Copyright

FAQ:
Choosing a Law School
US News Rankings
The Admissions Process
Application Trends
Diversity
Academic Factors
Sample Personal Statements
Recs & Resumes
How & When to Apply
Hearing from the
     Law Schools
Recent News

Other Departments:
LSAT and Admissions
     Services
Success Stories

Contact Us

With help from
Netscape Web Tutorial
by Charlton D. Rose
and David Chang

Choosing Your Law Schools  

Financial Aid

How will I ever pay for law school?

That's a good question to ask yourself. The cost of law school can be so staggering that unless you get a great job when you graduate, you may be unable to pay back the loans. The cost for a year's tuition, books, room, board and personal expenses at top private schools is over $50,000. But before you panic, remember that the average starting salary for those grads in 2004 was about $125,000. That should be enough to enable you to pay back $20,000 a year in loans.

The real problem is that many lesser-ranked private schools cost as much as the top ones, and you don't make nearly as much money when you graduate. It makes sense to look carefully at the likelihood of employment and the average starting salary before committing yourself to enormous loan repayments.  For a look at tuition, starting salary, and debt load, click here.  

Minority Financial Aid

Economically disadvantaged minorities often feel that they cannot afford a top law school.  However, many law schools offer substantial financial aid to minority and other disadvantaged applicants.  The following chart may help you realize that tuition is not the only factor deciding whether you can afford a law school.  The data presented here was collected from 126 law schools at the Law Forums in 1995.  

Interested in the Public Interest?

You needn't avoid more expensive schools just because you want to take a lower-paying public interest job when you graduate.  Many schools provide Loan Repayment Assistance for students who take lower-paying public interest jobs after law school.  NYU's program is reportedly the best, but many schools have similar programs. The Public Interest Law Foundation is a student-run organization with groups on many campuses.  The group raises funds each year to provide stipends for students who want to take public interest jobs in the summer.

I can't take out $150,000 in loans!!!!

And you may not have to. Scholarships and grants both refer to money that you will not have to pay back later. "Scholarships" are awards, merited by your grades, LSAT score, extracurricular activities or plans to engage in a specific field, such as poverty law or child advocacy. "Grants" are awards made by the school based at least partly on your financial status. They come from the school's operating budget, and are usually (but not always) given to offset the difference between your ability to pay and your loan availability. The balance of grants and loans in these "packages" varies with a school's resources and its interest in the student.

Who Gets Grants?

Many schools have money for geographic diversity. Duke, for instance, has been known to offer very generous grants to northerners, to lure them away from schools like Penn and NYU (schools which are ranked very similarly to Duke and accept many of the same students). This may be out of a belief that Duke's national reputation depends on having a national student body. It may arise from a desire to have a broad range of viewpoints in the student body, to help educate other students. It may simply mean that Duke doesn't have to work very hard to convince southerners to attend.  Whatever the reason, it can make the cost of attending Duke much less than that of attending NYU.

The second common diversity factor is ethnicity. Schools will often use grants to reduce the cost for a minority student, whether that person is of a racial minority or another group that will add to the school's mix of students, such as people who grew up in the former Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China.

In general, a school is more likely to use grant money to attract students whose ethnicity would otherwise be underrepresented. This can be a matter of local population, or of desirability of location. For instance, California has a very low resident population of African Americans as compared to the east coast. They may offer larger grants to African-Americans to encourage them to attend their schools. These same schools are less likely to offer diversity grants to Chinese and Japanese, since both groups have high populations in California. Schools in the midwest, on the other hand, may offer more diversity money to Asians and less to African Americans.

In 1999, grant money went to people with high LSATs, as response to the USNWR inflicted yet another change on the admissions game.  Even two points above a school's median can get you merit money.  So if you need dollars, retake the LSAT!

What Controls the Grant Amount?

In addition to the desire for diversity, a school's use of grants may reflect a student's grades and LSAT score, the time of year, or the size of the school's endowment. Schools may offer less grant money and larger loan packages to applicants whose grades or LSAT scores are far below the medians (in effect a "negative" merit scholarship). Students offered admission late in the year (especially those called from the wait list) may be offered less money simply because the school has exhausted its resources. And schools with smaller endowments, especially state schools, may have less money to offer in the first place. The size of a grant award reflects all these factors, and thus varies widely from school to school.

My Parents Have Money...

Then most private schools will take this into account in awarding grants.  Public schools tend to  consider only the applicant's income for graduate schools, just as FAFSA does, as long as your parents have not claimed you on their income taxes.  Any school using the Needs Diskette for financial aid, and most that have their own supplemental forms, will base grant awards on your parents' income as well as yours.

... But I'm a Grown-Up!

Can you prove it?  If you're under 30, have been to graduate school, or have less than 3 years full-time work experience after graduation, you may have trouble getting them to count you as completely independent.  If you're over 30 and have worked a while, try submitting a notarized letter stating that your parents haven't contributed to your upkeep since 19XX, show your own income tax returns for 3 or 4 years, and ask their advice.  You can also try enclosing a notarized letter from your parents saying that they refuse to contribute to your education.  But I warn you that I  personally know of only two people who succeeded in applying without parental information.  One was an orphan, and the other claimed her parents on her income tax returns!

On the other hand, parental income may not be as important as you think.  If you're clearly independent, many law schools won't require your parents to contribute unless they're pretty affluent.  

So What Should I Do?

Don't limit your choices from the outset to the schools you think will give you money. Apply to a number of schools and see what kinds of financial aid offers you receive. Private schools may have much more money to offer than state schools; you may be just the kind of student a school is seeking. Let the schools see your file and make a decision before removing them from your list.  And start now learning about the complexities of financial aid. There are a number of helpful sites on the web:

The Financial Aid Web Page has a wealth of scholarship and grant information.

The U.S. New & World Report Financial Aid Page gives grant and loan information, along with a number of other useful web sites.

Sallie Mae, a federal lending and loan consolidation organization, has calculators that will show you how much you have to repay each month on various loan amounts.

Each of these sites may refer you to many other helpful places. Before you go crawling off, make sure you've placed a bookmark here so you can return later.

Bad and Good Advice

If your prelaw advisor implies that you can't afford an expensive private school without referring to grant amounts, you're getting bad advice.  If the advisor doesn't consider cost of living in evaluating programs, you're getting bad advice.  If (s)he doesn't consider the return on your investment, you're getting bad advice.

When I advise a client about costs, we discuss the client's current financial status to see whether there's any chance of getting grant money in addition to loans before ruling out "expensive" schools.  When considering expenses, we factor in cost of living as well as tuition.  I had a client looking at BU, Georgetown, Hastings and USC.  Tuitions varied by several thousand dollars, but so did cost of living -- in inverse relation to the tuition, so that all four schools ended at the same cost.  We also looked at average starting salary at all four, and again found negligible differences. So this client knew that cost and return on investment was not going to be a decider for her.

When evaluating costs, I also work with disadvantaged students to help them understand the importance of taking out student loans, the relative return on their investment, and the value of attending the best school instead of the cheapest.  I know how frightening loans can be, and help the applicant get beyond those fears to see the best choice for their future.