<p>I was in the exact same situation as you and I chose Chicago. I don't regret my decision for one minute. I have about half a dozen friends in the Michigan honors program and to me it sounds like a joke. I really feel like I've gotten a lot more out of my time here at Chicago than they have at Michigan, academically and otherwise.</p>
<p>And don't worry about your GPA. Any law school worth its salt knows what it means to have a degree from Chicago.</p>
<p>For what it's worth, my family is not rich. I had to take out tons of loans and work my ass off while I was here at Chicago. It was still worth it.</p>
<p>Diocletian: Can you elaborate "Michigan honors program sounds like a joke". Please share specific examples. It is importnat to me, and I will appreciate your candid feedback. Otherwise, it sounds like you are supporting Chicago, because you are there.</p>
<p>Law schools acceptance process is extremely numbers-driven. Provided you get a really good LSAT (let us say 170-173), your GPA will be extremely important. Adjustments that are made by each law school (if any) to account for the hard school (e.g. UChicago) or hard major (e.g. engineering) are not that big (in the range of 0.1 to 0.2 generally). So, a person with 3.9-4.0 GPA from a decent state school (not even a caliber of UMich) will have better chances to be admitted to a top law school then UChicago graduate with 3.3 or even 3.5 GPA.</p>
<p>Well, alright, I have a friend in the Honors program studying philosophy at Michigan. One night I was discussing a paper I was writing for some class of mine, European Civ I think, and he remarked casually to me that he had a paper, too, and that this was his first time ever spending more than a a few hours writing his first draft. He said something silly like, "Yeah, this is the first time I'll ever have to go to the library and actually think about what I'm going to write." I was totally flabergasted that as a third-year honors student at Michigan getting good grades he could have cruised by doing so little work.</p>
<p>Of course, those defenders of Michigan will say this is all hearsay, and it's true. I don't know how indicative this is of Michigan or not, and I realize most of the education you get is what you put into it. Still, there's something to be said for the sort of academic environment such "grad inflation" causes. I've had to work for my good grades every second of every day since my first year here. It was never a cakewalk, and it's not a cakewalk for anybody I know here.</p>
<p>The environment at Michigan is just so totally different. At Chicago you're surrounded by people who want to learn, for the most part. I'm sure there are places and social circles at Michigan where that's common, but it really permeates everything here at Chicago -- the life of the mind, and all that. My friends' stories have only reinforced that view. Since that's exactly what I was looking for, coming from a high school where I was mocked for studying for the BC Calc test on my own (we had no AP math program), I jumped at the chance to come to Chicago, even though I'm now, as a fourth year, in debt to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. It was worth every cent.</p>