<p>Those sound valuable indeed, but it’s important to note they aren’t merit aid. One is state aid (which likely has other stipulations), the other is federal aid with the obvious stipulation of military service. When we refer to merit aid, what we really mean is law school-provided tuition discounts designed to encourage persons with high GPAs or LSATs, relative to the school’s interquartile stats, to attend that school over a better ranked school.</p>
<p>“If a student has always scored comfortably above a 3.0, or 3.25, or whatever the benchmark is for renewing a merit scholarship, he/she may think it will be no problem to meet those stipulations. But you can’t know how well you’ll do in law school until you’re in law school.”</p>
<p>Less than a decade ago, a 1L GPA of a 3.25 would have put a student easily in the top 1/3d of the class at my alma mater. Now, most schools grade-inflate more than my alma mater did, and even my school has jumped on the grade-inflation bandwagon, but at least look at the spread of GPAs during 1L year before taking any merit aid that is conditioned on maintaining a certain GPA. I would guess that most people are used to a 3.25 being in the bottom of the class, not the top.</p>
<p>the other think to ask is how the course is graded – by section, or overall curve? </p>
<p>Some ‘sneaky’ law schools put all of their honor/merit students into the same course section, and then curve by section. Then, by definition, at least half of those students will not receive merit money in year 2 since they will now be below (section) median.</p>
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<p>How do they define “need”? After paying 4 years of undergrad, who wouldn’t qualify for need?</p>
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<p>Mitt Romney :D</p>
<p>Actually, many professional schools still consider parental income/assets in their need calks.</p>
<p>^ what bb said. From the HLS site: [Policy</a> Overview](<a href=“http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/basics/policy/index.html]Policy”>http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/basics/policy/index.html)
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<p>Sons school seems to be on the grade deflating plan. Don’t understand lowering the curve at all. That said, merit scholarships at his school do not come with a GPA to meet to maintain it but the student must stay in good standing- which we take to mean they have above a 2.o GPA and stay in the program!!</p>
<p>Most law schools son applied to gave him merit aid.</p>