Negotiating michigan? Forum

[needmonay]

Hi everyone, I'm pretty new to the law school scene so I need some advice with scholarship. I have a 3.4 gpa and got a 162 lsat and I managed to get into michigan (I'm in state and urm). However, I didnt manage to get very much scholarship (only around 10k). I read some threads on here that people have use other schools to negotiate scholarships with their first choice, so I was thinking about doing that with michigan. I also applied to cooley law school because it's close to where I live and I read somewhere that it was a pretty good regional school according to rankings (I think it was ranked 2nd for something?).

I really want to go to michigan but i'm strongly considering just going to cooley unless michigan offers me more scholarship. Because of this, do you think it would be worth it to use cooley to negotiate for michigan scholarship? How would I even go about doing this? Or should I just settle on going to cooley bc I want to practice in michigan anyways? I'm not considering going to any other schools because I need to stay close to home due to family issues. Thanks for the advice everyone and Im excited to be going to law school!

[cavalier1138]

I'm going to give a serious answer despite the obvious red flags that this is a troll (namely that Michigan State is literally in the same town as Cooley, and you apparently didn't consider it, which doesn't fit your stated scenario).

No, a Cooley scholarship is not useful in negotiations with Michigan. And anyone who wants to be a practicing lawyer should avoid Cooley like the plague. People's best school choice will vary based on their actual career goals, but Cooley is a scam, not a law school. Assuming the OP is not trolling (again, a huge assumption), the options are go to Michigan or, better yet, retake the LSAT to get a better scholarship offer at Michigan next cycle. Of course, there's always the option of not going to law school at all.

[AdieuCali]

I’ve donned my nomex suit and am heading into the possible flames. URM cycles are highly unpredictable and I think it’s plausible with these stats to get MSU with no $.

OP is below both 25% at UM. Even if s/he goes up a few points on the LSAT, it’s not necessarily true that there will be more admissions or $$$ forthcoming. UM’s admissions needs might differ next year and they won’t admit OP even with a couple extra points.

UM in-state plus a slight discount is still a pretty great option. OP will be paying less than most of his/her classmates and will get Biglaw at median.

Retaking is almost always TCR, but in this case OP should just go to UM. The median UM grad will get a $190k/yr starting salary. The median Cooley grad will not become a lawyer. https://www.lstreports.com/compare/michigan/cooley/

[needmonay]

you apparently didn't consider it, which doesn't fit your stated scenario

Sorry for the miscommunication, I actually wasn't considering msu because I didn't get any scholarship. Michigan is a little more expensive but a far better school and Cooley would be essentially free, and I thought msu and Cooley would be slightly similar in quality (granted, I haven't really looked into msu because I didn't get a scholarship).

If I do retake the lsat, around what score would I need to get to get a better scholarship?

[beinghuman]

It's tricky. I knew someone with a 167 LSAT score and 3.8GPA non-URM two years ago who got into Michigan with a 15k scholarship. So given your GPA, you'd need to a substantial improvement to get a much larger scholarship because you might get the same offer with 2 or 3 points more on the LSAT.

The other problem I can think of is whether you'll be competitive enough. I'm not saying that LSAT will determine your ability to be a good attorney or do well in law school but within range it does predict where would end up on the curve. If the best you can is 162 i.e. you prepared really well etc, I'd give it some thought before enrolling because you'd be taken a significant amount of debt.

But all in all, Michigan is your best bet.

[cavalier1138]

Yeah, the other posts convinced me that your cycle is unpredictable enough that an LSAT bump isn't going to necessarily help much. Just go to Michigan (or don't go to law school).