If you look at WashU’s medians, you’ll notice something quite strange: although it’s a perpetual ‘cusp’ school, always on the edge of breaking into the T14, WashU has higher medians than Stanford and Yale. For those in the know, this is evidence of a shockingly distinct admissions policy that prioritizes super-splitters above all else. Every year, scores of applicants get their second chance from the best law school in the lower midwest. For the right applicant, they offer iconically large scholarships, fast admission action, and a fighting path to do well and enter Big Law.

You’ll want to apply to WashU if you’re a dramatic splitter. But despite the aggressive admissions policy, WashU is a lovely, well-resourced law school. The university in general has long nursed ambitions of being actually recognized as ‘the Harvard of the Midwest.’ It’s one of the few schools outside the Northeast, Chicago, or California that can claim a national reputation. Notably ungenerous financial aid policies for its undergraduate program (it has some of the richest undergrads in the country) frees WashU to throw its financial might around and be extra generous on the graduate level.

WashU has what it calls the “St. Louis problem.” Once an actual rival to Chicago and New York, St. Louis’s global reputation has crashed since the days of the 1904 World’s Fair. But decaying grandeur is also grand: St. Louis is cheap, has a thriving food scene, spectacular parks, and museums and zoos so good you’ll wonder how they actually stay afloat. The campus is self-consciously beautiful—you can see it trying to look like an East Coast school. Some recent tornados have left it somewhat bereft of shade.

Doing well at WashU Law means you have a real shot at a good Big Law position.