Financial barriers to visits Forum

[baristatobarrister]

Sorry if this has been asked before or is totally obvious, I'm new here.

So I got my first acceptance today (woohoo!) and of course my first thought was "gee I wish I could visit this place". Unfortunately I do not have a lot of money. I don't make a lot of money, I just spent most of my savings paying off debt and paying for all those pesky application fees.

I happened to receive a full ride the school. I'm wondering if it would be tacky to email them about financial help for the visit? Do schools do that? I've never even been to the city it's located in so I feel like a visit could be very helpful in my decision, but I can't think of any way to do it without help.

I guess it won't matter if no one else accepts me or gives me a scholarship!

[dextermorgan]

Congrats! A lot of schools offer a travel stipend to visit. It would be worth emailing the school to find out, especially since they are interested enough in you to give you a full ride.

[baristatobarrister]

Congrats! A lot of schools offer a travel stipend to visit. It would be worth emailing the school to find out, especially since they are interested enough in you to give you a full ride.

Great, thanks! Should I email the admissions person? Gosh, I thought I knew what I was doing until I came to this board!

[dextermorgan]

Congrats! A lot of schools offer a travel stipend to visit. It would be worth emailing the school to find out, especially since they are interested enough in you to give you a full ride.

Great, thanks! Should I email the admissions person? Gosh, I thought I knew what I was doing until I came to this board!

Yep. Just email them and thank them for the offer. Tell them you are really interested, but would like to visit the school to get a feel for it. Ask if they have any kind of assistance program for admitted students who would like to visit. It is possible they will tell you to wait for admitted students weekend or something of that sort, but most schools will cover at least part of the cost to visit.

[Dany]

If it helps, here's a [non-exhaustive] list of schools that offered travel stipends last year: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... =5&t=98776

And the other poster is correct, just email them and be very friendly/polite and explain that you're very interested in the school but due to financial constraints you cannot afford to visit. It might help to say you can provide financial documentation (last year's tax return or something) but if you can't, that's fine.