Mysonx3's Law School Thread

[mysonx3]

I’m dying to find out what schools you are applying to!

To be honest, I've been rather sheepish to share my list as I don't want to come across as braggadocious or naively optimistic, but I suppose that's not going to get better over time, so I might as well share.

I will be blanketing the top 13 law schools (the general consensus is that there is a drop-off after those 13), so that would be (in roughly the order they are ranked): Yale, Stanford, Harvard, University of Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn, University of Virginia, University of Michigan, UC-Berkeley, Duke, Northwestern, and Cornell.

Beyond those 13, I'm not sure what else I'll do. To some extent, it will depend on which schools offer me application fee waivers - a couple of them already have, but not ones I'm interested in. I'll probably apply to Washington University, as they have a reputation for accepting (and offering large scholarships to) students with high LSATs, almost regardless of the rest of their application. There's a (applicant-reported) database of people's admission results, and going back to 2012 it doesn't show a single rejection or waitlist from WashU for an applicant with my LSAT. So Washington will probably be my primary "safety" school, since it lets me hedge against my paranoia that my alternative credits degree may be looked down upon (which I doubt, but is possible) while also being a very strong school.

I'll also probably apply to Georgetown - for a long time they were considered on par with the Top 13, but have lost some traction in recent years. However, they're still very strong (the best in the 14+ rankings range) and are particularly good at placing students in goverment and public interest jobs, which is what I want to do. The downside is that they're known for being a bit stingy with scholarship money.

Beyond those, there's a handful of schools I'm considering applying to, but I'm definitely hoping/planning to get into one of the Top 13, hopefully with significant financial aid. Since law schools are rolling admissions, I'm going to apply for the Top 13 first and, by the time I would've applied for other schools, it's possible I could already have an admission and scholarship offer that makes it a moot point.