Top Law Schools

deleted

luckystar84 wrote:I didn't think so, like you couldn't use Cornell $$$ to get CLS to bring its wallet, but someone told me maybe not but you could use Cornell to get UVA to budge, and UVA budging may get CCN to budge.

I hadn't thought of this before. I already have 2 T14s and 1 T10. HY medians (approximately) here. Should I be applying to schools I hadn't considered before for scholly offers? NW, Cornell, UCB, etc.? Even if applying to these schools doesn't get more $$ from a higher-up school, I may go to a UCB if the price is right.

Yes.
Apply for scholarship or at least apply for the leverage.
Especially with apps down, you don't know what can happen

I agree you should apply for leverage, you can pass on UCB though. They don't do waivers if I recall and their scholarships are basically entirely just matching other schools. For UCB to be useful you would have to do like GULC --> Duke --> UCB --> CCN which is unlikely enough to work to not be worth the ~$100 + your time.

2014 wrote:I agree you should apply for leverage, you can pass on UCB though. They don't do waivers if I recall and their scholarships are basically entirely just matching other schools. For UCB to be useful you would have to do like GULC --> Duke --> UCB --> CCN which is unlikely enough to work to not be worth the ~$100 + your time.

OP said s/he would be willing to go for UCB if the money was right, though. Since s/he'll be able to negotiate Boalt up using other schools, it might end up being worth it even if Boalt doesn't help in negotiations with CCN. Given that $100 is a drop in the bucket in this whole law school endeavor and the application doesn't require much work beyond that put in on other apps, I'd go for it.

deleted

I know people last cycle who used Cornell $$$ to get NYU to increase its offer. So yes.

2014 wrote:I agree you should apply for leverage, you can pass on UCB though. They don't do waivers if I recall and their scholarships are basically entirely just matching other schools. For UCB to be useful you would have to do like GULC --> Duke --> UCB --> CCN which is unlikely enough to work to not be worth the ~$100 + your time.

UCB declines matching scholarship offers too. They are assholes. However, they provide legitimate financial aid to students with no real qualification based on merit (upto 20k/year) so if you qualify for this, you should most definitely apply there and use that to leverage money from either schools below UCB (If you are a borderline applicant to UCB) or above for a base to use.

NYU didn't match UVA's 120k from their initial 75k offer (upto 90)


All in all, it isn't an exact science but there are enough success stories each year that warrant the assumption that it's worth the risk ($100-$200) for the potential reward

So apply everywhere you can (or at least everywhere that gives you a fee waiver) even if you wouldn't attend at equal cost + 100k if offered CCN

deleted

luckystar84 wrote:
only T14 hadn't planned on applying to until now are UCB, NW, and Cornell. But now that we've cleared up whether I should apply to them, how do I pull off the NW->UCB->UVA->CLS chain? get something from NW, call up UCB to see if they match, then go to UVA and say hey UCB gave me $$. when UVA bumps its $, call up CLS?

this is all presuming I get in at these places, but HY median stats (approx) should be good enough

Well, first of all, Berkeley doesn't match from NU (source).
Also, Berkeley is notoriously stingy with $$ even through their matching process. They are also considered to have the most holistic admissions process outside of YS, so no one is guaranteed admission there-they may or may not be impressed by your high numbers, and they care a lot about admitting people who they perceive as having a strong genuine desire to go to Berkeley. You don't really appear to fall into that category. Additionally, if your numbers are as high as you describe them, you may face YP at certain schools outside of the T6, meaning you won't necessarily be showered in $ from Michigan, UVA, Penn, etc-you might actually be waitlisted.

edit: fixed link

deleted

Getting money from Berk is not easy. True that there is no merit based aid.

Disagree with poster above about matching though. I'm pretty sure that they do match money from peer schools.

Need based aid exists, but keep in mind that if you do qualify for need based aid, the amount is recalculated each year. If you score an SA, you will have to report those earnings to financial aid and they will lower your need based aid for the next year.

