chances

[prelaw12]

Ok so I am stuck in a dilemma. I would like to know what my options are. I will probably have a 3.4 gpa and right at a 159 to 160 lsat. Plan on applying to oklahoma university, tulsa, okc law, texas tech, and probably one more school. I know my numbers are better than the 50th percentile at all the schools im going to apply to, except OU, which i'm right at the 50th percentile. But, I will probably get significant scholarships to tulsa and okc law (possibly full ride at okc), and texas tech. but not to OU. What should I do assuming im accepted to all of these schools.

[nealric]

Whatever you do, don't go into significant debt for any of those schools. But keep in mind that many scholarship offers are intended to be revoked. They set GPA conditions that 2/3 of the scholarship offerees won't meet.

[bigs5068]

Tulsa may offer you a full scholarship I had slightly lower numbers and was offered nearly full tuition, but as Nealric said many of these scholarship offers are revoked after the first year for GPA requirements. Tulsa required you to maintain a 3.0 GPA, which is a GPA that anyone getting a scholarship to an ABA school got with minimal effort. However, law school is a whole different game everybody at an ABA school is smart, hard working, etc and at most schools only 35% of the class can have a 3.0 at the end of first year, which creates a 65% chance of losing your scholarship.

In regards to the schools I don't think any are impressive outside of Oklahoma or Texas. If you want to be in Oklahoma I would pay full price there, because Oklahoma probably does quite well in Oklahoma it is the best school in the state. If your not sure were you want to end up Tulsa on a full ride might be the best option although there is a strong chance you will only get the first year free. I visited Tulsa law school and was quite impressed with the facilities etc, but the town wasn't for me.

[prelaw12]

Well the full ride at OCU law mandates that you stay in the top one third of the class. I know this is probably a common attitude but it can't be that hard to stay in the top third of the class assuming I will be in an entering class in which the average person only received a 3.1 ugpa. That does reveal a little bit about a person's effort in undergrad. Not saying that's a bad GPA but you know what I mean. Also, my soon to be wife has a good job in OKC. I don't want her to have to quit that job because she is making pretty good money, and if I went to Tulsa I we would have to move. She could keep her job if I decided on OCU or OU. In weighing Tulsa vs OCU, If I got a full ride to Tulsa I would surely get a full ride to OCU. Considering Tulsa's average ugpa and lsat is higher, would it be inaccurate to say that it would be harder to remain in the top 3rd of the class at Tulsa than at OCU? If so, and if both offer a full ride, it would be thoroughly retarded to attend Tulsa as it would be easier to lose the scholarship there. This leaves me with OU or OCU. Just have to decide if I want to be 80,000 bucks in debt with a JD from a decent school, or possibly no debt from a school with a poor reputation.

[bigs5068]

What you just said is how law schools get you. Finishing in the top 1/3 of the class difficult and 66% of first year student's don't. What happened in undergrad is completely irrelevant and it is possible someone got a 3.1 in molecular biology, which would be a lot different than a 3.1 in religious studies. They may have gotten a 3.1 from a very difficult school and someone else might have received a 3.1 from a school that hands A's out. Even if none of those are true law school is nothing like undergrad. You have one final for each class nothing else matters except for three hours and how you prepare for one test. I never had an undergrad class where it was just one final graded anonymously. That is what law school is and there is no way to predict how you well do based on LSAT/GPA. There were people in my first year that said they passed up Berkeley for the full scholarship convinced they would finish in the top 10% and neither kept their scholarship after the end of first year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/business/law-school-grants.html?pagewanted=all this article does a good of explaining it. I kept mine, but I knew there was a good chance I would lose it. Don't go in with an attitude of it can't be that hard to be in the top 1/3 of the class it is. 95-99% of people at any ABA school are smart, hard working, ambitious people convinced they will be in the top of their class. However, 90% of these people won't be in the top 10% 80% won't be in the top 20% so and so on. So be very, very, very cautious about the merit scholarship offers and be sure you would want to be at that school even if the scholarship was taken away.

The most important thing besides the scholarship is location. People get so caught up in the "rankings", but they are an absolute joke and make no sense. As you can read in that article schools are obsessed with satisfying a for-profit magazine that in 1987 decided to rank law schools with no real criteria. Everybody buys into it, but it makes no sense. Schools drop 30 spots any given year and since there formula makes no sense there are 11 way ties the current 11 way tie for 84th place is my favorite.

This chart does a decent job of showing how much a school can change in over two years. http://www.top-law-schools.com/rankings.html

You can see if you were a first year at University of Missouri in 2009 you were attending the 65th best school now you would be at a school that is no longer in the top 100.

If you were a first year at Villanova in 2009 you attended the 61st best school now it is in the 11 way tie for 84th place so it might be 84th or 95th since it is an 11 way tie not it is somewhere between that.

OU has consistently stayed in the 70's, but realistically nobody is that impressed by 70th best in anything. I really think if you don't go to a T14 school (ELITE SCHOOL) i.e. Harvard, Yale, Stanford.  get out with as little debt as possible.

With that said University of Oklahoma offers in-state tuition and only costs 16,000 per year. http://www.lsac.org/LSACResources/Publications/2011OG/aba6879.pdf

Tulsa is 28,000 http://www.lsac.org/LSACResources/Publications/2011OG/aba6883.pdf
OKC is 31,000 per year http://www.lsac.org/LSACResources/Publications/2011OG/aba6543.pdf

To be realistic you will likely lose the scholarship at Tulsa or OKC the first year nothing against you, but as I said above the numbers are against you there is a 33% chance you will be in the top 1/3 of the class and a 66% chance you will lose the scholarship and then pay 56,000 in tuition or 62,000 for the final two years.

OKC you will pay 48,000 total. As a sidenote Tulsa has been jacking their tuition up like crazy when I was accepted it was 21,000 per year now it is 28,000 per year. All the private schools go up about two grand every year so even with the scholarship it won't remain a full scholarship, because private schools raise their tuition at an absurd rate. Oklahoma and other schools taht offer in-state tuition don't have price hikes that are as high. 

With all that said Oklahoma seems to offer the best of everything, but if your soon to be wife has a great job in OKC then maybe you should stay there. In the end law school teaches you the same thing literally from Harvard to Cooley the first year curriculum is basically identical. Contracts, Torts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, Legal Writing.

Anyways, there are  lot of factors to consider, but I just wanted to show some numbers and let you know about how the merit scholarships work.

[prelaw12]

Thanks for the input. I am taking all of that into consideration!!!