Welcome...good to see you!xolailaxo wrote:Hiii checking in. Received a fee waiver I requested for being an AmeriCorp. UVA is one of my four top choices, besides Duke, Cornell, and GULC. If I got accepted though, I would go in a heart beat. Does anyone know if applying binding decision helps?
Binding Early Decision (ED) helps in the sense that UVA is one of the few schools where there is actually a statistical admissions bump from going ED (not true at all schools).
It hurts because you are exceedingly likely to utterly destroy yourself from a financial perspective by going that route. You'll have zero leverage for scholarship negotiations and end up with a scholly much MUCH lower than you otherwise would have received.
So, the general consensus around here is unless you have a rich uncle who is paying for the entirety of law school (or a rich Uncle Sam...aka, the GI Bill), EDing is financial suicide and you'd be much better off applying regular decision and saving yourself tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition. If you can't get into UVA RD and below sticker, then accepting GULC with $$ or a T1 with $$$ probably would be a much better long-term financial decision.
