Vandy vs. Belmont for Nashville career Forum

[objctnyrhnr]

Either Vandy or not going is TCR.

Your final subbullet misses the mark entirely. In other words, your intuitions there about the type of correlation you describe are completely wrong...and to the extent that there might be any truth behind them, it certainly is not something that should be banked on in any way shape or form.

There’s something to be said about shooting for PI/govt and choosing a law school at minimal debt for that reason...but Belmont is just too horrible and 80k total for a Vandy degree, on its face, really isn’t a bad outcome.

That all being said, regardless of your options, you should only go to LS if everything in your soul tells you that you want to be a lawyer. Otherwise you’ll have problems down the road. I’m not judging you or making your decision for you or anything. I am just observing that your post sounds like there’s a degree of doubt behind your desire to be a lawyer.

[AdieuCali]

I read your post, so I’m not going to say “Vandy, no question.”
Congratulations on your scholarship and admission to Vandy!
1) you should only go to law school if you want to spend your career as a lawyer. Sinking 3 years and 6 figures plus into something that you’ll do “for a few years” is a bad idea. Not only do you have to consider the expense of law school, but the opportunity cost of doing literally anything else that makes money. If you’re not sure about whether you want to be a lawyer, maybe try taking a gig as a paralegal somewhere for a year. Law school will always be there for you.
2) you’re not fully accounting for cost of attendance. Once you include living expenses, student fees, student loan interest etc. the full COA (including your scholarships) would be ~$120k for Belmont and ~$225k for Vandy. https://www.lstreports.com/compare/vanderbilt/belmont/
3) you should not be seriously considering Belmont - even on a full ride. Basically no Belmont students will get a Biglaw job that allows them to repay the COL loans you’d need to take out. You are likely to be emplo
4) the big fish/little pond is the wrong way of looking at these things. You should always assume you’ll be the median student. Law school grades have a high degree of randomness and students at Belmont will be desperate to get top grades as it will be their only option to get an acceptable legal job. Meanwhile the median student at Vandy gets a biglaw job (though that may change in a down economy)
5) TCR is to sit out a year and figure out if you want to go to law school. Retake to get a better aid package at Vandy. However, if you’re dead set on matriculating Vandy is the obvious choice. It’s a great school - maybe not worth $200k, but you’ll be able to get a job that can pay that off. It’s better to pay off $200k debt on a $190k salary than $120k debt on a $55k salary.

[conflictedNashville]

Thanks for the input! I find it helps to get input from all different perspectives.

but Belmont is just too horrible and 80k total for a Vandy degree, on its face, really isn’t a bad outcome.

That all being said, regardless of your options, you should only go to LS if everything in your soul tells you that you want to be a lawyer. Otherwise you’ll have problems down the road.

What do you mean by Belmont being horrible? What do you think is so horrible about it?

And what kind of problems down the road are you talking about?

[conflictedNashville]

2) you’re not fully accounting for cost of attendance. Once you include living expenses, student fees, student loan interest etc. the full COA (including your scholarships) would be ~$120k for Belmont and ~$225k for Vandy. https://www.lstreports.com/compare/vanderbilt/belmont/
3) you should not be seriously considering Belmont - even on a full ride. Basically no Belmont students will get a Biglaw job that allows them to repay the COL loans you’d need to take out.

First of all, thank you!

I did leave one point out: I'll be living with my SO who is working full-time and will be able to cover living expenses for the both of us. So any loans taken out will solely be for tuition expenses, and it really is a no debt vs. reasonable amount of debt debate.

Just wanted to counter your third point - I know three Belmont grads who all got a job at a big law firm in Nashville right after graduation/passing the bar this past year, so I have some confidence that Belmont's reputation is growing in a good way.

[objctnyrhnr]

Thanks for the input! I find it helps to get input from all different perspectives.

but Belmont is just too horrible and 80k total for a Vandy degree, on its face, really isn’t a bad outcome.

That all being said, regardless of your options, you should only go to LS if everything in your soul tells you that you want to be a lawyer. Otherwise you’ll have problems down the road.

What do you mean by Belmont being horrible? What do you think is so horrible about it?

And what kind of problems down the road are you talking about?

Problems down the road = realizing you’ve put a ton of time, money, and effort into something you don’t like. I mean I know a number of people who have come to that realization and it just sounds brutal.

Re Belmont just being an objectively horrific law school, I’m going to call on one of those other posters who have all the stats at their fingertips, but it’s really bad. And you knowing a handful of people who have landed biglaw can’t really compare to aggregate statistics that show very bad outcomes on the whole. Can somebody back this with numbers?

If you’re married to law school next year, IMO, Vandy is the obvious play. 80k debt difference between a t20/t30 and a tier 2 school is, in my opinion, a legit debate (though id lean towards more debt at better school). So comparing a t20 to a fourth tier and asking is it worth the debt to go to the better school that dominates the market in which you want to practice seems to me to be a no brained.

