Law School Just Got One Step Closer

Okay, wow. I am trying to not freak out with excitement/nervousness/relief. I submitted 8 complete law school applications today! I am submitting two more next week and one probably later once I get the seriously tedious paperwork finished. I am very proud of this accomplishment because my own personal goal was to get my applications in by September, and most of them will be! WOOT WOOT!Here is my final school list by location:

Bay Area (6)

Berkeley

Stanford (still working on paperwork...gerr)

Hastings (done, but I can't submit until next week)

Golden Gate

University of San Francisco

Santa Clara

Los Angeles (2)

UC Los Angeles

University of Southern California

Sacramento Area (2)

Pacific McGeorge

UC Davis (done, but I can't submit until next week)

San Diego (1)

University of San Diego

Yes, for those of you counting, that is eleven schools. ELEVEN! I though five was excessive before I started the application process but two things made it easier and cheaper for me to apply to more schools. First, I applied for a fee waiver from the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) to waive the LSAC fees. They denied me at first but I wrote an appeal and they granted the fee waiver! This qualified me not only for the LSAC fee waiver but for most school's individual application fees (ranging from $50-$100 each!). With that fee waiver there is virtually no price limitation for me. I think the total cost of applying to all eleven schools will only be around $100 total. The second thing that made applying to eleven schools easier than you might imagine, is the LSAC online FlexApp. It is basically a standard application and when you enter your information in one schools application it carries over to all the other applications too. Each school has some of their own questions in the application but most of the forms are already filled in after you have done it once! It made the process so easy!

So now that 8 out of 11 applications are done I feel relieved. I know I still have a lot of work to do, such as general financial aid paper work in December/January and looking into grants/scholarships from each individual school. I think the hardest part of this process is going to be making the tough decisions when the offers from schools come in. For now I am keeping my options and mind open and hoping for a generous scholarship package from a super school. But I probably won't hear anything back from schools until December at the earliest, so I can put that out of my mind for a while and concentrate on enjoying life here in Guyana.