Scholarship applications for Baylor School of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law and Texas Tech University School of Law are now being accepted.

Applications became available last week and must be turned in to the scholarship committee by 5 p.m. on Feb. 26.

Dr. Neal Coates, chair of the Department of Political Science, said these scholarships affect present and future ACU students.

“ACU students right now can know that a number of schools are interested in them,” he said.

Coates said students who graduate from ACU and attend law school at Baylor, Pepperdine or Texas Tech have the opportunity to have their law school bills paid for them.

Coates said while there is competition to get into law school, fewer law school applications are being submitted so there is more opportunity to get into law school.

“We’ve always pushed our students to get into the very best law school that they can and to have several choices – three, four, five choices – and that gives them selections as they think about where God’s going to take them,” he said.

He said ACU students have a good preparation for law school. The percentage of ACU students who get accepted to law school is high and 99 percent of political science students who apply to law school are accepted.

Coates said students who complete the application process will meet with a committee of on-campus lawyers during the afternoon of March 5 in the Jack Pope Fellowship Room in the Hardin Administration Building.

10-15 students are expected to apply to the law schools, based on experience from the past several years.

These scholarship applications are only available once a year and are tied into ACU graduates.

“These aren’t just people trying to get into law school, these are people who have solid LSATs and solid GPAs,” Coates said. “So these are difficult scholarships to acquire from these law schools. It’s a prestigious set of three. We’re one of the very few schools in Texas that has any sort of set up like this, and it’s a testimony to the pre-law advisor, Mel Hailey, and the many years of work that he has done in developing relationships and also listening very carefully to what law schools want in college students.”

Coates said it’s important to Baylor, Pepperdine and Texas Tech that ACU students continue to see them as potential law schools.

“They also know the value of our ACU grads. These are not typical college grads who simply want to go to law school. These are students who are a cut above and who are going to make fine attorneys.”