What are realistic scholarship opportunities?

DatguyM15

Hi all,

I'm an older applicant, I will be 33 when I enter 1l, that is looking to attend the highest ranked law school possible and but also doesn't want to pay full sticker price because of my age/ less time to pay off debt. My stats are 3.1 GPA with a 167, I was also a D1 athlete at school that was very competitive in my sport/ I was all conference and led my team in a couple years in our most important stat, what kind of doors will this open for me and where can I apply to get good scholarship offers without the school being lower tier? I visited UW madison this weekend and met with an admissions counselor who said I would have a very high probability of receiving some aid there. This really surprised me because looking at their 25th/75th percentiles for GPA and LSAT I thought I was very weak in regards to my GPA. Also, was I too blunt in just asking the admissions officer if a scholarship was possible? After leaving the meeting I thought that may have been a blunder but in the business I'm currently in being blunt and assertive are good attributes. I'm old and lack some of the support you younger folks have so a little guidance on what should be schools that are reaches or lay-ups for my stats would be very helpful. Thanks in advance!

TheMikey

You can definitely get good scholarships depending on what schools they are.

Is a school like UW madison a school you are looking to go to? I'd say you have a chance at scholly. If you're looking at a top law school I'd say your chances aren't too high, but if you were to get a higher LSAT score then your chances of not only getting in will get higher but scholarship money will be more possible.

check out lawschoolnumbers and lurk on people who have similar stats like yours to see what their outcomes were.

best of luck!

Trust But Verify

Let's get this $. I'm planning on asking admission straight up like you said. I'm anticipating some generic responses but definitely want to know more about scholly $. There's not an institution in the world that I want to go into large debt for. And I personally don't care much about rank.

Good hunting. Namaste.

NotMyName

I don't think there is anything wrong speaking in a direct manner regarding scholarships so long as you don't violate typical social protocols like "don't be a dick"... it doesn't sound like that was the case

But honestly, I think you'll get far more information using LSN than speaking to an advisor even if they were direct and forthright with you (maybe not always the case). An advisor would have to spend hours with you in order to convey what you can gather on LSN in 30 minutes or less.

TexAgAaron

http://wisconsin.lawschoolnumbers.com/stats/1718

Here's a link to the mylawschoolnumbers.com numbers for Wisconsin. You will need to change the cycle to 2016-2107 as they have moved to the current cycle but it gives you a nice plotted chart for who is getting accepted. Also if you click the individual dots, it will take you to that user's page and show you schools, scholarships, etc. that the user reports. Same data as myLSN uses.

DatguyM15

Thanks guys! Already looking at LSN and it's raised my hopes of getting good money to a decent school.