<p>I was accepted to Princeton with no financial aid and to WashU with a full tuition scholarship. At WashU, I would major in biomedical engineering, go to law school, then go into patent law. At Princeton, I would likely major in Financial Engineering and work right after graduation in either management consulting or investment banking (no money left for law school). Not sure if giving up law is worth the prestige of Princeton - but everyone I know is pushing me towards Princeton... advice?</p>
<p>Would you rather be a lawyer or investment banker?</p>
<p>Wash U is a very prestigious school in its own right. That is a great school.</p>
<p>It really depends on what you want to do. If you want to be a lawyer, than the full tuition scholarship at Wash U you will greatly helped with those expenses. At Princeton you’ll have nothing.</p>
<p>The added “prestige” is worth nothing. Wash U is a very good school.</p>
<p>I would really highly recommend taking that offer at Wash U. I would love to go there if I got that…</p>
<p>Unless your family can easily take on $60,000 per year, go with Wash U. It’s a very prestigious and academically strong school and you won’t have to worry about debt.</p>
<p>Has anybody you know even heard of WashU? What good reason would you have for going to Princeton? From the info you gave, I can’t think of any. The scholarship saves you what… around 170-180k in total (I don’t know the exact numbers)? No school is worth more than a few thousand over WashU, let alone 170.</p>
<p>Besides, it doesn’t sound like you know 100% what you’d like to do for the rest of your life, so the super-flexible curriculum at WashU may benefit you tremendously.</p>
<p>if your family can afford it, go to Princeton. While not surefire by any means, your path to investment banking or a consulting firm like McKinsey in a desirable city like NYC is much easier. Investment banking can also net bonuses of over 80k after year 2 out of college. At McKinsey, our 3rd year business analysts out of college are collecting 35-40k bonuses coupled with a 90k salary. A lot of people on CC will make the argument that no school is worth thousands more than another. How about the out of state students at schools like Berkeley or Michigan from states like Maryland or Wisconsin? Berkeley and Michigan were worth tens of thousands more per year to these students somehow. Most of my colleagues at work had full rides at state schools but chose to pay for an elite private - definitely a calculated risk.</p>
<p>Law has always been the safe bet - my parents have always wanted me to be a lawyer. But I genuinely love forming persuasive arguments, writing well thought out ideas, and combining that with biotechnology and invention/innovation. But if I go to Princeton, it almost seems like I’m wasting an opportunity to go into a prestigious banking/consulting career (also something I’m very interested in, but have less experience with). My family wouldn’t be able to afford law school after Princeton (though I’m sure they place significantly more sudents in t14 schools than washu does).</p>
<p>You could always go to Princeton, work in consulting for 3 years (and get that 180k back) and then go to a top law school. There’s a reason why Wustl is offering full ride scholarships - you are the exact type of student they can’t win.</p>
<p>Princeton is offering no grant support? you’ll have to come up with the whole nut?</p>
<p>OP, your statement about Princeton placing more students in t14 schools than washu does could have all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with whether or not you will get into a t14 law school no matter which school you attend. </p>
<p>^it’s a proven fact though that Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Stanford students get into t14 law schools at higher acceptance rates with lower GPAs and LSATs compared to other top privates. Look at the pre-law stats from the schools for comparison.</p>
<p>Have you visited both, and do you have a preference (taking “prestige” off the table). If you like WashU better (for whatever reason), it is perfectly OK to go there. If you like Princeton, that is OK too.</p>
<p>But if your family is barely able to do the full-pay thing at Princeton, and you’d be giving up un-paid summer internships or semesters abroad, or something else you’d like to have because of that option, run the numbers here, and see what you think. <a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid;
<p>Prestige is very important to you, it seems. Am I correct in that?</p>
<p>And you also seem to have a good deal of your next 8 years planned out. Does your life usually go the way you plan it? I’m asking you these questions because this is really about where you better will fit. It’s all about you at this point in the decision and where you will do best.</p>
<p>Another thing is, when I tell people that I want to be a lawyer, they always frown and tell me to go into something “fun” like business or to put my “intelligence” to better use. Is the lifestyle and stigma of being a lawyer really that bad?</p>
<p>well, at least since Shakespeare but probably a lot longer, lawyers don’t get the benefit of the doubt. we used to hate surgeons before there was anesthesia and antiseptics, but I don’t see lawyers recovering anytime soon from their status in the public eye as people who can make the weaker argument seem stronger. More importantly, right now there is a glut of lawyers and no hope of change in that situation in the foreseeable future. As each school year brings tens of thousands more lawyers onto the scene, the situation certainly doesn’t get better. It also appears that the dream of acquiring partner status is fading for most lawyers, as are the outrageous salaries of the nineties and early 2000s. You can hope that a law degree from a prestigious law school will make a difference, but it may not. There are plenty of recent ivy-grad lawyers walking their dogs each afternoon and wondering how they’re going to get out of school loans so they can buy a house and send kids to college. My advice based on what I know of the legal profession from reading, talking to lawyers, advising students about law school, etc., is that if you’re going to go to law school you’ll be much better off if someone else pays for it. I think it’s clear where I stand on the decision you have to make, but that’s totally irrelevant. It’s all about you, OP, who you are, what you want, and how you respond to hurdles and misfortune. </p>