[AdieuCali]

2) you’re not fully accounting for cost of attendance. Once you include living expenses, student fees, student loan interest etc. the full COA (including your scholarships) would be ~$120k for Belmont and ~$225k for Vandy. https://www.lstreports.com/compare/vanderbilt/belmont/
3) you should not be seriously considering Belmont - even on a full ride. Basically no Belmont students will get a Biglaw job that allows them to repay the COL loans you’d need to take out.

First of all, thank you!

I did leave one point out: I'll be living with my SO who is working full-time and will be able to cover living expenses for the both of us. So any loans taken out will solely be for tuition expenses, and it really is a no debt vs. reasonable amount of debt debate.

Just wanted to counter your third point - I know three Belmont grads who all got a job at a big law firm in Nashville right after graduation/passing the bar this past year, so I have some confidence that Belmont's reputation is growing in a good way.

If you’re living with your SO, then Vandy has an even more enormous advantage.

As for Belmont, you might have met one of the 2(!!!!!) Belmont grads who got Biglaw in their respective classes. Check out Belmont’s ABA-required 509 report. Even in a booming legal economy, only 2 members of the class of ‘17 made it into firms of 100 or more (and none to firms of 500+) 9 months after grad. http://www.abarequireddisclosures.org/E ... comes.aspx. Meanwhile the median Vandy student got Biglaw.

Legal hiring is different than it was 20-30 years ago. To counter your anecdote with my anecdote, I was a SA at a medium-sized office of a V30. The managing partner, admin partner, and hiring partner all graduated from T4 law schools in the 80s and 90s. They could have hired alums to fill SA positions. However, there were 10 summer associates. 7 of us went to T13, 3 of us went to the local T20.

Please don’t go to Belmont. You will make up whatever difference in cost in your first six months of Biglaw!

[QContinuum]

Re Belmont just being an objectively horrific law school, I’m going to call on one of those other posters who have all the stats at their fingertips, but it’s really bad. And you knowing a handful of people who have landed biglaw can’t really compare to aggregate statistics that show very bad outcomes on the whole. Can somebody back this with numbers?

Sure. Belmont placed literally 2.5% of its class of 2017 - a whopping two total graduates - into BigLaw. Meanwhile Vandy has a BigLaw placement rate of 67%. So the average Vandy student easily lands BigLaw, but you gotta really be one of the two special snowflakes at Belmont to do so. Vandy's placement rate is 27 times Belmont's.

It's been a long time since I've seen such a lopsided comparison, but of course it's not surprising given that we're comparing the strongest T20 (even stronger than Georgetown) with a T4 law school.

[cavalier1138]

Just wanted to counter your third point - I know three Belmont grads who all got a job at a big law firm in Nashville right after graduation/passing the bar this past year, so I have some confidence that Belmont's reputation is growing in a good way.

I know three people who won money at the slots in Vegas.

Don't look at anecdotes. Look at data. Belmont graduates need to worry about getting jobs as lawyers, period. Biglaw is only a possibility for the top few students.

[Ohiobumpkin]

Dude... Vanderbilt. Congratulations!

[Sls17]

As of now, I see myself practicing law for a few years and then transitioning to do something else, and I can't help but think that investing almost $100K in a law degree from Vandy just to end up not a lawyer after a few years would be silly.

Belmont’s LST statistics give me the willies. Vanderbilt for $75k debt is a solid choice — *if and only if you decide you do in fact want to be a lawyer.*

Law school is a significant investment of not only $$ but also time and energy. This would be true whether you chose Vandy or Belmont. While I agree that it’s a little silly to go to law school only to foreseeably pursue something other than law after a few years, I don’t think that’s any more or less silly based on which school / scholarship you choose. Considering both opportunity cost and your resources beyond the scope of just money, law school is never free.

So your first step is to decide if you really want to be a lawyer and if you’re ready to invest in that goal. If so, your second step is to pick a school that can get you to a job as a lawyer without unreasonably burdensome debt: in your case, Vandy.

[ChangeGoinCome]

What about UTK?

[cavalier1138]

What about UTK?

Better than Belmont, but that's not saying a lot. If you want to work in a large firm, it's not a good choice.

[AdieuCali]

What about UTK?

UTK can't place 70% of its graduates into full-time legal work. OP has free housing in Nashville so s/he is probably looking at sub-$100k total COA for Vandy. That is a great outcome. With average grades at Vandy, OP has a good chance to land Biglaw. This is a really easy choice. https://www.lstreports.com/schools/tennessee/

[jeeptiger09]

Don't go to Belmont.

Maybe go to Vandy. If you are sold on Nashville, see if you can get a full ride to UTK, that's the best answer.

-someone intimately familiar with Nashville legal market

[icansortofmath]

Your situation makes Vandy even more compelling, not less.

Living costs covered? Vandy.
Not 100% sold on law? Vandy and network with business school kids and use career services to explore other options.
Want biglaw? Vandy. Don’t count on being top of Belmont to get biglaw.

Vandy and it’s not close at all.

