<p>I think this is a tough decision because you really don’t know what you want to do yet or are really in the position to evaluate post grad options because of age and experience. You must look within yourself and not your parents to decide what you want to do with your career. Taking on a career to please parents isn’t a very good way to go. I also think other people can’t pick your college so try not to be influenced by people who are just going on brand name and not looking deeper at the situation. You will start to see so many possibilities as you go through college. It seems unrealistic to pick when you are 18, you have to allow for exploration. It sounds like full pay at Princeton will be a strain on your family, although they seem to have enough that you don’t get aid. It’s a crazy amount to spend imo, unless the money is long set aside for such purpose and truly won’t be missed. I think Wash U is going to give you more flexibility and possible help with post grad schooling if needed.</p>
<p>Examples of pre-law data. (search through the sites for comparable years). </p>
<p><a href=“Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University”>Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University;
<p><a href=“Pre-Professional Advising | Student Affairs”>Pre-Professional Advising | Student Affairs;
<p><a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/group/SPLS/content/0809lawdata.pdf”>http://www.stanford.edu/group/SPLS/content/0809lawdata.pdf</a></p>
<p>You guys need to do an exhaustive search as the data exists.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think most people (including most lawyers) would most assuredly tell you that this is false. The legal field is most assuredly not a ‘safe bet’ anymore. </p>
<p>That being said, US News recently posted a link showing that 21 law schools were tied for median starting salary in the private sector for their graduates in 2012. ($160,000)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/articles/2014/03/11/infographic-2015-best-law-schools”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/articles/2014/03/11/infographic-2015-best-law-schools</a></p>
<p>This includes all of the T-14 in addition to some other top non T-14 schools which are very well respected in their regions.</p>
<p>I think many people have misconceptions about both the legal and financial fields. These people don’t earn a ton of money because they’re very intelligent. The reason these people earn so much money is because they tend to work a lot of hours (70+/week) in very stressful jobs. IB and BigLaw (the type of legal job which would provide you with the above compensation) are extremely stressful jobs where people work anywhere from 80-100 hours per week. Here’s an excerpt from a recent article on the WSJ:</p>
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</p>
<p><a href=“http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204062704577223623824944472”>http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204062704577223623824944472</a></p>
<p>You’ll likely be able to find similar stuff on Abovethelaw for the legal field.</p>
<p>With regard to your situation, it sounds like your parents have a strong college fund set up for you. Personally, I’d choose WUSTL since it doesn’t sound like you know what you want to do. WUSTL will give you the flexibility to go into the legal field and even leave if you don’t want to (what keeps many lawyers in the legal field is the crushing student loan debt they have to pay off.) But it will also provide you with the flexibility to do other things, like doing a clerkship after law school (if you can get one) which will pay off VERY well in the legal industry. WUSTL isn’t Princeton, but it’s certainly one of the top schools in the country. Turning down a full tuition scholarship from it should only be done after serious consideration.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize Princeton had sent out acceptances yet.</p>
<p>I applied early action, recently got the WashU notification though.</p>
<p>Even if you could show a clear pattern of T14 law schools favoring Stanford applicants over Cornell and JHU applicants (which I’m not sure you can*), it wouldn’t tell you anything about Princeton econ applicants v. WashU biomedical engineering applicants. Remember, we’re talking about a $160K price spread here. So the evidence ought to be persuasive that WashU just won’t get the OP where he’d need to go for a career outcome as good as what he’d get from 4 years at Princeton.</p>
<ul>
<li>It appears that Stanford applicants required, on average, higher LSAT scores to be admitted to Harvard Law School than Cornell or JHU applicants. JHU admits had lower mean GPAs than Stanford admits, too. Although, what we may be seeing is simply that Stanford generates many more applicants to HLS (and that those applicants happen to bring higher average stats to the table). To show a clear admission preference for certain school brands, what you need to compare is not the mean stats of the students who were accepted, but the admission rates of students from different schools with identical GPAs and scores.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>" Remember, we’re talking about a $160K price spread here."</p>
<p>No school is worth that much cost over WUSTL. Unless the family of the OP is pretty affluent, the choice is pretty obvious.</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks law is a safe bet is profoundly ignorant of the legal market. Only about 56% of the class of 2012 acquired full time, long term bar passage required jobs.</p>
<p>I’d also think that when applying to grad/law schools or IBanking jobs, having been a merit scholar who earned a full tuition ride is going to look pretty impressive on your resume. </p>
<p>Recently received acceptances from Harvard, Stanford, Yale so I will be choosing among those. Also WashU did not guarantee me a full tuition scholarship as I had previously thought (Danforth for anyone who’s wondering).</p>
<p>Can you give us (tuition+ R&B) - (grants+scholarships) = ? for each?
What’s your parents’ budget?</p>