George Washington (Sticker) v. Michigan State (Full Ride) Forum

(Rankings, Profiles, Tuition, Student Life, . . . )
Eco

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Re: George Washington (Sticker) v. Michigan State (Full Ride)

Post by Eco » Thu Aug 04, 2011 8:27 pm

No, I'm a 2L. And I have pretty good grades, I'm on a journal, I did great internships in the summer. But there is still an unbelievable cloud of uncertainty this OCI, and regional results came out and a lot of people got screwed on those already. It's not pretty. GW Law is a great school but the fact is it accepts too many students and those under the top 35% have very little if any career prospects at all. Sure, the school has access to lots of great government internships. But they're not paid.

Go to GW if you really, really want to be in a big city etc...- D.C. is super fun, night life is cool, etc... But don't go if you're at all worried about being in debt. Because all it takes is a little bad luck, a professor you don't click with, something like that, and one or two Bs and your chances of making real money are over.

midwestls

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Re: George Washington (Sticker) v. Michigan State (Full Ride)

Post by midwestls » Thu Aug 04, 2011 10:33 pm

As a guy who took the full ride over the ranking and had it work out nicely (i.e. I was fortunate enough to get a good job doing what I hoped to do), I can tell you is that few things beat having no student loan debt.

You almost can't fully get your head around how crippling the debt can be until you're out and paying it. I know partners and at least one judge who are 15 years into their careers, still paying off student loan debt, and hating it.

Having no debt or low debt is an amazing advantage life-wise and gives you a lot of margin for error on the career front.

Conventional wisdom on law student-oriented message boards drastically overrate law school rankings and understate debt load, especially once you're outside the t14-18. Your career prospects will certainly be better at GW. They will not be better enough to justify taking on 150K or more of debt.

As an aside, Michigan State is on a strong upward trajectory. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it was t50 within the next 3-4 years, and continue rising from there. So your degree could look even better 10 years from now than it does when you graduate.

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thexfactor

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Re: George Washington (Sticker) v. Michigan State (Full Ride)

Post by thexfactor » Sun Aug 28, 2011 12:06 am

hard decision. Id take GWU or dont go.

You need top 10% or so at MSU to have a chance at detroit biglaw. For anything better than that you likely need to be in t he top 5% or so.

if you are not in the top 10% then what? the "50k" jobs everyone talks about are pretty hard to get. You are investing 3 years of your time.

I would choose GW. Top 1/3 will have a good chance at biglaw. You are paying for 20-25% extra chance of getting biglaw.

Plus the quality of biglaw is a lot better in GWU than MSU.

Much more fun to live in DC vs East Lansing

You are investing 3 years of your time. Time=money. IBR limits your payments to 25 or 20 years or something anyways. At least at GW a decent chunk of the student body gets biglaw. Barely 5% at MSU get biglaw. I think the payout is bad either way, but if you had to hold a gun to my head and made me choose, i would choose GW.

In terms of transferring. Top 1/3 at MSU will get you into GW, Emory,UIUC but prob no job from OCI. Top 1/3 at GW will get you ucla/usc/georgetown and give you a much better chance at a biglaw job.

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