[conflictedNashville]

Update: Chose Belmont over Vandy and am super happy and landed a Big Law internship for 1L summer. Thank you everyone for your concerns but I am doing great and planning to pass the bar on the first try, like 97% of Belmont students did last year!

[QContinuum]

Update: Chose Belmont over Vandy and am super happy and landed a Big Law internship for 1L summer. Thank you everyone for your concerns but I am doing great and planning to pass the bar on the first try, like 97% of Belmont students did last year!

Congrats on your success!

Do you have a sense of how many of your classmates landed BigLaw positions?

[Johnnybgoode92]

Don’t troll this thread with Belmont v vandy. You either know the right answer is vandy or you actually do belong at Belmont.

[lkoy]

Just for other viewers who may view this in later years via the search tool.

Graduating from Belmont this year - My class has at least 10 students that landed Nashville "big law." One of which is myself. While certainly it is no Vandy placement rating, Belmont's reputation in the Nashville market is growing. Escalating from prior years of landing 2 students to 10+ is a good improvement for such a young school. Obviously, once again, compared to some T14 placements and reputations, Belmont is questionable. However, it is not a horrible school.

That being said, to land Nashville "big law," you do have to make the grades. I would say to give yourself a viable shot at Nashville "big law," which is more like mid-size firms in reality, you need to be, at a minimum, in the top 15 students of your class. Unless you have some killer connections.

Most students who end up attending Belmont have no desire for big law and want to, mainly, pursue small time criminal law work.

[cavalier1138]

Graduating from Belmont this year - My class has at least 10 students that landed Nashville "big law." One of which is myself. While certainly it is no Vandy placement rating, Belmont's reputation in the Nashville market is growing. Escalating from prior years of landing 2 students to 10+ is a good improvement for such a young school. Obviously, once again, compared to some T14 placements and reputations, Belmont is questionable. However, it is not a horrible school.

That being said, to land Nashville "big law," you do have to make the grades. I would say to give yourself a viable shot at Nashville "big law," which is more like mid-size firms in reality, you need to be, at a minimum, in the top 15 students of your class. Unless you have some killer connections.

Just to be clear: You came back to tell everyone that the forum consensus on this thread was correct and that law schools should start requiring a seminar on cognitive biases for all students?

And if you started attending in 2019, wouldn't you be graduating next year? Does Belmont let its top students skip a year?

[objctnyrhnr]

Feels like the “I just came back to tell y’all...” posts provide further evidence of the reasons NOT to go to this school if you want a good outcome.

Also I could be wrong but if you got biglaw 1L summer, does that make you a URM or some other diversity-type hire?

[nixy]

I’m assuming that lkoy is actually a different Belmont student than the OP of this thread.

But pointing out that you need to be in the top 15 students to get a “biglaw” outcome isn’t much of an endorsement. I agree that most Belmont students probably don’t have biglaw as a goal (and they really shouldn’t if they know anything about the school), but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good investment for non-biglaw jobs, which would depend on the cost, debt required, and what jobs grads ultimately can get. I’m sure for some people it turns out fine, but that’s true of every law school in the country.

[objctnyrhnr]

I’m assuming that lkoy is actually a different Belmont student than the OP of this thread.

But pointing out that you need to be in the top 15 students to get a “biglaw” outcome isn’t much of an endorsement. I agree that most Belmont students probably don’t have biglaw as a goal (and they really shouldn’t if they know anything about the school), but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good investment for non-biglaw jobs, which would depend on the cost, debt required, and what jobs grads ultimately can get. I’m sure for some people it turns out fine, but that’s true of every law school in the country.

Yes, this was my point above but nixy said it more clearly.

[lkoy]

I am not OP.

If people are super concerned about Biglaw - I agree Belmont may not be the way to go. You need to really excel to land that. However, plenty of my classmates have good job prospects. It's not some dead end school.

The sheer hostility towards the school is not warranted.

[cavalier1138]

I am not OP.

If people are super concerned about Biglaw - I agree Belmont may not be the way to go. You need to really excel to land that. However, plenty of my classmates have good job prospects. It's not some dead end school.

The sheer hostility towards the school is not warranted.

Based on prior years, 20-40% of your classmates do not have jobs as lawyers. Although Belmont's statistics show an upward trend over the past 4 years, it's not clear whether that's going to stick, especially since we don't know what effect the pandemic will have on hiring.

And when it comes to being "concerned about biglaw," the real concern is debt vs. likely income. The OP was considering Belmont at a full ride, which is the only acceptable cost. Everyone in your class who did not land a job at a large firm will likely be incapable of paying off their debt load unless they had a full ride. Belmont charges almost $50k a year in tuition alone, and it does not offer its graduates any realistic path to paying off that bill. Since about 50% of the class pays sticker, it seems like a much larger number of your classmates will be relying on IBR/PAYE and long-term forgiveness programs than will be going into jobs that allow them to service their debt.

But most importantly, this thread was about comparing Belmont to Vanderbilt, and there is no comparison in outcomes.