Tricks to getting Scholarships

All potential law students know that the key to getting into a good law school is your undergraduate GPA and your LSAT score. But what most potential law students don't realize is that applying early can be just as important. This is really important when looking at getting scholarships or getting into a school that your stats (GPA & LSAT) barley allow you to get into.

Examples from myself and my friends:

I applied to almost every school as early as possible. I took the June LSAT the summer before my senior year of college so I could apply asap. Because I applied so early, there were ample scholarships and I was lucky enough to get some money from almost every school I applied to, with less than impressive stats.

A good friend of mine had a slightly better LSAT and a slightly worse undergrad GPA, but he didn't take the LSAT until the middle of his senior year of college. As a result, he qualified for scholarship money, but didn't get any of it because it had all been given out. There were actually some schools that he would have likely received small scholarships from, but instead was wait-listed because he didn't get his act together and apply sooner.

Another friend of mine who was a year younger and listened to my advice and took the LSAT in the middle of his junior year, and applied to every one top schools asap. But he failed to apply to some of the schools that he could get good scholarships from till he hear back from his Ivy League schools. He ended up getting into some of these schools, but received little or no money from any of them. The more he got to thinking about the huge cost of law school and how he did not want to be dealing with loan repayment for a few decades, he decided to apply to some 2nd and 3rd tier schools. Not surprisingly, he got into all of them, but because he was applying at the end of the admissions cycle, he didn't receive any large scholarships. Scholarships he would have been a lock for had he just applied earlier.

The moral of this story is to apply early and apply to any school you are even considering as early as possible. When you apply often plays just as important of a role in how much money you get as your LSAT and your GPA.