<p>I've been browsing LawSchoolNumbers.com, and have seen people who apply to nearly 30 schools as well as people who applied to only a few schools. I assume that it's easier for applicants with really high grades and 165+ on the LSAT to figure out safety schools and to determine where they are likely to be admitted. But how many schools should a student with average grades (3.4-3.6) and a lower LSAT (mid to high 150s) apply to? </p>
<p>Assuming an applicant has good soft factors with a great personal statement and recs -- is there any way to tell which schools could be more likely to put the applicant into Committee based on those factors even if the applicant's GPA/LSAT index is lower than the school's mean? </p>
<p>How common are fee waivers? When do you find out if a school is waiving fees? </p>
<p>How important are visits before acceptance? I see the need to do visits when you've been accepted and are trying to decide between School A and School B, but is it worth taking time off from school in the Fall to visit before your application has been accepted? Do you get anything at all out of summer visits when classes aren't in session? </p>
<p>There’s a few schools which are notorious for specific quirks – not that these two are in play, but Northwestern will overlook low GPAs for work experience, while Berkeley will overlook low (by their standards) LSATs for high grades. Some schools are kind of predictable.</p>
<p>Number of schools you want to apply to depends on how far you want to stretch. If you’re looking for an extra five LSAT points, you’d better be applying to twenty of those schools. An extra two, you might think of a smaller number.</p>
<p>Fee waivers are offered either based on income – in which case you’ll know long in advance, probably when you take the LSAT – or based on your LSAT score, in which case they often start rolling in during the application season itself. You can always e-mail an admissions office to request one; this works better if you’re above their means.</p>
<p>Visits are particularly important if you are trying to convince a school that you are interested in them. Otherwise there’s not much point – far cheaper to apply to an extra school than visit to see if you want to apply.</p>
<p>Which schools care about the showing of interest through visits? I can’t imagine too many among the T-14, but I’m not that familiar with the law school admissions process yet.</p>
<p>I don’t know about visits (didn’t do any before I heard where I got in) but to answer your question about fee waivers, you generally get them from schools with one or more of the following:</p>
<p>a) money to spend (big endowments, lots of alumni donations)
b) lower median LSAT and GPA than you have
c) a desire for the type of diversity you exhibit.</p>
<p>But there’s really no rhyme or reason to it–you’ll know if a school is giving you one when the school sends you one.</p>
<p>Visits are mostly just important during the waitlist process, when schools are trying to actually fill their classes. As a general rule, though, any school which asks a, “Why us?” essay is worried about yield (Penn and Michigan do this).</p>
<p>I recommend taking a look at [LSAC.org</a> Homepage](<a href=“http://www.lsac.org%5DLSAC.org”>http://www.lsac.org). There is a search function there where you can input your LSAT and UG gpa and see your odds at MOST ABA-accredited law schools. </p>
<p>Some schools have very narrow ranges. Some have broad ranges. My hunch is that those in the latter group pay more attention to “soft factors” than those with narrower bands for accepted students. </p>
<p>Personally…I think that once a student determines that an acceptance to a T14 LS is extremely unlikely, (s)he should focus on applying to schools in the region of the country where they want to practice. The number of schools might be determined by how certain the student is of his/her geographic preference, how many LSs there are in that region, and how competitive admissions are for LSs in that region. So, off the top of my head, my hunch would be that a student who was certain (s)he wanted to practice in Indiana and had mean gpa and LSAT numbers for IU-Bloomington would apply to fewer schools than someone who wanted to practice in New York, D.C., Boston. </p>
<p>If you can’t get into a T-14 and want to practice in Indiana, IU is undoubtedly the best law school to attend. If you want to practice in NY, you’d probably apply to all the NY area law schools other than NYU and Columbia, and might decide “what the heck” and apply to those anyway.There are simply more LSs to apply to and the “pecking order” among them for hiring purposes will matter. </p>
<p>The other factor that matters is cost. Lower tier LSs often lack loan forgiveness programs for those who are headed into public service. So, if your dream is to work for legal aid, and you don’t have a good in-state public option that you are almost certain to get into, you might apply to a range of schools so you can compare packages. </p>
<p>That’s a long-winded way of saying I don’t think there’s one size fits all answer to NZ’s question as to how many LSs to apply to. It’s not just your “stats” which determine how many LSs you will apply to ; it is also where you want to practice and what you want to do.</p>
<p>IMO, the best and worst applicants have the fewest schools to consider. Someone with T-14 numbers may choose to apply only to T-14 schools with 1 or 2 safeties, while someone with 3rd or 4th tier numbers should apply to the few schools in the area they wish to practice in. The people applying to 30 schools are those just below the cusp of the T-14, who apply to most of them as reach schools, several semi-national schools in the T-25, and a few regional safeties. Of course, there are always some people who overapply to reaches and safeties.</p>