Top Law Schools

Just learned about section stacking in another thread (schools hand out 1L scholarships that mandate performance at the top 10/20/50% of your section, then put all the high performance 1Ls into a single, more competetive, section, thus causing most to lose their scholarships in year 2.).

Someone suggested trying to negotiate GPA terms OUT of a scholarship deal. Is this even possible? Has anyone ever heard of someone successfully negotiating this?

I'm not planning to do this - it sounds too risky to me. Just curious.

rote777 wrote:Just learned about section stacking in another thread (schools hand out 1L scholarships that mandate performance at the top 10/20/50% of your section, then put all the high performance 1Ls into a single, more competetive, section, thus causing most to lose their scholarships in year 2.).

Someone suggested trying to negotiate GPA terms OUT of a scholarship deal. Is this even possible? Has anyone ever heard of someone successfully negotiating this?

I'm not planning to do this - it sounds too risky to me. Just curious.

Schools will often match offers from peer schools. It's not risky to send a school a copy of a scholarship offer from another school and ask the school to match it. That seemed to be what the financial aid office expected us to do.

JazzOne wrote:

rote777 wrote:Just learned about section stacking in another thread (schools hand out 1L scholarships that mandate performance at the top 10/20/50% of your section, then put all the high performance 1Ls into a single, more competetive, section, thus causing most to lose their scholarships in year 2.).

Someone suggested trying to negotiate GPA terms OUT of a scholarship deal. Is this even possible? Has anyone ever heard of someone successfully negotiating this?

I'm not planning to do this - it sounds too risky to me. Just curious.

Schools will often match offers from peer schools. It's not risky to send a school a copy of a scholarship offer from another school and ask the school to match it. That seemed to be what the financial aid office expected us to do.

Correct response to the wrong question


I do not see why it would be 'risky' to ask for them to have stringless aid. Once you have been accepted what are they going to do, rescind their offer because you ask for a removal of the GPA req? (obviously, you want to do it in a polite, professional letter or email. But I think that should go w/o saying) I think that at worst they will say no and be a little annoyed. BUT, you still have the acceptance and string filled scholarship in hand in this ‘worst case.’ Best case = stringless aid!!

JazzOne wrote:

rote777 wrote:Just learned about section stacking in another thread (schools hand out 1L scholarships that mandate performance at the top 10/20/50% of your section, then put all the high performance 1Ls into a single, more competetive, section, thus causing most to lose their scholarships in year 2.).

Someone suggested trying to negotiate GPA terms OUT of a scholarship deal. Is this even possible? Has anyone ever heard of someone successfully negotiating this?

I'm not planning to do this - it sounds too risky to me. Just curious.

Schools will often match offers from peer schools. It's not risky to send a school a copy of a scholarship offer from another school and ask the school to match it. That seemed to be what the financial aid office expected us to do.

Now when you say this, does that mean asking for more scholarships as well? I understand negotiating the GPA requirement out of the offer, but if a peer school has offered you considerable more money, would it be worth sending a copy of that letter to your school of choice in the hopes of them bumping up the scholarship amount? Just curious.

anyone know which t14 and t20 schools do/don't have gpa strings attached? and which schools that do have strings are notorious for stacking?

I doubt any t-14 has such conditions, beyond being in good academic statement (which probably means not being in the bottom 2%).

Only lower ranked schools tend to have requirements to keep scholarships anywhere near median.

'section staking' is, in my opinion, largely a rumor. People don't talk about their scholarships much in law school, and it's possible that at lower ranked schools they give out enough scholarships with strings attached that people just start thinking that they're 'stacked'. I've never heard direct evidence of stacking, only 'I've heard...'. It strikes me as more plausible that, given all of the OTHER nefarious schemes law schools partake in, people thought this one made so much sense that they started repeating it in the TLS echo chamber.

I'm happy to be proven wrong, but that's the assumption I operate under based on 1.5 years of steady TLSing + being in law school and knowing others in law school.

JayTal wrote:

JazzOne wrote:

rote777 wrote:Just learned about section stacking in another thread (schools hand out 1L scholarships that mandate performance at the top 10/20/50% of your section, then put all the high performance 1Ls into a single, more competetive, section, thus causing most to lose their scholarships in year 2.).

