Top Law Schools

How many schools did you apply to? How much time did you spend on applications?

I am thinking about applying to 15 or so for the 2011 cycle, and I wanted to see if that was crazy or not.

Any luck with the far-reaching strategy? Scholarships or acceptance into reach schools?

I think 10-15 schools is probably the norm for TLS. If you only applied to 5 schools, you'd better have HYS numbers with CC as your backups.

for an answer ur #'s matter...but for the most part, apply to like 4-5 targets, 3-4 safeties, and 3-4 reaches.....i applied to a ton of schools mostly due to fee waivers from schools that look somewhat appealing. Fee waivers might increase the amount of safeties.

I am a splitter with 2.98/175 and decent softs: 12 years of civilian/military work, second BA with a 4.0, good LORs. I applied to 25 schools. More than half gave me fee waivers but the total cost came to just over $1000. I have a good job so the money isn't a problem. I just felt that I was better off giving it a try at top schools even though I have a less than 10% chance of getting in rather than trying to save money now and not knowing if I would have gotten in. I got a scholarship at Minnesota so far, Waitlisted at Virginia, and denied at Berkeley with the rest still in the air. Having thought about it for a while now, if money was an issue I would not have applied to any safeties, 4-5 targets and the rest on reaches.

jmaan wrote:for an answer ur #'s matter...but for the most part, apply to like 4-5 targets, 3-4 safeties, and 3-4 reaches.....i applied to a ton of schools mostly due to fee waivers from schools that look somewhat appealing. Fee waivers might increase the amount of safeties.

It also depends if you're willing to take a lower-ranked safety school with scholarship money, in which case you'd apply to a lot of safeties.

MURPH wrote:I am a splitter with 2.98/175 and decent softs: 12 years of civilian/military work, second BA with a 4.0, good LORs. I applied to 25 schools. More than half gave me fee waivers but the total cost came to just over $1000. I have a good job so the money isn't a problem. I just felt that I was better off giving it a try at top schools even though I have a less than 10% chance of getting in rather than trying to save money now and not knowing if I would have gotten in. I got a scholarship at Minnesota so far, Waitlisted at Virginia, and denied at Berkeley with the rest still in the air. Having thought about it for a while now, if money was an issue I would not have applied to any safeties, 4-5 targets and the rest on reaches.

Similar deal here, 3.0/170, non-URM minority applicant, 6 years WE. Applied to 30 schools, more than half off fee waivers. Spent somewhere between $1k and $2k on apps.

If I knew then what I know now, I would've applied to different schools, but I still would've applied to almost that many. Regardless, I'm still happy with where I ended up.

I applied to 15 schools had about 8 fee waivers and spent about $700 on application fees.

10 schools
5 were fee waivers
about $350 total

lawduder wrote:10 schools
5 were fee waivers
about $350 total

+1 for me. Applying should be seen as an investment.

7 schools, 7 waivers. $84 so far, but I'm going on another waiver solicitation-athon tomorrow. I want to hit a couple more T14s before their deadlines since I've only applied to 3 of them at this point.

I applied to 16 schools with 5 fee waivers. I spent just shy of $1k.

My thought is law school is a once in a lifetime choice. I would rather apply to every possibility and be rejected than ponder "what if" at a later time.

14 schools. 11 fee waivers. ~ $400 or so.

19 schools, ~$200. LSAC fee waiver FTW.

13 schools (originally going to be 16 but I ran out of money and then lost interest in the other schools)...
Probably $200, cause I only applied to one without a fee waiver.

13 schools, lsac waiver--maybe $230. I'm getting itchy. If I don't hear anything by Wednesday I'll probably send out another 4 or so.

25 schools (5 fee waivers). $1500. Another $800 traveling to schools.

14 reaches... and I got into 2 of those reaches.

Haven't regretted it once. It cost me a lot. But this number is very small to know what your future options are. (As a caveat, I do realize not everyone has a budget that allows this and this strategy doesn't make sense for everyone).

The highest I have ever heard of that I can confirm? 150+. Yes, you read that correctly.

_

WhiskeyGuy wrote:Applying should be seen as an investment.

+1

Quite literally, since getting into more schools may be the difference between having a nice scholarship at one or not.

I applied to 17 and probably would have applied to 3-5 more reaches if I could afford it. With fee waivers, total cost was still manageable.

Who knows, I may always wonder about the reaches I didn't apply to, but they weren't my top choices location-wise, I couldn't get fee waivers and if I don't get into similarly ranked schools where my numbers were borderline, I'll just convince myself I wouldn't have gotten in anyway.

People apply to less than 8-10 schools?

22 schools; 13 Fee waivers (5 merit/8 need-based)

Extreme reverse splitter: 158/4.0

Results thus far:
2 Acceptances (Colorado, Vermont)
2 WLs (UVA, American)

20 schools
all fee waivers except UNLV
$12 report fee for 16 of them

i was planning on deferring for a year anyway and had a job opportunity lined up in case i didn't get my first choices, so applied to substantially fewer schools (5) than i otherwise would have (maybe 10, with fee waivers).

applied to 7, had waivers for 5 of them. withdrew from 2 of them before they decided. However, I wasn't interested in going to a safety with a scholarship, so strategies obviously vary.

~20 for me, most of which were with fee waivers.