Today I received a large white envelope from Temple University Beasley School of Law. I was encouraged by the size of the envelope since the “small, white, angry” envelope that had come earlier in the the week from George Mason had been just that … “small”.
Sure enough, it was a very nice acceptance letter and packet of information for accepted students. However, there was no mention of scholarship dollars. This is hardly surprising given the lack of budget for part time scholarships I had talked about in my “Part-Time … Full Tuition” post, but it was still disappointing. I will give them a call on Monday to see if this is negotiable, but as I have mentioned before, part-time students have little or no leverage with schools.
I plan on being in Philadelphia in a few weeks and I will make time to swing by the Temple University campus to get a feel for the neighborhood. The safety of the campus and the immediate neighborhood are of particular interest to me since I will not be living on campus and will be attending evening classes. I need to be sure that I would feel comfortable leaving class or the law library at 10:00 PM at night and taking the subway.
You know … reading back over my Thanksgiving post, I had called Temple my second choice, so I should be ecstatic that my second choice has accepted me. But I find that I can muster little enthusiasm for borrowing over $100,000 for a degree from a Tier 2 school (and pay over $1,000 a month for an apartment while there) when I can go to a T3 with no debt and live quite comfortably on $500 to $700 a month while there and feel safer while doing so. As I continue to reconcile myself to my George Mason rejection, I will probably revisit this line of thought.
I would never have believed this before I began, but even the selection process is an anvil on which law school applicants are hammered and forged. I have decided that the key is to try and embrace the process and learn from everything, even the disappointments … no … especially the disappointments.
As I share my musings with you over the next few weeks as other decisions come in, I may flip-flop repeatedly about which acceptance I am favoring and why. And I will try to share those with you so that others who are experiencing the same thing will not feel that they are alone. In the meantime it would be very rude of me not to say “Thank you very much Temple! It is an honor to be accepted to your fine school! I do not know where I will end up, but if I do end up at Temple, I do not doubt for a moment that I will be proud of my school!”
Monachus Lex … Out
