Why the hell would I put myself through this? Once is more than enough for the vast majority of applicants. But, judging from how many times I've put myself through this process, I seem to derive an expensive masochistic pleasure from jumping through these hoops multiple times.
Three rounds of law school applications sent out to twenty school in total. Four (!) LSATs taken. Four deposits sent in. Five law schools visited.
Here's the quick rundown of what's happened in these three years:
My first year of being a 0L (or I could call it my -2L year, I guess), I made the error of waiting to apply to schools until fairly late in the cycle. I got in at a few decent schools (and waitlisted at a bunch of good ones), but lost a chance at getting any money at any of them because they had apparently given all their money away. After thinking about my situation, I decided to wait another year, and approach the process more seriously, getting all my apps out way earlier.
So, my second year of being a 0L (-1L?), I did it right. I applied to the same basic list of schools, except I applied much earlier. Alas, I was waitlisted at many of the places as I was the previous year, but I got some acceptances and money that I hadn't seen before. Nice! I went and visited a couple of these schools, and felt kind of so-so about my options, even though they were pretty solid academically. For the amount of money I was still going to have to go into debt to attend, I wanted to be really really happy with my choice. And so. I decided to retake the LSAT for the fourth time.
What happened with LSATs 1-3? Well, that's a good question. And it warrants a blog post of its own because it's a bit of a story. So, to skip ahead and leave the tale of my long-drawn-out LSAT-angsting for another day, I did well enough on my fourth LSAT to make my prospects at law schools quite a bit better. I applied to schools, got into some really good ones, though I didn't see much money. After looking at my options, I resolved to attend BU at sticker price, and sent in my deposit, waving a sad goodbye to the first chunk of money I would send off into the law school void.
BUT WAIT. I had applied to UMN (a school I had been waitlisted at previously) last-minute, and received an acceptance packet from them just after sending in my check to BU. In disbelief, I read that I had received a very generous scholarship. Sold, Minnesota.
And so I'm following the money all the way to cold, cold Minneapolis, to an awesome law school where I'm going to graduate without much debt. And I'm really happy with this prospect, and am glad I spent all that time in 0L limbo waiting for the right option. At least I hope it's the right option. We'll see.