<p>Law school is not a “safe bet.” It hasn’t been a safe bet since the recession began in 2008-2009. The law market is glutted, with far more lawyers than it can accommodate. You have to go to a top 14 law school to be considered for those great high-paying jobs that everyone seems to think lawyers have, and getting into these law schools require very high GPAs and very high LSAT scores. Everyone thinks they’re going to get a 3.5+ when they first start college, but obviously, not everyone does.</p>
<p>Besides, there are MANY fields that need skills like forming persuasive arguments, writing well-thought out ideas, and innovating in biotechnology. For one example, biomedical/biotechnical scientists do this all the time when they write applications for grants to support scientific research and write publications presenting the results of their research. People who work in biomedical/biotechnical marketing also have to be persuasive and write well-thought out ideas. If you work in R&D in a tech firm you will probably have to do this as well. I could go on, but the vast majority of jobs in biotech will very much like someone who loves, and is good at, forming persuasive arguments and thinking up great ideas.</p>
<p>While prestige is very important in making it to a prestigious banking or consulting career - number one, you’re not even sure you want to do that, and number two, the perceived lower prestige at Wash U isn’t enough to keep you off the Street if you want to go there. Olin (at Wash U) reports that the median base salary for graduates of their BBA program was $62,500 and 98% of students had a job within 90 days of graduation. 32% of Olin BBA graduates whent into financial services and another 16% went into financial services. And Olin students were hired at places like Accenture, American Express, AT Kearney, Goldman Sachs, Novartis, Wells Fargo, Experian, Ernst & Young, Booz Allen Hamilton, Bain, Blackstone, Deloitte (both accounting and consulting), Microsoft, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Although you may not be an Olin student if you go to Wash U, that means those firms are on campus recruiting. You’ll see a similar list on the Wash U engineering website.</p>
<p>Law has always been the safe bet - my parents have always wanted me to be a lawyer. But I genuinely love forming persuasive arguments, writing well thought out ideas, and combining that with biotechnology and invention/innovation. But if I go to Princeton, it almost seems like I’m wasting an opportunity to go into a prestigious banking/consulting career (also something I’m very interested in, but have less experience with). My family wouldn’t be able to afford law school after Princeton (though I’m sure they place significantly more sudents in t14 schools than washu does).</p>
<p>Wash U is literally in the top 15 undergraduate institutions in the entire country. Even with the yearly shuffle of positions it’s solidly in the top 20. A debt-free education there is a special privilege and I definitely don’t think you should turn it down for Princeton.</p>
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<p>No, it’s not. If those statistics even exist, it doesn’t mean that those schools cause higher acceptance rates to top law schools. Their lower-scoring students may be more likely to apply to top 14 law schools, or they may be more likely to want to be lawyers from the get-go.</p>
<p>^those statistics do exist. Do some research in previous threads. Or search for yale prelaw applicants or Stanford prelaw applicants. You may want to argue causation versus correlation…yet if you were to actually examine the data instead of making baseless denials, you’d see HYPS pre-law applicants systematically get in at higher rates with lower scores and GPAs despite an applicant pool that is less qualified than ones at berkeley, along with other “top” schools.</p>
<p>A Princeton degree is a not a sure ticket to a top bulge bracket firm. Though they may have sent more grads to IB than WashU does, there is no guarantee that they can place all their grads to IB. In fact, I would expect that a number of their grads don’t really make it at all, even at the interview stage. And, whilst that is true, a number of WashU grads do end up getting a job as IBiers. If you’ll do really well at WashU, there’s a high possibility that you’ll get the job that you want. </p>
<p>Take the full-ride from WashU. It is a very good school, and not that far behind Princeton in terms of respect amongst employers. </p>
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<p>May we please see those stats? They need to show acceptance *rates<a href=“admissions%20divided%20by%20applications”>/i</a>, for each combination of LSAT and GPA, across many “top privates”, to be meaningful. </p>
<p>It also would be good to see some hiring rates for major investment banks at Princeton. For the ~$160K premium you’d pay to attend Princeton, what are the odds you’ll get what you want? </p>
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<p>Moreover, biomedical engineering seems to be one of its particular strengths (judging from the US News and NRC rankings.) </p>
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This is a good question.</p>