That's pretty cool. I was under the impression Temple wanted mid-160s and 3.5+ GPAs to offer that kind of money. Drexel's deadline is May 1st, which is one of the latest I've seen. So like I said, I'm not so sure I'd be SOL for Drexel considering their application process continues through March and April. My letters of recommendation are in, and my personal statement will be finished this weekend. I plan on having my applications out before March 1st. As for working after college, I've been planning on doing law school for the better part of thirteen years, and I've never really had a back-up plan. I have absolutely no idea what I would do, what I'd enjoy doing, or what I'm even qualified to do, but I bet I wouldn't enjoy it since I know it's not what I want to do with my life.
I still don't see why I can't bust my ass and try to transfer to a school like Temple. That's not unheard of.
You have no idea what you are qualified to do, what you would enjoy doing? Even more reason to take a year off to explore what is out there while preparing for the LSAT. You could take a legal or nonlegal job and see firsthand what you can or cannot do. Who knows, maybe you would enjoy something else or discover that there is a niche in the law that you feel passionate about and would enter law school with a better idea of where your legal career will take you. I took 4 years off. The first year, I thought it was gonna be just one year and then head to a PhD History program but I liked the legal job I took that decided to change career paths. After that I worked more because, honestly, I got lazy about the LSAT. But the point is that the one year, apart of being able to help you prepare your applications and improve your LSAT enormously, can help you professionally.
And law school is an investment in every sense of the word. Invest more time in the test. I'm sure if you do that and improve, your chances at getting at a better regional school will improve, as well as the likelihood of scholarship money that could reduce your final debt load. You could always try to transfer, but that is never guaranteed to occur. If you want to transfer to a school, you might as well fight as hard as possible to get into that school.