Waiting game

I received a letter from Cornell Law School yesterday. The gist was, “You’re an interesting candidate. We have waved our application fee and our February 1st deadline. Apply.”

And so I applied.

This was a stupid idea for three reasons:

1) I’ve already been accepted by dream school (University of Minnesota).

2) Cornell isn’t going to review my application before I have to pay my deposit for UMN.

3) Although Cornell “waved” the application deadline, my LSAT scores aren’t competitive enough for scholarships so late in the applicant pool.

I have not paid my deposit at UMN because I am still figuring out how to afford it.

I have received some scholarship from UMN, but it might be helpful to say, “Hey, I’ve been awarded so-and-so-much from (comparable law school)…, is there any way I can qualify for more money here? Throw me some change?”

The problem is that the law schools that have given me full tuition scholarships (Drake, Stetson, etc.), are not top tier schools, and the other schools that have given sizable scholarships (Yeshiva, Temple, DePaul, etc.) are still not in UMN’s league.

I’m still waiting to hear from Duke, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame.

I suspect that waiting for more money from UMN is a bad idea.

Déjà vu. I went through this situation four years ago: I passed up Macalester and Georgetown for the University of Miami (because of scholarship) and I’ve regretted that decision for four years.

I’m not going to bypass my opportunity to go to UMN because of a few thousand dollars.

It’s too important for that.