<p>Looking for input from the experts here! I've read so much on various boards about the importance of attending the highest-ranked law school you get into, the career-long benefits of going to a T14 school, the difficulty of finding a job without a T14 degree, etc. What about when the choice is between a T10 school with a partial scholarship, and a full tuition scholarship with living stipend at a T20 school?</p>
<p>The student in question doesn't want a career in biglaw, academia, the federal judiciary, etc. At the moment she sees her future in education or family law, or some other area of public interest law. Would you say that the advantages of graduating without debt balance out any hiring preferences for the higher-ranked schools? Especially considering that her salary ambitions are pretty modest? She is very anxious about the idea of taking on debt (was able to get through undergrad without doing so). Many thanks for any opinions or suggestions.</p>
<p>Unfortunately you’d need a lot more information to go on here. If you’re talking about Georgetown vs. UCLA for example, you’d take UCLA. If you’re talking about Yale versus school #20, then you have a dilemma on your hands.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it also depends on your family’s financial situation, although I know it’s unreasonable to expect you to talk about stuff like that on a message board.</p>
<p>Thanks for responding, mike! It’s actually Vanderbilt vs. UVA. The student is very anxious about borrowing - it looks as if she’d be in debt maybe $70K if she took the 1/2 tuition scholarship. Can anyone comment on hiring prospects for a grad who goes to a school like Vandy vs. UVA, which isn’t ranked all that much higher (is it 9th?) but is still in that much-vaunted T14?</p>
<p>I think the key is that she is not interested in biglaw, academia, or federal judiciary. those are the areas where a T14 would matter. A T20 with full tuition covered would be my choice. My only other comment is that often law hiring below the T14 is regional. So I would consider where she plans to practice.</p>
<p>1.) I do want to urge you to remember that interests change very considerably. Biglaw has a lot of downsides – a LOT – but many of my classmates overestimated those downsides as 1Ls. As they learned more, they became less disinterested. So in that sense, it might be nice to pick a school that preserves options.</p>
<p>2.) I also want to urge you to remember that some schools have debt-repayment programs available for certain types of public interest careers. I’m not familiar with UVa’s. These programs have some severe downsides as well, but can be useful in some situations.</p>
<p>(*This clerkship data’s a little older. Also, the “NLJ 250” is the measure used here for “big firms.” That might be a little overinclusive, but it’s the relative proportion we’re discussing anyway.)</p>
<p>4.) In general, it’s not true that prestige doesn’t matter outside of biglaw, academia, or federal judiciary. It matters in many other contexts – in fact, it seems to matter MORE in some fields of public interest law than it does in biglaw and federal judiciary. Take a look at Amnesty International, or Human Rights Watch, or any of the numerous public interest firms that write amicus briefs and whatnot.</p>
<p>5.) I would also suggest that if your daughter is getting a 50% scholarship at UVa, she might well be gaining higher-up admissions as well. If, hypothetically, she gets into Columbia (full-pay), I might suggest you consider that as well. Higher-up schools often have less-restricted debt-repayment programs for public interest law as well.</p>
<p>Frazzled- you are estimating the difference of attending UVA vs. Vanderbilt to be $70,000? If that is the amount you are talking about, I think in the long run UVA will prove to be a much better investment. Vanderbilt may still be considered a "regional"school and I can’t imagine it plays as well in NY as UVA does. As BDM gave some stats from the 2010 “Go-to -Schools”, the 2011 list shows UVA as # 6 with a 46.70 placement in BigLaw vs Vanderbilt as # 18 at 29.81. There is also some discussion on TLS that smaller markets, like the southeast may have a tougher time to recover with this economic slowdown.<br>
And though the student (your daughter?) is not interested in BigLaw, she will still be vying for summer legal positions to gain experience and become more competitive.<br>
My d just went through the process to obtain summer employment. And I feel she had a better response coming from her T-14 school </p>
<p>all i can say is my d also had to make a choice last year between full ride at T 50 school (Cordoza) vs. a T14 education with no aid. In the end, she went the T-14 route and is happy with the decision.<br>
IMO- I think your kid will have many more opportunities anywhere in the country with a degree from UVA rather than Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>That seems like a pretty conservative estimate for UVa, unless she’s a VA resident and is going to be living at home. </p>
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<p>If they’re doing federal appellate litigation, maybe. But by and large, small firms and public interest orgs don’t care anywhere near as much about prestige as biglaw and federal judges (it’s probably not possible to care MORE than they do, as they’re obsessed with it). If you’re looking to do family law, whatever advantage you get from going to Virginia over Vandy is probably not even close to being worth $70K+.</p>
<p>Vandy took a huge hit. Northwestern had a big drop as well. Cornell had a meteoric rise to #1 that no one is quite sure where it came from. These things vary from year to year though. There are so many factors that go into it.</p>
<p>UVA has a pretty good LRAP. Someone did a rough ranking of loan repayment programs and UVA was somewhere around 5th best. (NW’s is best FYI) </p>
<p>UVA is ranked 10th in the 2010 US News rankings, but generally Michigan/UVA/UPenn are considered peer schools. Many expect UVA to rise in this year’s ranking. UVA actually has had better NLJ 250 hiring/clerkship numbers than NYU the past two years and its median GPA/LSAT were NYU 3.72 171 UVA 3.85 170</p>
<p>I agree with the common sentiment that UVA has more national appeal than Vandy. </p>
