Top Law Schools

I recently finished paying off my undergraduate loans and am planning to attend law school in the fall of 2018. I'm interested chiefly in Yale and Harvard, and I know that they both expect you to exhaust your savings in order to pay for school. This indicates to me that saving up over the next year is unlikely to do me much good. I'm definitely going to save some, since they seem to require a minimum contribution, but I'm not sure how much I should save.

As much as you can.

Unless you have 250k, anything else would just be a drop in the bucket.

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At H at least, there is no minimum required contribution from student assets. The minimum you're probably thinking about is the minimum amount they require you to take out in loans for you to be eligible for any grants. No idea about Y.

That quibble aside though, it's not prudent to orient your financial planning over the next year on the assumption you will get into H or Y. As you say, their aid policies incentivize you to save nothing between now and law school. That puts you in a pretty precarious position. You will probably realize that H and Y don't make sense for many (most) applicants, and if you've decided to spend all the money you would have saved, law school becomes a lot more expensive.

Personally, with your stats, I'd take a Ruby at Chicago > HYS any day of the week. That way you don't even need to worry about saving Going to Yale is cool. Having no debt from a marginally worse law school is much cooler.

Just to jump on this - not that I'm applying to HYS - roughly how much should we have saved or should try to have saved from the moment we commit to a school? Meaning deposits, move in, first day, etc. Similarly to OP, I'll have my UG loans paid off by April hopefully and I receive no financial assistance from my parents. I put the majority of my paychecks towards my loans, but roughly how much should I be setting aside for everything that needs to be paid for BEFORE any funds are distributed for when we start school?