Transcription
Hi, so this video is why I regret going to Chapman University School of Law. So I applied to Chapman University April 9, 2022, and they accepted me April 19, 2022. It was just a simple letter in my email that said, "Congratulations on your admissions."
Then on April 20th, I received the offer through email, which was a scholarship offer of forty-seven thousand dollars per year. And then on April 20th, I received an email telling me that the first seat deposit and the letter that you sign that says, "I accept admissions," was due April 26th. So all that to say, I had less than a week to decide to attend Chapman University. Um, I wish I had had more time to decide because it was a huge mistake.
So if you didn't know, Chapman University, they give conditional scholarships. And basically, a conditional scholarship means that you get the scholarship the first year, and then if you maintain a GPA of 2.9, you get the scholarship for the second year. And if you again have a GPA of 2.9 or above, you get the scholarship for the third year. So Chapman also has an academic policy that puts the curve at 2.8.
Now, if you don't know what a curve is, this goes back to math class and all about medians and modes. And it's basically, so a curve goes like this, right? So this is the middle, which means 50 go on this side, 50 go on this side. This right here is your, this number is your median. So at Chapman, the maximum median is 2.8. That means everyone has to, half the students can fall above a 2.8, and the other half must fall below. The other thing about this curve is that at least 10 percent have to, have to, have to fall between a 0.0 and a 1.9. That means if everyone in your class does amazing and gets an A, 10 are required by the grading policy to get at least a 0.0 to a 1.9. So what does that mean? That means if you have a class of 100, that means 10 percent of that class has to get between a zero and a 1.9. That is a D. And 50 of the class must get lower than a 2.8. And these are mandatory first-year grading distribution curves.
Here's the other thing. At law school, they break you into three sections. And in these sections, these are your classmates. So there's about 50 students in each section, which means about 50 students in each class. So in your class, you will have your grade curve. Are you following?
Now, here's something to consider, and this is just my opinion. But if I have an entering class and I am giving, if I have an entering class of 150 individuals, and I'm giving 110 of them conditional scholarships, where will I put those individuals that receive the conditional scholarships? Well, you could, if you wanted to, distribute them evenly. Or what you could do, if you wanted to, was take the top performing students with the highest conditional scholarships, and you could put them into one section. And what would that do for you? That would mean that 50 of those students could lose their scholarship. Hopefully, what you've learned from my amazing drawing skills is that 50 percent of the students will lose their scholarship. Which means that I know when I'm sending out these acceptance letters, and I'm sending out these conditional scholarships, and I'm stacking, I'm stacking the system to work in my benefit. I know that I am not going to have to honor most of those scholarships when the second year begins. Anyone who does that knowingly is wrong, in my opinion. And anyone who does that, in my opinion, is predatory.
Here's the other issue. Because the curve is so low at 2.8, that prevents you, even if you did really well and you performed half, right in the middle, at the median mark, you still will have a 2.8 GPA. And now ask yourself, when you're submitting to transfer into other colleges and other law schools, have a median of 3.1 or a 3.0. Who will get accepted as a transfer student? Will it be the student who got a 3.0 for the same amount of effort? Or will it be the student at Chapman who got a 2.8? Now, these are comparable students. They both fell right in the middle. But who's going to get accepted as a transfer? Probably the 3.0. Which is why this practice of 2.8 is harmful to students. And it also harms their ability to get jobs because again, you're competing with other schools who have a higher median GPA. But I think, and this is just my opinion, but I think the reason they have such a low median GPA is to knock out conditional scholarship offers and to knock out the chance that you will transfer somewhere else.
So where's the silver lining? The silver lining is that Chapman offers an appeal process. Which means that you can put excuses and paperwork and write an essay with evidence and submit it to Chapman's appeal, and maybe, maybe they'll grant you the ability to keep your scholarship. So that's exactly what I did. And you know what they did? They waited two and a half months until the end of July to tell me that my appeal was denied. Now, this is so random, right? It took you 12 days to accept me as a student when I applied in April. But yet, it takes you over two months to deny my appeal. That's suspicious. Maybe, maybe if I'm working at an office, I want to tell these 60 or 70 students that lost their scholarship that they still have a chance because there's an appeal process, right? You still have a chance. And maybe that'll encourage them not to apply anywhere else. And then after the application for transfer window has closed, that's when I'm gonna send out all my denial emails. I think, in my opinion, that's exactly what they did.
Now, moving forward, if you're a student that got accepted to Chapman University on a conditional scholarship, hopefully this video and my experience helped you see things a little bit more clearer. I had a 161 on the LSAT, and I had a 3.96 GPA. So I was falling somewhere at the top of the entering class for stats. So I thought, this isn't going to be that hard getting above a 2.9. It shouldn't be that hard. You know, I'm already coming in at, like, the top 25 of the entering class. Like, it shouldn't be that hard. But you know what? In writing, I got a 1.5. Um, and civil procedure, I got a 2.2. And, uh, that was it. And, uh, they denied my appeal. And, uh, so just consider the fact that they designed the system for individuals to fail, in my opinion. I don't think it's worth it. They have a sixty-two thousand dollar a year tuition. And when I got my financial aid letter for this coming 2L, they want me to take out a hundred and one thousand dollars. When I finished my undergrad, I had five thousand dollars in student loans. I had paid a lot of them off, um, primarily from joining the military and deploying. That's how I was able to pay off a lot of my student loans. And now I'm faced with going into stream debt over two hundred thousand dollars in debt to finish a degree with no other options. So anyways, don't feel sorry for me. Argentina. Um, yeah, that's just how I feel. I hope this video was helpful to you in some ways. Um, there's a lot of schools that do this that offer conditional scholarships. Um, you know, they do it to get you in the door. They do it because they want your high GPA. They want your high LSAT score. It's all so that they can compete on that ranking of US News top law schools. And, um, so that's all I have to say.