wait, e.g., if OP is anticipating a better offer in the near future. You generally don't want to negotiate more than once, so you have to weigh the advantage of negotiating early (or earlier) against the risk of stronger offer(s) coming in later.)

Then let's start here: why do you think that OP is not behind the curve, on January 24th? How about you provide some information to shed light on what the curve looks like temporally?

[QContinuum]

The difference is that I am not making any assertion about whether OP is late or early to the negotiating table. You asserted, strongly and repeatedly, that OP is "behind" the curve. I don't think that assertion is correct, hence my request for you to provide corroborating evidence.

Your ATL link isn't relevant, because it merely establishes that OP would be late to the game if they were applying to law school now. It's completely irrelevant to the question of whether OP, having applied earlier, is now late to the negotiating table.

Your school may have given out more to your similarly-situated peers because those peers had better offers on the table from other schools. Perhaps they applied to more schools than you did; perhaps they had stronger softs; perhaps a one-point difference in LSAT was the cause; perhaps they had greater financial need; perhaps they simply got lucky and spoke with a different admissions officer than you did.

To the extent I'd be comfortable making a statement about OP's timing, it would be that the pace of scholarship exhaustion is school-dependent, but that OP certainly shouldn't just wait for the sake of waiting - regardless of any particular school's timeline, each school has a fixed, ever-diminishing pot of scholarship money, so there is no advantage to waiting just for the sake of waiting. (Although there may be valid reason to wait, e.g., if OP is anticipating a better offer in the near future. You generally don't want to negotiate more than once, so you have to weigh the advantage of negotiating early (or earlier) against the risk of stronger offer(s) coming in later.)

Then let's start here: why do you think that OP is not behind the curve, on January 24th? How about you provide some information to shed light on what the curve looks like temporally?

That's not how this works, my friend. You made the assertion - wholly unsupported as far as I can tell - that OP is behind the curve. The burden is on you to corroborate that claim. It's not on other TLSers to affirmatively disprove your speculative guessing.

[KunAgnis]

The difference is that I am not making any assertion about whether OP is late or early to the negotiating table. You asserted, strongly and repeatedly, that OP is "behind" the curve. I don't think that assertion is correct, hence my request for you to provide corroborating evidence.

Your ATL link isn't relevant, because it merely establishes that OP would be late to the game if they were applying to law school now. It's completely irrelevant to the question of whether OP, having applied earlier, is now late to the negotiating table.

Your school may have given out more to your similarly-situated peers because those peers had better offers on the table from other schools. Perhaps they applied to more schools than you did; perhaps they had stronger softs; perhaps a one-point difference in LSAT was the cause; perhaps they had greater financial need; perhaps they simply got lucky and spoke with a different admissions officer than you did.

To the extent I'd be comfortable making a statement about OP's timing, it would be that the pace of scholarship exhaustion is school-dependent, but that OP certainly shouldn't just wait for the sake of waiting - regardless of any particular school's timeline, each school has a fixed, ever-diminishing pot of scholarship money, so there is no advantage to waiting just for the sake of waiting. (Although there may be valid reason to wait, e.g., if OP is anticipating a better offer in the near future. You generally don't want to negotiate more than once, so you have to weigh the advantage of negotiating early (or earlier) against the risk of stronger offer(s) coming in later.)

Then let's start here: why do you think that OP is not behind the curve, on January 24th? How about you provide some information to shed light on what the curve looks like temporally?

That's not how this works, my friend. You made the assertion - wholly unsupported as far as I can tell - that OP is behind the curve. The burden is on you to corroborate that claim. It's not on other TLSers to affirmatively disprove your speculative guessing.

Your statement isn't quite it works either, since you literally stated prior that you don't think I'm correct. The only way you can state that is if you can show why he's not late. Otherwise, you have no basis for your point and you'd also be making an assertion.

[cavalier1138]

The only way you can state that is if you can show why he's not late. Otherwise, you have no basis for your point and you'd also be making an assertion.

That is... 100% not how argument works, but ok.

I didn't receive scholarship offers from some schools until February of my cycle, despite having been admitted much earlier. I had no trouble negotiating with those offers from that point and into March. Unless things have changed drastically in the last few years, a number of T13 schools simply don't give any scholarship information until this point unless you've been offered one of the special full ride scholarships.

There's an anecdote to match your anecdote. But since your assertion makes no sense (schools give out all their funding in November) and isn't supported by anything except speculation, I'm not going to give it that much weight. The bulk of admissions are happening right around now; it would be absurd for schools to have already drained their scholarship funds on the assumption that every good applicant submitted early.

[KunAgnis]

Cavalier, if you've been reading the whole thread, QContinuum has a problem with me stating an assertion without facts to support it in my response to OP. He also failed to support his assertion with facts, which means that he's committing the very same problem.

I don't think there's anything wrong with making an argument based on assertions in this situation, since negotiations with law schools is a relatively blackbox process. Schools don't publish complete data sets and it's hard to compare anecdata, as QContinuum proved earlier in the thread. I'm merely pointing out his response reveals his hypocrisy; I'm not defining how arguments work.

