Fee waiver but.. LSAC fee?

[clhurley]

Alas, LSAC is down today, so I must ask you folk. Plus, I want to be sure. So.. you get fee waivers, so bam, you don't have to pay that $65 fee for the actual law school. But don't you have to pay like $15 to LSAC every time they send your files to a school? So that applying to a school for which you got a fee waiver isn't actually free.. just a reduced cost?

[Laura Roslin]

Yep.  That's all the school can do - waive the fee they would be charging you.  You still have to pay LSAC for their intensive use of...fax machines?  Email?  I'm not sure.  (And if you think it doesn't seem like $15 worth of work to forward a transcript and a few letters...I'm with you.)

If the fee is a problem, you may be able to get an LSAC fee waiver, which includes 4 free LSAC reports.  (And if you can get a need-based LSAC waiver, most schools will waive their fee automatically.)  But most of us are applying to more than four schools, so it doesn't help much.

While the fee is annoying, it does keep people from applying to schools that they would really never go to.  So perhaps it is for the best.

Good luck!

[Gone]

Yep.  That's all the school can do - waive the fee they would be charging you.  You still have to pay LSAC for their intensive use of...fax machines?  Email?  I'm not sure.  (And if you think it doesn't seem like $15 worth of work to forward a transcript and a few letters...I'm with you.)

If the fee is a problem, you may be able to get an LSAC fee waiver, which includes 4 free LSAC reports.  (And if you can get a need-based LSAC waiver, most schools will waive their fee automatically.)  But most of us are applying to more than four schools, so it doesn't help much.

While the fee is annoying, it does keep people from applying to schools that they would really never go to.  So perhaps it is for the best.

Good luck!

That's a good point. Otherwise schools that give out a lot of fee waivers are going to be getting a lot more applications from students that are way out of their reach - which is good for their numbers but bad for people who might not be accepted initially because of it (or might get smaller aid offers because the money is being earmarked for kids who won't end up going, though schools are usually pretty good at figuring out what % of aid will be accepted and offering more than they have in planning for it)

[clhurley]

Ahh, that's what I thought. Thanks for the info!

[Gone]

What I wish they would do is keep the per school fee (maybe even increase it slightly) and reduce the ridiculous fee for signing up for LSDAS. That way, people can essentially choose how much they spend on law school apps based on the resources they have. (I understand this means richer kids will apply to more schools, but that isn't that much of a change from the way it is now, and I'm thinking lower the registration fee enough so applying to say 9 or 10 schools would be the same total cost as now)

[Ninja1]

You know, I was just thinking about it, and I think the LSAC fees seem pretty reasonable in retrospect. The service is convenient and it works like it's supposed to, which is more than you can say for a lot of things.

All told, I spent something around $300-350 on LSAC fees (not counting the LSAT, I never understood why that costs so much). If that was all free, all I would have done is apply to more schools.