What are some generous, well known law schools that give a lot of aid.
Incorrect approach, in my opinion.
Start with an actual LSAT score & GPA.
The top three law schools do not award merit scholarships (Harvard, Yale & Stanford). Most of the rest do, however.
Publisher is spot on.
Outside of HYP. all of the top law schools offer generous merit aid if you have numbers (GPA+LSAT) that exceed their medians, and preferably 75th %.
Let me give you a real world example from this admissions cycle. My daughter is a senior at Notre Dame with a 3.88 LSAC GPA and a 172 LSAT score. Neither number is perfect but they are both strong. Here is her outcome:
Columbia, $22K/year
NYU, nothing
Georgetown, $30K/year
George Washington, $50K/year
Duke, $40K/year
Wisconsin, > full ride
Illinois, > full ride
If you are an extremely strong applicant lower ranked schools will simply throw money at you. Some schools will award what is actually merit money but call it financial aid when the family income would clearly indicate financial aid is not needed. Negotiation is also the norm for law school - you don’t simply accept the Columbia’s offer you use your NYU offer to force Columbia to cough up more money. I negotiate for a living as a supply chain guy and it was a bit hurly -burly even for someone like me
My guess is that if my daughter had a 173 or a 174 LSAT the financial offers would have been more generous
If you want a good idea of what money is available, the best thing to do is to google XXX law school and pull down a copy of their ABA 509 report. It will show percentile GPA and LSAT of admitted students along with what percentage of students are offered aid
As the folks above have posted though, without a real GPA and LSAT score your question is purely academic
Take Philosophy/Logic courses. If you can enroll in honors classes with lots of reading and writing, take them. In the summer after junior year, invest in a good LSAT prep course and work very hard: the higher the LSAT score, the better the odds.
Unfortunately, if you take a course in logic in college, it may harm your LSAT score.
Those who teach LSAT test prep courses recognize this & try to get students to put aside what they learned in the logic course in order to learn the test prep system in order to achieve a higher LSAT score.
The LSAT is a learnable test.
@Publisher That wasn’t DS’ experience re: logic courses.
@bubblytaco You can check where other applicants have been accepted and what their scholarships were at https://mylsn.info/r/pre-law/admissions/search/ In general, the higher your LSAT and GPA, the higher your merit at schools below YSH. All schools, and especially YSH, are also looking for interesting work experience.
@bouders: She must have understood the material.
On a more serious note, LSAT tutors can tell pretty quickly who has & has not taken an undergraduate course in logic. My suggestion is to avoid logic courses until after taking the LSAT & receiving a satisfactory score. (Based on several real life examples.)
Why logic courses need to be avoided? I heard the opposite that taking computer logic courses can be beneficial.
Take the Logic courses if your mind enjoys the approach to such thinking as they are foundational to conceptual analysis and keep in mind that they are not “a means to an end”.
If one takes a Classic Logic course and views it as a mechanical approach to test taking it is not the answer. It is a great one two step in approaching advanced reasoning so if it fits your area of interest don’t wait, take it when you find it fits your needs.
For me Classic Logic I freshman year and Logic II sophomore year were a great fit.
Any tutor worth their salt can tweak a given mind set to maximize ones potential. So having had Logic is not a negative so long as it’s not viewed as the solution and more as a solvent. I found it very advantageous to have had Logic across all my studies and ultimately with having greater clarity in most all test taking.