<p>I am a junior at MIT and am considering law school, but was wondering if there was any money available at the top 14 schools. I have found some money given out by Columbia and Northwestern, but I was wondering about the frequency of these scholarships and whether i have a chance (or a chance at admission for that matter).</p>
<p>Major - Mathematics with Computer Science and Management Science
GPA: 3.7/4.0
LSAT: 175
Internships: Worked for two financial institution in sales and trading (includes the coming summer)</p>
<p>browse the profiles at lawschoolnumbers.com and chiashu.com (although be warned, its self reported so don’t expect a representative sample). </p>
<p>otherwise, what i can tell you myself on “merit” scholarships is from personal experience (even less representative), had about a 3.8 w/ 172 applying this year, poli sci weak ecs: </p>
<p>Columbia-they offer a few full or half tuition scholarships, otherwise only need based, i received no merit based award. however, they gave the impression in their financial aid presentation that they were willing to consider the fact that you’d been given other offers if you brought it up. </p>
<p>berkeley- you have to apply for merit awards, either on the basis of matching another t-14 offer or in some other avenue i have forgotten becuase it was irrelevant to me. </p>
<p>chicago- automatic consideration, didn’t give me any. </p>
<p>duke- automatic consideration, offer of 25k/yr for me. georgetown- requires an essay for consideration, 10k/yr for me. </p>
<p>also applied to stanford (need based only i believe but unsure) and nyu but haven’t heard back from either, never applied to the rest so i can’t give you accurate info. </p>
<p>i’d just stress looking at the sites, with numbers like those there is money out there…</p>
<p>Michigan’s Darrow, NYU’s public-service related awards, Columbia’s Hamilton + Pierce (? I forget the name; it’s full tuition + stipend) awards–these are the major merit awards at the top schools.</p>
<p>I’d say that you have a shot at the Hamilton and the other Columbia award (which is given to ppl that have worked in the corporate sector + have excellent recommendations). The GPA is on the low side, which might be forgiven because of your alma mater.</p>
<p>thank you so much for taking the time to discredit my thread. I am an identical twin and my brother goes to duke. We both have taken the LSAT and we both were looking at law school.</p>
<p>I am in fact a junior at MIT. My gpa is in fact a 4.7 out of 5.0, but I posted it so that more people would be able to comment. You can check out all of my posts if you like, you will find a number in both the duke and mit discussion boards. </p>
<p>Your response was also incredibly helpful. Thank you.</p>
<p>Are you not violating the terms of this website by registering one username with multiple identities? You and your identical twin are not one individual.</p>
<p>wow, cbreeze, you’re a winner. congratulations. </p>
<p>OSUforME, though your GPA is normally a little low to get a merit scholarship from Columbia, Chicago or NYU, I think you will get money from at least one of them because a 3.7 from MIT is pretty damn impressive.</p>
<p>Penn has the Levy scholarship that’s about 2/3 tuition for three years. Depending on your credentials, pretty much all the t-14s except for Harvard, Yale, and Stanford have some kind of merit money available.</p>
<p>Only a handful of the very qualified applicants to T-14 law schools will receive merit scholarships. While it is wonderful if you receive one of them, I don’t think that it is a safe bet to plan on receiving any merit money. </p>
<p>Most law students will finance their law school educations with student loans and, perhaps, need-based grants.</p>
<p>Along with the Levy, Penn also has the Wilson (half price) and smaller Dean’s scholarship. You will be notified automatically if they are interested in giving money, then an essay is required before they make a final decision.</p>
<p>One point to keep in mind. A few of these scholarships require public service or academia (Furman at NYU). In some cases you might be better off going to a higher ranked law school with a good loan forgiveness program. Harvard has a loan forgiveness program and has initiated a program waiving tuition for 3rd years heading into public service. That might actually work out as well as some of the public service scholarships.</p>
<p>I understand that it is far from guaranteed to get any money at all, but right now I am completely undecided about future career plans. I just don’t want to take on too much debt and then find out being a lawyer is not really what i wanted to do. I was hoping to apply to schools where I at least had the possibility of lessening loan amounts (even if that may be an unrealistic goal).</p>