PM me and Ill give you a detailed response within the month (you wont be talking schollies till February anyway). I did exactly what you are talking about doing.

Don't go Berkeley -> anything. Other schools won't match a matching scholarship (and yea the berkeley offer says "matching scholarship"). Best schools to get matching B money are Michigan and sometimes Georgetown, unless of course you can use higher ranked schools, i.e. HCCNP (So you go Cornell/Northwestern -> Gtown -> Cal, but not Cal -> CCN). Cal can be generous. I got more $ from them than I submitted to match.

If you want to hit Columbia, you'll need Chicago, NYU, and maybe Penn offers; Harvard acceptances can also sometimes nudge CLS. They wont work much with lower ranked schools. You can raise Chicago with a substantially larger (2-3x larger) NU offer, and you can raise NYU or UChi with Duke, Michigan, or Penn. Michigan is incredibly stubborn and won't budge, but Dean Holt at Duke is very flexible - express enough interest and you can definitely go Cornell -> Duke or NU -> Duke. So you can flow all the way but its very tedious and far from guaranteed, and we aren't talking about even matches here - you'll still wind up with less at CCN than lower T14, but you can shrink the gap a little and its worth sending a few emails even just for $10K.

Moreover, at the end of the day, CCN may surprise you. You could fight for weeks to increase a lower offer at another school just to get handed $120K at UChi without having to negotiate.

UVA offers such ridiculous scholarships to qualified candidates that its my impression other T14s arent super excited to match them.

I know everyone is saying Berk is frugal with the $, but they were pretty good to me. I went in with a good UVA scholly and not only did they match it, they beat it by 10K. Penn was actually much less flexible (TBF I applied to Penn late). Not disagreeing with anybody but just in my personal experience UCB was pretty generous.

L’Étranger wrote:Getting money from Berk is not easy. True that there is no merit based aid.

Disagree with poster above about matching though. I'm pretty sure that they do match money from peer schools.

Need based aid exists, but keep in mind that if you do qualify for need based aid, the amount is recalculated each year. If you score an SA, you will have to report those earnings to financial aid and they will lower your need based aid for the next year.

They do match, but not from NU-it's not in the list of schools they'll consider offers from on their website, and they explicitly state they won't consider offers from any schools not on their list.

jbagelboy wrote:PM me and Ill give you a detailed response within the month (you wont be talking schollies till February anyway). I did exactly what you are talking about doing.

Don't go Berkeley -> anything. Other schools won't match a matching scholarship (and yea the berkeley offer says "matching scholarship"). Best schools to get matching B money are Michigan and sometimes Georgetown, unless of course you can use higher ranked schools, i.e. HCCNP (So you go Cornell/Northwestern -> Gtown -> Cal, but not Cal -> CCN). Cal can be generous. I got more $ from them than I submitted to match.

If you want to hit Columbia, you'll need Chicago, NYU, and maybe Penn offers; Harvard acceptances can also sometimes nudge CLS. They wont work much with lower ranked schools. You can raise Chicago with a substantially larger (2-3x larger) NU offer, and you can raise NYU or UChi with Duke, Michigan, or Penn. Michigan is incredibly stubborn and won't budge, but Dean Holt at Duke is very flexible - express enough interest and you can definitely go Cornell -> Duke or NU -> Duke. So you can flow all the way but its very tedious and far from guaranteed, and we aren't talking about even matches here - you'll still wind up with less at CCN than lower T14, but you can shrink the gap a little and its worth sending a few emails even just for $10K.

Moreover, at the end of the day, CCN may surprise you. You could fight for weeks to increase a lower offer at another school just to get handed $120K at UChi without having to negotiate.

UVA offers such ridiculous scholarships to qualified candidates that its my impression other T14s arent super excited to match them.

This is super helpful. I recall reading from some threads from last year that CLS technically doesn't do merit aid besides Butler/Hamilton, so you have to apply for need aid and do everything under the guise of that (though at the end of the day it's still actually mostly merit-based). Was that your experience, or did you negotiate with them just like any other school?