I need a rough estimate of the COA an Ohio resident aiming for a law degree might look at over 7 years.
Assume a GPA above 3.5, but not perfect, some APs, standardised test scores in the 80th percentile. Assume the best in state publics the student might get into. Assume that family is full pay for instate public.
I’m thinking that OSU is probably out. Would this kid maybe end up at Akron, Bowling Green, Miami, Kent State, OU? With or without a scholarship? You don’t have to chance them, just off the top of your head, so I can make a reasonable guesstimate at the cost over four years.
And for law school - clearly a hard working kid, but not the best test taker. Looking into your crystal balls, again, probably not OSU, maybe Akron, Cincinnati, Toledo? Probably no scholarships?
Again, just think of a reasonable trajectory you’d expect for this student.
I’d step back a minute and ask why the interest in law? Assuming your kid is going to go to college whether or not he goes to law school, then we are just talking about the cost of law school both in direct costs (tuition, room, board, expenses) and the opportunity cost of 3 years out of the workforce. Of course if college is in question, then you should look at the cost/return of likely colleges, but I would look at each separately. You can look up the cost of attendance at the schools you listed to get a ballpark estimate for both college and law school.
Does your kid have an interest in advocacy? Advocacy is not limited to social matters and can include private business related matters. Or is this interest driven by perception of having a solid good salaried professional career? If the latter, realize that below a certain level of law school, you need to be graduating at the top of the class to ensure even a good local/regional job. Lot’s of horror stories of students graduating with huge debt out of law school and having limited employment prospects.
You mention that test taking is an issue. The LSAT is incredibly important in law school admissions and merit scholarships. After that, there is the mother of all test, the bar exam. Is law playing to your kid’s strengths is a question that you have to consider.
IF the goal is to work for Big Law, you probably need to go to a T14 Law School or finish near the top of your class (Law review/Journal) at a second tier school.
What IS the goal? If this student wants to practice law in Ohio and not at a “big law” firm, that is different than if they want to practice law in NYC or inside the beltway in DC.
And before the answer becomes “practice law in Ohio and not at a big firm”, make sure somebody takes a look at what lawyers do and don’t do in small firms, in Ohio, TODAY, not someone’s great uncle who had a thriving Trusts and Estates practice in Cincinnati and retired with millions.
There are lawyers- recent grads- passed the Ohio bar on the first try, from decent but not top tier firms, who are eking out a living with residential real estate closings and some low-end immigration work (i.e. not doing well paid corporate immigration, but helping someone’s Au Pair gain residency status). Take a look at median salaries for new lawyers.
The legal field is compressing rapidly and all those nice, respectable upper middle class livelihoods in the law are disappearing. I’ve got a friend whose son in law is doing hourly Doc Review (not Ohio but in a large midwest city) and he is making a skootch over what he’d make at Costco-- and Costco has better benefits, a career path, etc.
Hate to be a Debbie Downer but every time someone on CC says “you don’t need to go to a top law school if you want to work in a midsized city in the midwest” the angels cry. Every time a kid posts that they want to go to law school but they don’t want Biglaw, they want to be a federal prosecutor, those same angels pull out their hair (becoming an AUSA is MORE competitive than getting a BigLaw job!)
I realise it is very hard to explain what I need, which makes it hard for you all to help.
This is an entirely hypothetical scenario. There is no student in question who is, or will be, going to school in Ohio. If there were, I shouldn’t post about them, because I am aware you are only allowed to post about yourself or your own kid on CC. I hope that as long as we are not talking about what the kid is actually doing (because of course there is a real kid somewhere doing something entirely different somewhere else behind all the fog) this is sufficiently hypothetical to not break this rule.
(If the mods disagree, I’m sorry and please take the thread down.)
What I need is a somewhat reasonable estimate of the COA a student with stats in this ball park (will muddy the waters a little further once I have finished this post) might look at if they were going to public school instate. And I feel there is no point in looking up COA of various instate colleges and law schools unless admission and attendance are somewhat realistic propositions, which is why I’m putting the hypothetical to this community.
ok, I’ll play. A 26 on the ACT is about the 80th percentile, so riskily assume a 160 on the LSAT (similar percentile).
Law school admissions is nearly all about undergrad GPA + LSAT scores, and admissions chances are much higher when both of those two data points are above the LS medians. Merit money generally goes to those with high LSAT scores and/or those with numbers in the top quartile. Since merit money depends a lot on LSAT, time to get better with standardized test taking.
tOSU has a mean 163 LSAT
Case is 160.
Cincy is 158
“And I feel there is no point in looking up COA of various instate colleges and law schools unless admission and attendance are somewhat realistic propositions…”
Disagree. Look up tOSU and 4 others (ranked lower) and you’ll get a good idea of the COA. (Just add inflation.) But note, if one has teh stats for tOSU, that same student might get a merit discount at a lower-ranked school. It’s all about GPA+LSAT (and URM). Someone at median, has a great chance of acceptance, but no merit money without a hook. Someone above both 75th percentiles has a great chance at merit money. But full rides are extremely rare. Law schools are cash cows for Universities, so they don’t like to award big discounts.
And @bluebayou, that is actually very helpful in that I understand that it is a reasonable expectation that a kid like this might expect to get into one of these law schools, but definitely couldn’t expect a scholarship.
@blossom I agree with what you are saying…and especially considering the cost, time and lost wages doing something else if law school is attended.
But I will add, we do need these other types of lawyers you are describing. If someone graduates from Columbia, for example, I doubt they will want to do real estate back in flyover country.
I have no problem with hypotheticals. What I have an issue with is not indicating that it’s a hypothetical. I have more of a problem that the original post was recently edited in such a way that older responses may not make sense anymore. Closing
The rules have been relaxed on that. At our discretion, we’ll allow in certain situations, e.g. an experienced users assisting an FGLI who does not know how much they don’t know and has no family member more familiar. I (wrongly) assumed that was the case here.