[KunAgnis]

The only way you can state that is if you can show why he's not late. Otherwise, you have no basis for your point and you'd also be making an assertion.

That is... 100% not how argument works, but ok.

I didn't receive scholarship offers from some schools until February of my cycle, despite having been admitted much earlier. I had no trouble negotiating with those offers from that point and into March. Unless things have changed drastically in the last few years, a number of T13 schools simply don't give any scholarship information until this point unless you've been offered one of the special full ride scholarships.

There's an anecdote to match your anecdote. But since your assertion makes no sense (schools give out all their funding in November) and isn't supported by anything except speculation, I'm not going to give it that much weight. The bulk of admissions are happening right around now; it would be absurd for schools to have already drained their scholarship funds on the assumption that every good applicant submitted early.

You're mischaracterizing my prior statement so I'd suggest you read again. I stated that admissions start being sent out around November, not that scholarships are all sent out in November. Two different statements.

Also, you have no way of proving that "[t]he bulk of admissions are happening right around now," so I'm not going to give that that much weight either.

[QContinuum]

Cavalier, if you've been reading the whole thread, QContinuum has a problem with me stating an assertion without facts to support it in my response to OP. He also failed to support his assertion with facts, which means that he's committing the very same problem.

I don't think there's anything wrong with making an argument based on assertions in this situation, since negotiations with law schools is a relatively blackbox process. Schools don't publish complete data sets and it's hard to compare anecdata, as QContinuum proved earlier in the thread. I'm merely pointing out his response reveals his hypocrisy; I'm not defining how arguments work.

I am not making an assertion. I am questioning the validity of your assertion, which you have conceded is wholly speculative and based solely on a series of inferences drawn from a single anecdote (your own experience negotiating your scholarship at your law school). The fact that I am questioning your assertion does not mean I am making my own, independent assertion.

Put another way, I am not arguing that OP is early to the negotiating table. I am saying - to you - substantiate your claim that OP is behind the curve, or concede that your claim is pure guesswork. Your posts above make your concession clear.

That is... 100% not how argument works, but ok.

I didn't receive scholarship offers from some schools until February of my cycle, despite having been admitted much earlier. I had no trouble negotiating with those offers from that point and into March. Unless things have changed drastically in the last few years, a number of T13 schools simply don't give any scholarship information until this point unless you've been offered one of the special full ride scholarships.

There's an anecdote to match your anecdote. But since your assertion makes no sense (schools give out all their funding in November) and isn't supported by anything except speculation, I'm not going to give it that much weight. The bulk of admissions are happening right around now; it would be absurd for schools to have already drained their scholarship funds on the assumption that every good applicant submitted early.

You're mischaracterizing my prior statement so I'd suggest you read again. I stated that admissions start being sent out around November, not that scholarships are all sent out in November. Two different statements.

Also, you have no way of proving that "[t]he bulk of admissions are happening right around now," so I'm not going to give that that much weight either.

No, actually. You repeatedly stated that the bulk of scholarships are sent out in November, making OP late to the table. You had an entire argument based on how you would've gotten more money had you negotiated in November (which actually isn't a fact but more wild guessing on your part, as you implicitly conceded later on), because the scholarship pot was still full at that point, whereas it was largely depleted by January.

[cavalier1138]

Also, you have no way of proving that "[t]he bulk of admissions are happening right around now," so I'm not going to give that that much weight either.

That's actually demonstrable by looking at admissions timelines, submissions data on MyLSN, and even these forums. You see a spike in acceptance/rejection waves in December and January. Some schools literally do not make decisions until the new year (Northwestern doesn't even send decisions until February, if I recall correctly). And many, many schools do not send out financial aid info until February/March. I went back through my decision emails from my cycle, and all the T13 schools I applied to had financial aid timelines with an application process starting in January.

November is crazy-early for most schools to be turning decisions back, and it's usually only going to be sure-thing applicants who get that kind of turnaround (or Duke PT). Even then, it only applies to people who submitted extremely early. Any adcomm will tell you that they consider a pre-Thanksgiving submission to be early, which means that they can't possibly be receiving a majority of applications before December.

But the real point is that the OP is in no way "late" in starting negotiations now. Schools still have plenty of money left to play with, and the OP may not have their most powerful offers in hand yet.

[nixy]

Yeah, I think that last is an important point - the first and most important point about negotiating is to have competing offers, and even people who apply bright and early in October or so aren't going to have all their acceptances in January to know what will be the best competing offers.

[Auxilio]

I'll just echo that, at least when I applied a few years ago, most T13 schools didn't release scholarship information until around February. I didn't start negotiation until around March (and continued into May). And I applied well before Thanksgiving, and I think I had a pretty successful negotiation (went from $75,000 to $120,000 at the school I ended up at).

[Shredzeppelin240]

Unrelated - Currently studying for the lsat and found this threat helpful for LR.

[carsondalywashere]

Retaking the LSAT and double depositing can be effective tactics as long as maintain open communication with the school about your intentions