Hoping for housing and living stipend with 4.0 and 170.

[tonyyassa95]

Hi, I recently received a 170 on my LSAT and have earned a 4.0 throughout my undergrad career. I am hoping for a full-ride scholarship, as well as housing and living stipends to one of my target schools. These include USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, NYU, and Georgetown. I would be open to basically any school in the top 15-20, but these are definitely my preferred options.
I am wondering first, how common is it for schools to offer living/housing stipends to students? and secondly, are my numbers at a point where I could hold out for an offer like that, or do I need to improve on my LSAT score?
Thanks in advance for your help and advice, and my apologies if I'm being overly hopeful at this point.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for posting the question here! It's much easier to go into detail here as opposed to Twitter, obviously.

Ok, financial aid outcomes are lot harder to predict than basic admissions decisions. While both depend on the quality and depth of the applicant pools, financial aid tends to be more variable.

My sense is that for the higher ranked schools, you won't be looking at a full ride. At some places you'll get decent money, but a full ride doesn't seem likely. NYU is interestingly one school that I could see giving you at decent offer. The lower ranked schools, such as USC and UCLA, are more likely to get close to what you are looking for in terms of a full ride but even then it's dicey. I can't speak to stipends, and don't see a lot of those each year.

Here's my advice for you: with a 4.0 and a 170, you are doing yourself a disservice by not retaking the LSAT if you feel you can do even better (that might be a big "if" though). You are already close to those magic mid-170s, and with a perfect GPA, every single point at your LSAT score level has a big impact. I'd retake it, because you can completely change your outcomes—and resulting debt—with just a few more points.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

[tonyyassa95]

No problem! Thanks for the in-depth answer!

So do you think getting in the 172-175 range would dramatically increase my chances at free housing? or just at full-ride scholarships above the USC/UCLA range?
Also would you recommend applying now with these numbers and seeing what offers I get, and then waiting a year to re-take the LSAT and re-apply next year if I'm not happy with the offers?
Or do you think I would be able to increase my score in time to take the December LSAT and still get applications in for this cycle?

[nicholaspavic]

Hi Tony,

I'm Nick, a colleague of Dave's here at PowerScore. I just wanted to jump in here because Dave has answered some of these questions before. But I am going to take them out of order.

Or do you think I would be able to increase my score in time to take the December LSAT and still get applications in for this cycle?

There's really two questions in this question.

To the first question about your ability to increase your score, my answer is a firm "yes." The December exam may be less than two month's away but every instructor at PowerScore (myself included) has helped students raise their score from a 170 to mid-170's in that time. With that modest increase you are seeking, that is absolutely doable. I am confident that you can create a tutoring plan with us or potentially a study plan on your own, and get that increase from a 170.

Now to the second part of your question, can you get your applications in on time? Dave has gone into great depth about this very topic here:

http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/struggl ... r-too-late

The answer to quote Dave:

The short version is that if your application is complete by about January 10th or so, you will still be in what's called the First Group, which is the first 40% of applicants. Thus, regardless of score considerations, while September LSAT does allow you to apply earlier, the December LSAT still allows you to be in the first half of applicants, and that's pretty reasonable on its own.

Also please consider this post from Dave explaining why you should consider re-taking and why every point on this test is so important in the admissions process:

http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/should- ... -agree-yes

That said, I think you should strongly consider re-taking the LSAT in December. There is also something to be said against waiting a full cycle to re-take it as the skills that you have developed can fade over time and it can be quite daunting to have to start your studying all over again. Also, I want to direct you to our blog post from our friends at Spivey Consulting about how re-taking is not generally a negative in your applications:

http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/do-law- ... a-negative

So to get to your last questions about free housing vs full ride scholarships at the schools which you mentioned, I cannot really effectively address that, but I can confidently say that a higher LSAT score increases your chances at both if they are available.

Thanks for the great questions and I hope this helps!

[Dave Killoran]

No problem! Thanks for the in-depth answer!

So do you think getting in the 172-175 range would dramatically increase my chances at free housing? or just at full-ride scholarships above the USC/UCLA range?
Also would you recommend applying now with these numbers and seeing what offers I get, and then waiting a year to re-take the LSAT and re-apply next year if I'm not happy with the offers?
Or do you think I would be able to increase my score in time to take the December LSAT and still get applications in for this cycle?

Hi Tony,

Some quick answers here from me since I'm in transit. The higher score will increase your chances at a full ride. As I mentioned before, we don't see many stipends of the type you are talking about, mainly because they are very rare. As in, almost never are they given by law schools.

I could see taking the path of delaying that you reference, but I will say that if you turn down a full ride from a school like UCLA only to reapply the following year, they will know you are shopping deals and penalize you by either yield protecting you via a waitlist or by declining to offer you as much money. These are smart people, and when they feel they are being played, they are under no obligation to simply hand out large scholarships. I personally would use you to amp up our app numbers by rejecting you, but that's just me My point is that they can tell when someone is shopping aid packages, and while that's acceptable the first time around—since it's presumed to be the only time it will happen for each person—on a reapply situation when the prior decision was admit with a scholarship you'd be under some risk. At the least you'd need to write a compelling addendum explaining why you were back again after they made what would be reasonable standards be considered really good offers.

I'd shoot for December and try to grab a few more points, and then apply with that.

Good luck!

[tonyyassa95]

Thank you both for those answers! I will definitely keep those in mind and plan to start studying again for the December LSAT, I really appreciate the insight you've given me here, particularly in regards to law schools responses to re-applying, as that was something I hadn't really considered. You've given me a lot to think about, and I'm going to see what I can do to boost my score by December.

[Dave Killoran]

Awesome, glad to help! If you get a chance, give us a shoutout on Twitter for the help here. Thanks!