Law Students: Read the Fine Print.

In an attempt to lure better students and boost rankings that are largely based on GPA and LSAT scores, law schools are increasingly offering merit based scholarships...but there are strings attached.  To retain the scholarship, students must often maintain a GPA (3.0 or 3.25).  Unfortunately, many law schools aren't being up front about this stipulation and grading policies (like distributing grades on a fixed curve, which can make an easy-sounding 3.0 difficult to achieve)...

Many law students have found themselves owing their law schools money in later semester after not reading the scholarship's fine print.  Sounds like some lawyer tricks to me...

For more, check out this post.

Pondering Ph.D.?

From Inside Higher Ed, in support of getting a PhD...pretty funny article:

To get at the smugness factor we have to reframe the income question. It is true, as the Economist clucks, that people who earn doctorates rarely see their earnings potential increase enough to offset the cost of the degree. But no research has as yet adjusted the data on non-doctorate earnings to account for the amount of income people without doctorates ("nondocs") devote to generating the same level of self-satisfaction that the Ph.D.-holder comes by as a matter of course. She who holds a doctorate might look with envy upon her nondoc neighbor with the car that has working power windows. After all, the doctorate’s car has plastic sheeting duct-taped to the door frame (thanks, $24,000-per-year postdoc!). But that nondoc neighbor has spent some incomprehensible sum — perhaps as much as $20,000 — to buy a car in search of self-approbation. His vehicle is an artificial attempt to show he deserves a full life. So is his seasonally appropriate coat and balanced diet.