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Has anyone had success renegotiating their scholarships using transfer offers from other schools? I'm relatively happy with the rank/prestige/location/prospects of my school, but the debt will begin to get monstrous after 1L. Due to my home situation, I have to take out full COA every year. While I have a tidy 15k scholly already, I'd really like to up it to at least 1/2 or 3/4ths of tuition.

Anyone have any success with this in the past? I know the admission department here said they did not negotiate scholarships with offers from other schools initially.

I'm at SMU, by the way.

i can say that i had very little success at my school. granted, it was a highly ranked school and they had given a TON of money to incoming 1Ls, so that was probably part of the reason. I know as you get further down the USNWR rankings schools are usually a little more willing to open the pocketbook to keep their best students.

though in truth it's a little premature to be thinking about this when you don't have any grades yet.

crazyblink653 wrote: though in truth it's a little premature to be thinking about this when you don't have any grades yet.

Fair, though I would make a distinction between it being too early to think about 'transferring' and it being too early to think about 'squeezing every dime I can out of my law school otherwise I will end up $210k in debt.'

I'm worried that acting like I might transfer would burn bridges at my school that I could never rebuild, and whether that would be worth it, especially since I have little-to-no intention of actually leaving.

You won't burn any bridges by trying, any more than you "burned bridges" by trying to negotiate the scholarship before 1L. The administration is not going to bad mouth you to anyone because you approached them looking to up your scholarship, and your profs who write LORs if anything, might be impressed that you got a chance to transfer to a top school and decided to stay. Of course, you will tell them that you decided to stay so you can take their ____ and the law class.

I don't know about SMU, but some at my old school were successful with this. If you hit the 1L lottery, you are suddenly employable, which puts you in an even better spot than a 0L trying to negotiate with the school. This was one of my initial reasons for applying to transfer as well, but in the end I just decided to do the transfer.

yeah, i'll add one other thing. keep in mind that the people you will be interacting with in this regard deal with this EVERY year, and have gotten very good at it.

also, SMU in particular is a very strong regional school. so if they know you want to end up in Texas, they know you're actually better off with high grades + LR from SMU then you are going to basically any other highly ranked school with the possible exceptions of UT-Austin or Vandy. Just something to keep in mind.

benchslap wrote:though I would make a distinction between it being too early to think about 'transferring' and it being too early to think about 'squeezing every dime I can out of my law school otherwise I will end up $210k in debt.'

There is no distinction (or a negligible one) when you need the transfer offers to leverage a higher scholarship, as you acknowledged here:

benchslap wrote:renegotiating their scholarships using transfer offers from other schools?

In both cases you need the stats to transfer and, as crazyblink653 said, it's premature to be thinking about this when you don't have grades yet.

That said, crazyblink653 and Wholigan have credited responses here. Most of this will depend on the school and I don't have personal knowledge of how SMU handles these situations. You can try to ask 2Ls and 3Ls if they've done it (or heard it can be done) but, barring that, the best thing to do is get stellar grades, get transfer offers, and negotiate for yourself.

benchslap wrote:

crazyblink653 wrote: though in truth it's a little premature to be thinking about this when you don't have any grades yet.

Fair, though I would make a distinction between it being too early to think about 'transferring' and it being too early to think about 'squeezing every dime I can out of my law school otherwise I will end up $210k in debt.'

As someone else pointed out, you have no leverage to squeeze with (in this scenario) if you aren't able to transfer, so this really is you thinking about the transferring process. You're considered highly unlikely to have the grades to transfer, until you've demonstrated that you can earn them. And if you don't have the grades to transfer, you don't have the threat of transferring as leverage...

That said, I see no harm in generally discussing whether it's possible to use transferring as leverage. Just understand that until you have grades, you have to assume it's unlikely you'll get to have that kind of leverage to use.

Wholigan wrote:You won't burn any bridges by trying, any more than you "burned bridges" by trying to negotiate the scholarship before 1L. The administration is not going to bad mouth you to anyone because you approached them looking to up your scholarship, and your profs who write LORs if anything, might be impressed that you got a chance to transfer to a top school and decided to stay. Of course, you will tell them that you decided to stay so you can take their ____ and the law class.

I don't know about SMU, but some at my old school were successful with this. If you hit the 1L lottery, you are suddenly employable, which puts you in an even better spot than a 0L trying to negotiate with the school. This was one of my initial reasons for applying to transfer as well, but in the end I just decided to do the transfer.

+1 on everything.

My old school would not renegotiate my scholarship, ergo the "old" adjective.