Anonymous wrote:Dean Manning of Harvard Law School put out a press release 8 months ago that Harvard Law School will start offering merit scholarships of up to 100% of tuition for the most qualified applicants. So maybe the top schools are changing their minds on merit aid.

Well, I know dear John and gave it three minutes of searching but can’t find what you are referencing. It’s irrelevant, anyhow, because student loan policies are set by a Harvard Law student committee, not John. So like any good politician John can say whatever he likes and it’s not happening. Harvard, now at a whopping $107k a year, does not give merit aid because it doesn’t need to. Financial aid, to be distinguished from merit, is also tightly controlled. Also, if John actually said that, you should know you can drive a truck through through what “most qualified” means. Look at this for example. https://hls.harvard.edu/sfs/financial-aid/financial-aid-policy/parent-resources/#general-requirements. HLS subtracts from that $107k figure the student’s earnings, the student’s assets, then the parents’ assets in full up to age 25 (parents contributions aren’t phased totally out until age 29). My DD woujd like to follow in my footsteps. After sending three full-pay kids to college, and taking care of two seniors with dementia, and heading towards retirement we cannot afford $330k in after tax dollars, which means making probably $500k. The only schools offering real merit are the lesser known which are trying to climb the USNWR ladder. They will pay for spectacular GPAs and LSATs. Thst is the hard truth. So she’s applying only to those where she has a chance of merit based upon her test scores.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can also work at a university and get reduced tuition at law school. I know someone who graduated Georgetown Law this way.

In the 90's, many schools were free.

Now, you have to work there a minimum number of years (several) for partial tuition decrease, and there is no longer total tuition decrease - unless you have worked there for decades, and are grandfathered in.

I think there is a common misconception that what was true in the 90's (free school!) is true now. It is most definitely not.

You don't know what you're talking about. Move along.

True! A bizarre post! I was paying off my students loans well into the 90s. There were no free law schools

Anonymous wrote:My husband got free tuition to Georgetown Law.

But when and merit or financial aid?

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Anonymous wrote:It's unclear what effect the recent actions of Yale & others re: not cooperating with USNWR will have on this, but, in the past, law schools have been very sensitive to rankings & compete for the highest GPAs & LSAT scores. It's not like undergraduate where you only get merit for schools that are lower ranked than the schools you're qualified for.

A top law school will provide merit for a kid with top LSAT scores. I've helped my law school recruit top students and have seen law schools basically get into a bidding war over the amount of aid available.

FWIW, I think the rankings will continue to matter because USNWR can get the data they need from other sources, and no matter what Yale et al say, they don't want to drop in the rankings.

Interesting. In the early 90s, I had 99th percentile LSAT score and spouse had a perfect Lsat score, we both had graduated undergrad from ivies, and neither of us were offerred merit aid from any law school. We both attended GW, fwiw.

This was a change that came in the early 2010s. The number of students applying to law school dropped and the competition for good students became intense. Some schools reduced the size of their classes rather than lower their standards, but they also started making more generous financial aid offers to students with good stats.

But all of that shifted again with the surge of law school applicants during the early COViD years when new graduates had promised jobs pulled and couldn’t find work so went back to school. This year is the first where applicant numbers are starting to go back to normal. Because there were plenty of full oy students from here and abroad merit awards dried up.

Anonymous wrote:
A top law school will provide merit for a kid with top LSAT scores. I've helped my law school recruit top students and have seen law schools basically get into a bidding war over the amount of aid available.

Interesting that they got into a bidding war. Yet Imsaw on r/lawschooladmissions that a candidate had her offer rescinded when she tried to negotiate with UCLA for better merit aid.