Paying for It Without Grad PLUS

Chapter 4 showed you why the money changed. This chapter is what you do about it.

Grad PLUS is gone for new borrowers after July 1, 2026.¹ Federal loans now cap at $50,000 a year and $200,000 over your whole law degree.² That cap is the budget you’re planning around, so let’s plan around it, step by step.

Step 1: score first

Most applicants skip this move. Before you touch a financial-aid form, build your LSAT score.

Your score is the biggest lever you have on price. Chapter 5 walked through how scholarship money tracks LSAT bands. A higher score opens better schools and bigger checks at the schools you’re already considering. A few points can swing a scholarship offer by tens of thousands of dollars, more than any financial-aid negotiation will move.

The cheapest way to pay for law school is a higher score, built before you apply.

Step 2: do the real-cost math

Once you have offers in hand, run this math for every school on your list, using the real cost rather than the sticker price.

Take the full cost of attendance for all 3 years. That’s tuition plus fees plus a realistic living budget. Subtract whatever scholarship the school offered. That’s your real cost.

Now compare that number to $200,000, the federal lifetime cap.² Whatever’s left over is your gap, the part you’ll cover with private loans, family money, or savings.

Here’s an example, with numbers built to show the math, not a real student. Call her Priya. School A costs $270,000 all-in over 3 years and offered her no scholarship. Gap: $70,000. School B costs $200,000 all-in and offered her a third off. Gap: zero. Same applicant, same degree, very different financial exposure.

Run this for every school before you commit to one. A school that looks more prestigious on paper can still be the worse bet once you see the gap next to it.

Step 3: the private-loan reality

If you have a gap, you’re going to private lenders. Understand how they think, because it’s the opposite of how the federal government used to think.

Before the caps, the federal government would fund any price any school charged, no questions asked.³ Private lenders check. They look at your credit, sometimes a cosigner’s credit, and increasingly the school’s own outcomes: bar passage, employment rates, the kind of jobs graduates actually land.

A private lender’s rate carries information. If 2 lenders quote you 7 to 8 percent and a 3rd quotes you 13 percent, that 3rd lender isn’t being random. Their model is pricing in what happens to graduates of that specific school. A high rate is the market telling you something the admissions brochure won’t.

Look, that doesn’t mean never take a private loan. Sometimes the gap is small, the school’s outcomes are strong, and a private loan at a reasonable rate is a normal part of financing the degree. But when the rate is high across multiple lenders, treat it as a warning about the school. It tells you what people with no emotional stake in your law school dream think about your odds.

Step 4: minimize the debt you take on

A few rules here. Simple ones, worth following before you sign anything.

Pick schools by net price. A $75,000-a-year sticker with a half scholarship can cost less than a $50,000-a-year sticker with no scholarship. Run the real number from Step 2 every time instead of comparing what schools advertise.

Negotiate. Scholarship offers aren’t always final. If a school you’d genuinely attend offers you less than a peer school at a similar rank, go back and ask. Worst case they say no, and you’re right where you started anyway.

Weigh outcomes over prestige, especially at the margin. A school ranked 15 spots lower, with strong local hiring and a full scholarship, can beat a slightly fancier name with a $70,000 gap. The name on the diploma matters less than the job and the monthly payment that follow it. Chapter 17 goes deeper on how to size up a school’s real strength. For now, don’t let rank alone talk you into a bigger gap.

Every dollar of debt you don’t take on is a dollar you never have to repay, at any rate, under any plan.

Step 5: know the repayment side before you borrow

Most applicants think hard about debt when they sign for it and barely at all about paying it back. Do both. Here’s what changed.

The Repayment Assistance Plan, RAP, is the new federal repayment system starting July 1, 2026.⁴ Payments run 1 to 10 percent of your income, depending on how much you earn, over a 30-year term.⁵ If you work in public service, Public Service Loan Forgiveness still exists, but only RAP payments count toward it now. The old 10-year standard plan no longer qualifies for PSLF.⁶

So if your plan is to work for the public defender’s office and let PSLF wipe the loan, that plan still works. It just runs through RAP now instead of whatever income-driven plan you may have heard about from someone who borrowed years ago.

Here’s an example, again with invented numbers to show the shape of the math. Call him Marcus. He borrows $150,000 in federal loans, takes a public-interest job at $65,000 a year, and qualifies for RAP. His payment lands around 5 percent of income, roughly $270 a month. That’s manageable, and it’s also nowhere near enough to pay off $150,000. So under RAP the balance mostly holds steady, and what’s left gets forgiven at year 30.⁷ That forgiven amount counts as taxable income the year it happens. Marcus needs to plan for that tax bill long before it arrives.

Don’t memorize Marcus’s numbers. Run your own version before you borrow. Plug in the salary you actually expect, not the one you’re hoping for. Use the real RAP percentage for that income band. See what the monthly payment looks like against rent, a car payment, and the rest of an actual life. If the number doesn’t work at the salary you’re realistically aiming for, better to find that out before the loan than 3 years into repaying it.

Putting it together

5 steps, in order. Build the score first, because it’s the cheapest discount on the table. Run the real-cost math for every offer against the $200,000 cap so you know your actual gap. Read a high private-loan rate as a warning about the school. Cut debt wherever you can: net price, negotiation, outcomes over prestige. And check the real monthly payment under RAP before you sign anything.

The math here is simple. Most applicants just never run it until the bill arrives. Run it first.

Watch: what losing Grad PLUS means for paying for law school

Trump Cut Grad PLUS Loans | Will Law Schools Finally Lower Tuition?

This chapter is from Anyone Can Beat the Law School Collapse by Steve Schwartz, LSAT Coach and Founder of LSAT Unplugged. I've been coaching the LSAT since 2005.

Published July 28, 2026.