Someone suggested trying to negotiate GPA terms OUT of a scholarship deal. Is this even possible? Has anyone ever heard of someone successfully negotiating this?

I'm not planning to do this - it sounds too risky to me. Just curious.

Schools will often match offers from peer schools. It's not risky to send a school a copy of a scholarship offer from another school and ask the school to match it. That seemed to be what the financial aid office expected us to do.

Now when you say this, does that mean asking for more scholarships as well? I understand negotiating the GPA requirement out of the offer, but if a peer school has offered you considerable more money, would it be worth sending a copy of that letter to your school of choice in the hopes of them bumping up the scholarship amount? Just curious.

Absolutely. You don't want to be a dick about it, but I think it's fine to send them a short note to let them know that money is a concern to you and that you've gotten better offers from peer schools. Tact is the key. I would try to play it like, "[Your Law School] is my top choice, and my decision would be a whole lot easier if you matched this offer."

Just for full disclosure: My attempt to negotiate additional financial aid failed, but I only applied to one school, so I didn't have any peer offers to negotiate with.

JazzOne wrote:

JayTal wrote:

JazzOne wrote:

rote777 wrote:Just learned about section stacking in another thread (schools hand out 1L scholarships that mandate performance at the top 10/20/50% of your section, then put all the high performance 1Ls into a single, more competetive, section, thus causing most to lose their scholarships in year 2.).

Someone suggested trying to negotiate GPA terms OUT of a scholarship deal. Is this even possible? Has anyone ever heard of someone successfully negotiating this?

I'm not planning to do this - it sounds too risky to me. Just curious.

Schools will often match offers from peer schools. It's not risky to send a school a copy of a scholarship offer from another school and ask the school to match it. That seemed to be what the financial aid office expected us to do.

Now when you say this, does that mean asking for more scholarships as well? I understand negotiating the GPA requirement out of the offer, but if a peer school has offered you considerable more money, would it be worth sending a copy of that letter to your school of choice in the hopes of them bumping up the scholarship amount? Just curious.

Absolutely. You don't want to be a dick about it, but I think it's fine to send them a short note to let them know that money is a concern to you and that you've gotten better offers from peer schools. Tact is the key. I would try to play it like, "[Your Law School] is my top choice, and my decision would be a whole lot easier if you matched this offer."

Just for full disclosure: My attempt to negotiate additional financial aid failed, but I only applied to one school, so I didn't have any peer offers to negotiate with.

Do you think it would work to show a similar or better offer from a peer school that didn't have GPA string or less stringent ones. (Say you get 100k from iowa to say in top 1/2 and one from indiana for 90k to stay in top 1/3)

Schools don't have to stack sections to screw people out of their scholarships. There's nothing like giving money to 70% percent of the entering class, with the stipulation that each and every one of these admits will lose that scholarship for failure to stay in the top 40%. I was basically told this verbatim by an adcomm at a lower T1 to which I applied. In my experience, the T30 and above may give you nothing to begin with, but they won't play games like this. Nearly every T2 I looked at had schollies with strings, with the exception of Northeastern. (NUSL doesn't give grades, so this would be a bit difficult for them to do.)

I think the scholarships with strings trend is disgusting. I don't even want to get into what happened to my friend's roommate at a local T2. I'm almost glad I have no scholarship to lose.

MoS wrote:Do you think it would work to show a similar or better offer from a peer school that didn't have GPA string or less stringent ones. (Say you get 100k from iowa to say in top 1/2 and one from indiana for 90k to stay in top 1/3)

Yes, that was exactly the point of my first post in this thread. Someone above opined that my post was responsive to the wrong question. Perhaps I was not addressing OP's question directly, but I was trying to suggest that an offer from a peer school could be used as a bargaining chip with respect to scholarship restrictions.

Along these lines, I just got offered a full scholarship for L1 and half scholarship for L2&3...however there is a line that states that if you transfer out of the school or leave, the scholarship shall become a LOAN.