<p>Full tuition + stipened is a heck of a deal though. I doubt anyone could give you a concrete answer as to how much a UVA JD would help compared to Vandy in terms of what she wants to do for a career. Probably not much. If she wants to settle down in the South, I would probably go with Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>Many people say they don’t want to go into big-law, but once they get to school, a good portion change their mind. </p>
<p>Just curious, do you know her LSAT and GPA? </p>
<p>I will be at UVA next year, but I tried to be as objective as possible</p>
<p>Well, I would suggest that a lot of them are lying; probably half of all biglaw associates wrote a PS about how they wanted to save the world as a public interest lawyer. It’s uncouth to admit that you went to law school to make money. And some of the ones who genuinely change their mind do so because they’re confronted with a huge amount of debt, which wouldn’t be an issue here.</p>
<p>Perhaps. I don’t think many are lying, they are just a little naive. They don’t really understand what they are getting themselves into by going to law school X. You will see plenty of threads on TLS with students who vehemently swear they do not want to go into big law. That is not an admissions essay and they are anonymous. See for yourself.</p>
<p>Do I think the student in question genuinely wants to do something “good for society?” Of course. Most of us do. But reality will set in one day and big law will be an attractive option if it is in reach. It doesn’t mean she’s lying now.</p>
<p>Exactly what I meant by saying some of these students are naive and the “reality.” They figure public interest groups will be throwing themselves at them to take their services. Not the case.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your input, and for raising several points that hadn’t occurred to me. There must be a huge number of law students who change their original career plans to biglaw because everyone I’ve asked about this tells me she should keep that door open. It’s fascinating that law school admissions are so quantifiable compared to undergrad! Many thanks for digging up the facts and figures for her to wade through.</p>
<p>She has some savings and will have some parental help with living expenses, though she won’t live at home, so she’s thinking that $70K will cover it. She has a similar offer from a school ranked with UVA, and an admit from a higher-ranked school with no scholarship where she doesn’t think she’d be a good fit. And is still waiting to hear from a few other schools. She likes her ducks in a row and is anxious to know where she’ll be this fall.</p>
<p>A related question - if admissions at a lower-ranked (but still solid at #17) thinks she’s one of their top prospective admits, and higher-ranked schools do not see her that way, how does that bode for performance in law school? I know, of course, that students with top scholarships can flub it and students with no scholarships can be in the top 10 percent once they’re actually enrolled. Is it better to be a big fish in a small pond if the small pond is somewhere a lot of other fish would like to be? (I realize that it’s best to be the biggest fish in the biggest pond but that’s not going to happen.)</p>
<p>I hate to say it, but “fit” might have to be pushed aside a little bit. Which schools are we talking about?</p>
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<p>In general, the scholarships suggest that Vanderbilt thinks she’ll be one of their very best students and UVa thinks she’ll be excellent. Meanwhile, the other school (maybe NYU-ish?) seems to think she’ll be solid but not a standout. These projections have a lot of uncertainty associated with them, though – I’d be hesitant to bank too much on them. </p>
<p>My older brother is 3L at a T10 law school, and he has several classmates who are literally kicking themselves for not having done 2L OCI because they changed their mind and they now wanna do BigLaw. Despite their academic credentials, they are out of the game.</p>
<p>Thanks again, all, for taking the time to respond. I’m going to forward this thread to her and let her sort it out - very glad not to have to make this decision myself. Thanks, mike, for the reminder that scholarship offers don’t necessarily correlate with how well a student might do once enrolled. Final grade = grade on one exam - ouch.</p>
<p>I know I shouldn’t be That Mom, but I’d rather be her on the internet than in real life. My d just heard that she’s been accepted at Harvard Law. We’re all floored, especially her. She had an interview last week (Harvard being one of the few schools that interviews candidates, though not all of them) and told me it had gone terribly because she wound up giving an answer that didn’t match the question. I was even more clueless because somehow I missed her telling me that Harvard had called to interview her and thought it was another school on the list. We never thought Harvard would be part of the equation.</p>
<p>I don’t think she’s even looked at the costs there yet because she figured it was her Impossible Dream school. She’s filed her FAFSA and NeedAccess info (we have, too), but I imagine she’ll wind up with 6-figures in loans if she decides to go. What I wonder is, how do you not? Though I’m sure there are students who forgo debt even for a very big name law school. She’s visiting Vanderbilt and UVA over the next couple of weekends. I don’t know if there are any official visit weekends left for Harvard.</p>
<p>If anyone has advice, I’d be happy to hear it.</p>
<p>For whatever it’s worth, I know that Columbia Law offers several full-tuition scholarships known as the “Hamilton” scholarships, generally offered to students who are also considering Yale and Harvard. Yale and Harvard offer no merit aid whatsoever and most need-based aid is in the form of loans. And of course Columbia is a very high-powered, highly regarded school of its own.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the gossip around that circle of students is that very, very few Hamilton offers get accepted and the vast majority are turned down. I’ve never seen the hard statistics (maybe CLS doesn’t release them?) but in my anecdotal experience that seems correct.</p>
(I realize that it’s best to be the biggest fish in the biggest pond but that’s not going to happen.)</p>