So I've been doing my best to lurk and google and read up, but I wanted to float a question regarding negotiation strategies with multiple offers already on the table.
In my specific case, let's say I'm working with something like the following:
School A
Rank ~12
90k scholly
School B
Rank ~15
100k scholly
School C
Rank ~20
145k scholly
School D
Rank ~25
135k scholly
Now most approaches that I've read about have talked about working up the ladder, starting with C and using D's offers to leverage C to a new offer, and then moving forward to use C's new offer to leverage B and so forth.
In this case, where all schools have already made offers, would it make sense to attempt to use all available offers to leverage D first, including school A's offer? And then presumably work up the ladder, using all available offers including the new offer from D to leverage C, etc?
Or, alternatively, would I be better off first using A to leverage B, getting B to make a new offer, and then using B's new offer to leverage C & D, and using the final new offers to leverage A?
Negotiation Direction/Order Forum
- cavalier1138
- Posts: 8007
- Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2016 8:01 pm
Re: Negotiation Direction/Order
Without names, this is a pointless exercise. Is school A Berkeley or Cornell? What's the point of obfuscating the name?
Different schools have different values in negotiations. If school C is WashU, then their offer is probably not a strong negotiating chip, because other schools know how much money they'll throw at a high LSAT. But if school C is USC and school A is Berkeley, maybe that number carries more weight, since you're in a position to reasonably say you'd go to another good CA school.
So short version: no idea unless you start naming institutions. Ranking is less important than the actual schools and their negotiation power relative to one another.
Different schools have different values in negotiations. If school C is WashU, then their offer is probably not a strong negotiating chip, because other schools know how much money they'll throw at a high LSAT. But if school C is USC and school A is Berkeley, maybe that number carries more weight, since you're in a position to reasonably say you'd go to another good CA school.
So short version: no idea unless you start naming institutions. Ranking is less important than the actual schools and their negotiation power relative to one another.
- capnobvious123
- Posts: 88
- Joined: Sun May 31, 2015 9:38 am
Re: Negotiation Direction/Order
Fair enough. By eliminating names, I was hoping to make this thread more helpful for people besides me.cavalier1138 wrote:Without names, this is a pointless exercise. Is school A Berkeley or Cornell? What's the point of obfuscating the name?
Different schools have different values in negotiations. If school C is WashU, then their offer is probably not a strong negotiating chip, because other schools know how much money they'll throw at a high LSAT. But if school C is USC and school A is Berkeley, maybe that number carries more weight, since you're in a position to reasonably say you'd go to another good CA school.
So short version: no idea unless you start naming institutions. Ranking is less important than the actual schools and their negotiation power relative to one another.
In my case, the top school is Cornell, then UTexas, then Emory, then George Washington. I don't suppose that Emory and GW really have much weight against even Texas, but I was just curious about whether it'd be better to try GW against Emory first, or Cornell against Texas then Texas against the bottom two.