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June 28, 2005

Thanks GW Class of 2005!

This just in from the GW law school student body president:

This year was the first time a graduating class of our law school has done an organized gift from the law school graduates. The Class of 2005 selected its donation to go to the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) to benefit graduates going into public interest jobs.

The 2005 Class Gift had 52% of the class make a donation, raised over $10,000, and had an alumni donor match the gift 4 to 1 because the class reached 50% participation. In addition, this year's Graduation Speaker, Senator Harry Reid, donated $3,000 to the gift. In total, this year's class provided $56,250 to directly provide assistance for the LRAP program.

Color me impressed! I'm hoping to make GW pay for most of my student loans through this LRAP dealio, so thanks to everyone who donated—and especially to that alum for the 4-1 match! You people rock!

Just because I'm curious, does anyone have any anecdotes about other schools doing things like this?

Posted June 28, 2005 06:21 AM | law school


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Wow - that's impressive!

BU's graduating class raised money for the same purpose, although I don't know how much they ultimately collected.

Posted by: Cathy at June 28, 2005 09:26 AM

LRAP is an "alternate donation" for the 3L class gift each year at Ohio State. I have no idea how much they raised this past year, though.

Posted by: mediocre law student [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 28, 2005 10:38 AM

I know that's what our Class gift was as well but there was no matching and as a result the donations were few and far between.

Posted by: Beanie at June 28, 2005 10:59 AM

You fail to realize that we(GW) has one of the worst Loan Repayment Programs in the country. It's pretty pathetic and 50K does very little to help it get better. Yes, 50K is impressive from graduates, but it was really only 10K and the donor gave 40K. A good loan repayment program takes a lot more than 50K.

Posted by: Reckless Murder at June 29, 2005 12:55 AM

Reckless: This is true, that the LRAP blows, sort of. I mean, it could be better, but from my understanding, it's not much better than worthless. My understanding is that its goal is to get you to a pre-tax gross income of $36k/year. That means if you make $40k, and your loan payments are $10k, it will pay $6k of your loans so that your take-home (pretax) will still be $36k. I haven't looked at it in a while, but that's what it looked like the last time I checked. I should get more details, eh? My point is, I can live just fine on $36k/year. I've lived on arouund $16-20k/year for many years now. It's not living like a king, but it's not bad.

Oh, and you're also right that a good LRAP requires more than $50k in its resource pool, but I'm pretty sure the LRAP isn't relying on this for its sole source of funding. I also agree that, in a sense, $10k is pretty pathetic from the graduating class, but the matching funds rocked and it seems like we should encourage this kind of thing wherever possible even if we do wish the numbers were larger.

Are you planning on using the LRAP? Are you speaking from disappointment in learning that it won't work as well as you'd hoped? Whassup?

Posted by: ambimb at June 29, 2005 06:45 AM

I'm not trying to degrade the matching funds. I think whoever matched the funds 4-1 did a great job and knows that it is important to give law students the option to do that. I do think it is possible to live off $36K pre-tax. But I think it really goes to the whole alumni apathy sense I get from our school. I think there are some true alumni donors at our school that save the rest of the alumni, but considering how many students a year GW Law graduates (3rd/4th biggest law school?) and it being in the top 25, it should have a comparatively large number of alumni donors. But for all the bragging our school does about who our alumni are, we don't hear, nor is it emphasized about any donors. All we know about are the buildings and that's only because it's the way we know what classroom to go to or which elevator is the slowest. Other than that, what really do we have? It's all the same 4 guys on buildings and classrooms and libraries and moot court rooms. I could be wrong and I'm sure there are plenty of alumni out there that donate a lot of money and are carrying the burden. I could even be wrong and every alumni donates money, but I have a feeling I'm not wrong. But anyways, about your last question; as you can guess from my blog, I'm a raging Republican with extreme indifference to human suffering. Since Bush hasn't called me to find out my interest as the future Chief Justice, I'm going to try my hand at FIP and see that route for a little bit and pay off my loans the old fashioned way. But if I do get one of those Firm jobs out of school, you can hold me to my calling out alumni to donate to GW. If I'm going to criticize, I better put my money where my mouth is right?

Posted by: Reckless Murder at June 29, 2005 11:52 PM

I have the same impression about the lack of support from alumni. After working two years on the EJF auction, I can tell you we get almost nothing from them. This is one of the reasons I believe GW has long been something of a degree-factory. People don't hate it, but they don't love it; it doesn't make an impression on students such that they care about the school and want to see it succeed. Or maybe not. Maybe GW alums are just selfish bastards or make no money. You think? But there's also a possible problem with the way the school manages its alumni outreach. I'm thinking there could be a *lot* of improvement in that area, but what do I know?

Posted by: ambimb at June 30, 2005 07:46 AM

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