<p>Honestly, I am in Los Angeles, and the average person I have run into 9times out of 10 does not/did not have any comparable international experience as close to the one I have experienced</p>
<p>You live in LOS ANGELES and you don’t think people have international experience like yours? Over half the people in LA don’t speak English as their native language and 40% of the population was born outside of the U.S. Why would you think other Angelenos don’t have international experience?</p>
<p>Here’s my advice. You are geographically limited, so you can only apply to schools on the West Coast - CA, and maybe OR or WA. Your strategy is to find what schools in CA (and maybe OR and WA) offer merit scholarships, and apply to those at which you rank in the top 5% of transfer students - maybe top 10%.</p>
<p>Do not overestimate the importance of your international experience. The schools you listed - Pomona, Pitzer and Occidental to a certain extent, UCLA - get hundreds of transfer slots every year from very qualified students; a lot of them are certain to have int’l experience and these schools can pick anyone they want. You’ll get the most merit aid (if any is available for transfer students to begin with) at places where you are in the top 5%, maybe top 10%, of transfer students.</p>
<p>Another option is to wait until your divorce is final from your husband, before you apply. If you anticipate your divorce will be final by Feb or Mar 2012, then you can apply now because I believe FAFSA asks you if you are married on the day you file the form (but you should check that). If you don’t have an income, your EFC should be zero, which will help if you can get into a school that meets full need for transfers.</p>
<p>Cal States do make sense, you want to know why? Because you may not be able to <em>afford</em> to go anywhere else. You can talk about how you want to go to a tier 1 school all you want, but you can go where you can pay. I think you are very misguided about your opinions on getting into law school; Cal State students get into top law schools all the time. Tier 1 kids are overrepresented at top law schools for multiple reasons. One (small) reason may be a slight edge in the admissions process, but other bigger reasons are 1) they’re more likely to be able to afford most or all of it anyway, 2) they’re more likely to be legacies, and 3) they’re more likely to be motivated to go to top law schools in the first place. Among other reasons I may have forgotten. Law school admissions are FAR more interested in your GPA and your LSAT scores than where you went to school - especially at a recognizable university like the Cal States. They’re not exactly West Podunk State or anything.</p>
<p>Two other things concern me:</p>
<p>1) It’s ironic to me that you won’t even consider the idea that someone from a Cal State can get into law school easily, but you mention getting a full-ride scholarship to a TOP 15 LAW SCHOOL like it’s nothing. I would NOT rely on a full-ride…some schools don’t even give merit aid to law students, and you need to be Jesus to get one if they do because they will offer 1-3 per year. I think it’s far more likely that you can get into a T15 law school from Cal State than it is that you’ll get a full ride to a T15 law school.</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>2) Public service forgiveness only applies to public Stafford loans. There are two things you said that are inaccurate. First of all, they don’t make school more affordable - the schools are exactly the same price as they were before. Secondly, they <em>do not</em> mean that you don’t have to pay anything. Public service loan forgiveness means that IF you get a public service job after law school, and IF you work in that sector for 10 years, after that time the BALANCE of your loans will be forgiven. However, during those 10 years you will have to make payments on your loans. There’s also a caveat - you have to be eligible for income-based repayment in order to be eligible for public service loan forgiveness (because if you are on the standard repayment program, you won’t have anything left to forgive after 10 years).</p>
<p>You are allowed to borrow up to $20,500 a year in Stafford loans as a grad student. Most tier 1 law schools cost between $60K and $80K per year, which means you’ll have to borrow an additional $40K to $60K <em>per year</em> to pay for law school in private loans. That means you’ll have around $2,000 in student loans to pay (at an assumed interest rate of around 8%) every month ON TOP of your federal loan burden. Assuming that you make $80,000 a year (which is a lot to assume in public service law), your monthly payment on the Stafford loans with IBR will be about $800, so that means that your total repayment will be about $2,800 a month.</p>
<p>Some top law schools do have public service programs that help their students in public service law pay back law school loans - Harvard, for example, has a Low-Income Payment Program for public service lawyers. That means even if you make $80,000 a year, your monthly payments will be $1,066 a month, which is a lot less than the $2800…but still a lot of money. That plus taxes reduces an $80K income to a little less than $50K.</p>