Negotiating a scholarship after first year? Forum

[Patent2014]

Edit for privacy.

[NotMyRealName09]

This must vary by school, but some schools will offer scholy's to good students after 1L grades come in. I can only speak to my experience at a TTT (at the time), but I came into lawschool with nothing, aced my 1L year (top 5%) and they threw two different full-ride scholarships at me - one was just "merit" based, meaning I had to maintain a certain GPA, and another was an offer into their King Scholar program, where I had to take a seminar class thing and write an extra law-review type note. I took the King Scholar program - another line for the resume.

So yeah, they throw money at good students to stop them from leaving, and I see no harm in asking them for some while alluding to your consideration of leaving, but that really depends on your actual class rank and a bunch of subjective factors specific to your school. Top 10-15% is very good and I bet you can get some money, but schools (probably) have a whole bunch of data on what students in what percentile actually transfer out, and what amount of money has to be thrown their way to encourage them to stay.

I'm totally speculating, but I suspect that the school has a formula for offering scholarship money and that more than anything determines whether they'll offer it to you or not.

Did you check your school's website? I think mine actually laid out express terms / GPA requirements for scholarship offers after 1L year.

[Pumpkin-Duke of Pie]

Friend of mine negotiated at the end of 1L year, and got a scholarship increase. If they think you might transfer out, or if you're transferring out, some schools will offer to negotiate a higher scholarship for the next year. It probably won't help you to negotiate right now, since, for all they know, you could potentially bomb next semester and be at their mercy again.

[MarkfromWI]

Whether you actually want to transfer or not, send out applications. Acceptances in hand will go a lot farther in negotiations than simply saying, "well gee I did really well this year so I don't want to pay as much." The money that you have to spend on transfer apps (a couple hundred bucks) is well worth it when it can end up saving you tens of thousands of dollars down the road if you do actually decide to stay put.

[fltanglab]

Had a friend who received some acceptances from transfer apps and then went to negotiate. It worked out; he/she got a pretty significant sum.