I think that's horrible! What if I get into a car accident and have to quit law school to recover, what if I find the law school's program below par or of unacceptable quality, what if I start getting stalked by a local and want to transfer out of state or decide to leave the country??!! ok, that last one was a bit far-fetched...but the point is the same

Does anyone have experience negotiating "scholarship converts to loan if you don't graduate from here " clauses out of a scholarship offer?

I successfully negotiated the amount I was offered at 2 of the 3 schools I contacted. I was not able to successfully remove restrictions anywhere. Our student handbook specifically lists the GPA requirements for different types of scholarships. Because it is in the handbook, I'm guessing it is difficult to negotiate.

Hi,

Although I've used this website as a resource, this is my first post.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has any more information concerning the OP. I received a full merit-based scholarship at a T2 with the caveat that I stay in the top 25% of my class. The scholarship is called the "Dean's Scholarship," so I'm thinking the terms may be dictated in stone in a handbook somewhere (though I can't find anything).

Do you think it is possible that I could ask to be top 50% or no strings at all? It just seems like a lot of unnecessary stress. Although I hope/expect to be in the top of my class, I don't want to have that financial anvil hanging over my head.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to ask, and I'm not worried about how to frame the negotiations (though suggestions are certainly welcome). I'm more interested to hear anyone's opinion on the likelihood of getting it reduced or if anyone has any experience here.

Thanks in advance.

OperaSoprano wrote:Schools don't have to stack sections to screw people out of their scholarships. There's nothing like giving money to 70% percent of the entering class, with the stipulation that each and every one of these admits will lose that scholarship for failure to stay in the top 40%. I was basically told this verbatim by an adcomm at a lower T1 to which I applied. In my experience, the T30 and above may give you nothing to begin with, but they won't play games like this. Nearly every T2 I looked at had schollies with strings, with the exception of Northeastern. (NUSL doesn't give grades, so this would be a bit difficult for them to do.)

I think the scholarships with strings trend is disgusting. I don't even want to get into what happened to my friend's roommate at a local T2. I'm almost glad I have no scholarship to lose.

TBF schools probably won't play games like this now that they have to publish retention rates. Things are getting better

rote777 wrote:Just learned about section stacking in another thread (schools hand out 1L scholarships that mandate performance at the top 10/20/50% of your section, then put all the high performance 1Ls into a single, more competetive, section, thus causing most to lose their scholarships in year 2.).

Someone suggested trying to negotiate GPA terms OUT of a scholarship deal. Is this even possible? Has anyone ever heard of someone successfully negotiating this?

I'm not planning to do this - it sounds too risky to me. Just curious.

I tried it with one school and was told that it was a standard decided on by the faculty and administrators and therefore that it was not open to negotiation -- they simply didn't consider it on a student-to-student basis.
Can't hurt to try, though.

mmacmu1 wrote:Hi,

Although I've used this website as a resource, this is my first post.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has any more information concerning the OP. I received a full merit-based scholarship at a T2 with the caveat that I stay in the top 25% of my class. The scholarship is called the "Dean's Scholarship," so I'm thinking the terms may be dictated in stone in a handbook somewhere (though I can't find anything).

Do you think it is possible that I could ask to be top 50% or no strings at all? It just seems like a lot of unnecessary stress. Although I hope/expect to be in the top of my class, I don't want to have that financial anvil hanging over my head.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to ask, and I'm not worried about how to frame the negotiations (though suggestions are certainly welcome). I'm more interested to hear anyone's opinion on the likelihood of getting it reduced or if anyone has any experience here.

Thanks in advance.

Do not go to any school with a 25% scholarship. Please. Or if you do, in your head only consider the scholarship for the first year.

Dear Scammy Law School That Gives Crappy Stips,

I am excited to be admitted to your law school. Furthermore, I greatly appreciate the generous scholarship you have offered me. Unfortunately, I have serious concerns about the top 25% stipulation on the scholarship. I feel that, having never been to law school, I don't have an idea of whether or not it is feasible for me to be in the top 25% of my class. Furthermore, if I was not to retain the scholarship in years two and three I cannot justify the cost of attending law school....

Also, the notion that it is set in stone is bogus. Negotiate to no stips not top 50%.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/busin ... d=all&_r=0