<p>do law schools, like undergrads, give financial aid base on need? if they do, do they use the fafsa like in undergrad to determine the amount? let's say as an undergrad my financial aid covers everything for me because, coming from a low-income background, my EFC is 0. does that likely mean that the costs for my law education will be mostly subsidized by the government as well?</p>
<p>You'd be applying for FAFSA, but if you are a certain age you will probably be filing as an independent. Also I believe law schools don't tend to give out a lot of grants, but mainly loans. For those who score really well on the LSAT & have a high GPA, you may get a scholarship. Some schools have special loan payoff programs for those who work in non-profit post-grad and have a small salary. I'm not sure how the government grants work for graduate school, but from what I've heard most law students are on loans, not grants. Thus more than likely the costs will NOT be subsidized by the government.</p>
<p>Just one note . . . I don't know of any law school that guarantees that it will meet your need, regardless of what your FAFSA states. In addition, most law schools (like most universities) use a supplemental form specific to their school that includes assets, savings, etc. that might not otherwise be included in a FAFSA calculation. In addition, most law schools require you to include your parents' income information in your financial aid applications until you are somewhere between 26 and 30 years old, depending on the particular law school. </p>
<p>Three additional notes:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Most loan forgiveness programs for students who work in the public interest after graduation from law school ("public interest" is defined differently at different schools), which exist mainly at the top law schools, require you to take the loans and then have them forgiven after some amount of time, typically 3-5 years, after you have actually worked in the public interest position.</p></li>
<li><p>If you are granted financial aid for your first year of law school, you are typically granted smaller amounts for each of your second two years of law school, as you will be expected to earn money over the summer, of which you are expected to contribute a significant amount towards your tuition, room and board.</p></li>
<li><p>You will need to have good credit in order to obtain private loans for amounts necessary to fund your tuition and other expenses, as the amounts available for Stafford and Perkins loans (as you "max out" those loans) is often insufficient to meet a student's needs. (e.g. Stafford loans for graduate/professional school max out at $20,500 per year, with a lifetime limit of $138,500, which, I believe, includes undergraduate Stafford loans).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>From my experience and what I've observed, unless you attend a law school for which you are exceptionally overqualified, you should plan on borrowing the entire cost of attendance, minus whatever you have saved. </p>
<p>That's not to say you can't reduce your debt load: attending a state school (where you're a state resident) or going where the cost of living is low can help, there are a lot of smaller scholarship (in the $500-$5000 range) offered by local bar associations and the like, and earnings from summer jobs or part-time work in school can also help. Some schools also offer merit-based scholarships for specific areas (law and econ, international, public interest, etc.) but these are so rare that you can't really count on getting one.</p>
<p>Speculation: Your EFC will likely still be 0 (law schools also have supplemental forms, but so do most undergrads), but now a much higher proportion of the "aid" you get will be in the form of loans.</p>
<p>Law schools just don't calculate EFC the same way that undergrad does. At a minimum, you will be expected to contribute what may seem (and what certainly seems to me) to be a larger sum of money than you would probably expect. Families without two pennies to rub together are often expected to contribute (money which you obviously must then replace with additional private law school loans (for which you need good credit)). Students who already have a number of undergrad loans are expected to take additional loans to finance their law school educations, and, in my experience, the loans already taken are not given a lot of weight in making law school financial aid decisions. Work study is typically not an option (at least not first year). </p>
<p>Even law students who are truly financially independent, with families of their own, have parental contributions attributed to them until they reach whatever age a law school specifies when you no longer need to provide parental financial information (typically 26-30 years old). Grants, when given, are typically not sufficient to bridge the gap between the money you actually have to put towards tuition and the money you need to pay.</p>
<p>Inevitably, you will take out a not insubstantial amount of loans if you do not have the resources to pay for law school out of pocket. </p>
<p>I would recommend you take a look at HLS</a> Student Financial Services: Understanding Financial Aid at HLS, particularly at the information on the right hand of that page. Harvard tends to be more generous than many schools for students with financial need, but you can see how parental and student contributions are viewed.</p>
<p>Some examples:</p>
<p>The minimum contributions calculated for students are:</p>
<p>1L: $2,500
2L: $7,700
3L: $11,600</p>
<p>These numbers are net of a student's living allowance, amounts allowed for taxes and a 10% rate of "free money" for other expenses.</p>
