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I got in on a full tuition scholarship.
These are the scholarship stipulations:

If your class rank, after each academic year, places you in the upper 40% of your class, you will retain 100% of your scholarship. If your class rank places you in the upper 55% of your class, you will retain 75% of your scholarship. If your class rank places you in the upper 65% of your class, you will retain 55% of your scholarship.

What do you think? is upper 40% reasonable?

0Lost wrote:I got in on a full tuition scholarship.
These are the scholarship stipulations:

If your class rank, after each academic year, places you in the upper 40% of your class, you will retain 100% of your scholarship. If your class rank places you in the upper 55% of your class, you will retain 75% of your scholarship. If your class rank places you in the upper 65% of your class, you will retain 55% of your scholarship.

What do you think? is upper 40% reasonable?

Sounds extremely risky at best. See if you can negotiate that stipulation away.

No stipulation worse than "maintain good academic standing" is acceptable.

no, ask them to remove the stips

Is it even possible to negotiate stips? Clearly he is very competitive for them, so if they had no stips scholarships wouldn't they offer it?

Shootin wrote:Is it even possible to negotiate stips? Clearly he is very competitive for them, so if they had no stips scholarships wouldn't they offer it?

You can always negotiate. And to your second question, no.

Anecdata, but I've heard rumors of St. Johns section stacking to make sure they recoup some full scholarship money.

Winter is Coming wrote:Anecdata, but I've heard rumors of St. Johns section stacking to make sure they recoup some full scholarship money.

You mean bigger class sizes to make it harder to be in the top X % of your class? Speaking of which, is it true some schools put all students receiving scholarships in the same section in order to knock off some of them?

tezzeret wrote:

Winter is Coming wrote:Anecdata, but I've heard rumors of St. Johns section stacking to make sure they recoup some full scholarship money.

You mean bigger class sizes to make it harder to be in the top X % of your class?Speaking of which, is it true some schools put all students receiving scholarships in the same section in order to knock off some of them?

Bolded is what is referred to as section stacking. Big class sizes don't affect a curve.

Winter is Coming wrote:Anecdata, but I've heard rumors of St. Johns section stacking to make sure they recoup some full scholarship money.

+1

0Lost wrote:I got in on a full tuition scholarship.
These are the scholarship stipulations:

If your class rank, after each academic year, places you in the upper 40% of your class, you will retain 100% of your scholarship. If your class rank places you in the upper 55% of your class, you will retain 75% of your scholarship. If your class rank places you in the upper 65% of your class, you will retain 55% of your scholarship.

What do you think? is upper 40% reasonable?

I had the same thing and I just thought it was way too risky. If you are dead set on St. John's try and negotiate this away otherwise I wouldn't go.

Do they section stack? If not I'd probably do it. There's really no scenario in which section stacking won't have at least some affect on you, and if you have the #'s to get that offer your odds of being in the top 40% are very high (caveat: based on 2000-08 data). Of course, they're not 100% so it would be better to get the stips removed, but section stacking is probably a bigger concern.

Top 40% is pretty risky, try to get it removed. Are you in at any other schools with money?

I emailed admissions asking for more reasonable stips and received no reply. Honestly i'm not sure why I got the offer, my gpa is not good (3.01) but my lsat is okay? 157. I am a female URM. I've decided to retake the lsat and apply to better schools next cycle. St. Johns was a safety school anyway.

0Lost wrote:I emailed admissions asking for more reasonable stips and received no reply. Honestly i'm not sure why I got the offer, my gpa is not good (3.01) but my lsat is okay? 157. I am a female URM. I've decided to retake the lsat and apply to better schools next cycle. St. Johns was a safety school anyway.

TLS Success Story. As a URM, a strong LSAT--even with your GPA--should give you good options next cycle. Good luck!

0Lost wrote:I emailed admissions asking for more reasonable stips and received no reply. Honestly i'm not sure why I got the offer, my gpa is not good (3.01) but my lsat is okay? 157. I am a female URM. I've decided to retake the lsat and apply to better schools next cycle. St. Johns was a safety school anyway.

I haven't looked at the data since like 2011, but I'd bet the st johns median is now below a 157. as long as your lsat is above a median you're a very valuable asset because schools face a lot of pressure to have a non-laughable # of urm's in each class, and you're actually helping the most important median. even if it's not st. john's you're going to get the same offer at a comparable school.

my previous point on very likely to be in the top 40% doesn't apply in this situation. the idea is the lsat has no predictive value whatsoever of 1l gpa within a few points, but a lot of predictive value as you hit the 10 point above/below median range and law reviews at virtually every school are disproportionately populated by full scholarship students. there's really no correlation between race/age/gender, etc. and gpa outside of the #'s so from a statistical standpoint you should be going to an elite school or a school with no stips.