<p>Students are also expected to contribute 100% of their assets to their costs of education. </p>
<p>In addition, law school admissions is not need blind like some of the top undergraduate schools (namely, the ivy league). Your need may be considered as part of whether you are admitted to a particular law school in the first place (in other words, can this person afford to attend this school, and can they continue to afford to attend this school for all three years without dropping out and without holding anything more than a part time job?). </p>
<p>The financial aid system for law school is not as comparable to undergraduate as you may expect. I would recommend that anyone applying to top law schools expect to take out a significant amount of loans to cover any gap between money you actually have to put towards tuition and additional money that you need. Don't assume that you will be given grants in respect of any financial need you believe that you have. </p>
<p>That said, you should apply to the law schools you would like to attend and you should apply for financial aid at those law schools. You never know what you may receive.</p>
<p>I'd also suggest that you take a look at Need</a> Access.org - Home. to get an idea of how the process works at some law schools. Click on the link to participating schools to see which schools use these forms.</p>
<p>How much interests for the loan? For example, if you have loan</p>
<p>1L: $25,000
2L: $35,000
3L: $50,000</p>
<p>In total 110,000 for three years.</p>
<p>How much you need to pay back after you have graduated from law school?</p>
<p>there are a number of calculators for which you can play with different scenarios for loan repayment.</p>
<p>FinAid</a> | Calculators</p>
<p>$110,000 at 6.8% over 10 years- repayment of $1265.88 month ($41,906.23 in interest) </p>
<p>$110,000 at 6.8% over 30 years- repayment of $717.12 month ($148,160.51
in interest)</p>
<p>You also have to take into account that most of your law school student loans (typically all but Perkins and subsidized Stafford) will actually be accruing interest while you are in law school, though the principal amount (the amount you actually borrowed, plus, in some cases, disbursement fees and other expenses) simply grows without any obligation on your part to make payments while you are in school. At either graduation or some point after graduation (typically 6 months), that simple interest is capitalized into the principal of your loan (so that if your loan is for $100,000, and has been accruing simply interest at 7% (though, in reality, interest rates fluctuate) for three years (though this a simplification as you would only be responsible for $XX from your first year, $XX plus $YY for your second year and $XX plus $YY plus $ZZ for your third year, and further complicated by disbursements each semester), you would owe an additional $21,000 so that the total you would begin to repay would be $121,000 instead of $100,000.</p>
<p>just going to bump this up. Any and all recent insight into financial aid process is appreciated. May be helpful for those going through the 2009/2010 admission cycle.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that the insights in this thread need to change for this current crop of applicants. The information provided here is still as true as it was when first posted.</p>
<p>thanks sally- I knew about need access site, fin aid calculator and I have info re: federal student loan forgiveness law from equaljusticeworks.org. Again all this stuff could change at a moments notice- but it’s good to have a general idea as to what is out there re: financial aid process.</p>
<p>just wanted to see if anything was missing and to make new group of applicants aware of financial aid info. I get a headache just thinking about it.</p>
<p>Well, marni, you’re in good company with that headache, because I get a bad one every time I think about how many years of working 80+ hour weeks it took for me to pay off my law school student loans.</p>
<p>Yikes!
I gotta admit- my kid is just starting her journey and I really have no idea how this is all going to play out.<br>
I don’t know what is more troublesome to her- being deeply in debt or having an 80 hour work week and that deadly combo could be enough to turn her off all together. </p>
<p>my guess is that a good offer from a T-20/30 school might meet her needs- but then again it’s her life and her decision. Gotta admit, I’m excited and curious about what the future may bring for my kid. I guess we’ll have a better idea in the spring. I know she really does like her job, and it does have a real career path, so it’s not impossible that she can nix the idea of law school all together. But right now, she is working on her applications and will start sending them out within the next few weeks.</p>
<p>sally- thanks again for the info.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of good information here, but I thought I’d jump in to say that even average applicants to good law schools have a chance at some scholarship money. Yes, loans will generally be by far the largest part of a package, but my D was provided scholarships that meet roughly 20% of her COA over three years, and she certainly was average, not at the top of the applicant pool.</p>
<p>My understanding of the scholarship is limited, since I wasn’t terrible involved in the process, but I think it was partially based on need and “maybe” merit. In any case, I think she was offered similar packages at three “lower” T-14 schools. Her EFC was 0, but we make enough that there would be an expectation of our helping her.</p>