pulsedriver08 wrote:gitguy wrote:pulsedriver08 wrote:Would it be better to attend UC Davis with a 30k/year scholarship or UCI with a 15k/year one? I plan to practice in SoCal. Also, Loyola gave me 35k/year, so that's an option as well. Any recommendations?
I would have a hard time passing up $45K. You might try using that Davis scholly to get a bump on your UCI award.
Are you referring to passing up $45k for Irvine? Davis gave double the scholarship and Loyola is over twice as much. But, Irvine is a great school though, so I am not sure what's the better option. Money is obviously important, but does it trump reputation? Loyola has dropped to 87th, and Davis is more renowned in NorCal. It's really a difficult choice.
And, I tried increasing the Irvine scholly, but they wouldn't budge. Furthermore, the need aid has been tapped out by prior applicants, so that's not an option either.
I would really appreciate any ideas. I am completely lost.
Thanks.
I wouldn't let rankings impact your decisions, based off of Loyola's employment prospects I don't think it's a good school to attend for any amount of debt. Davis gave me $15K more per year than Irvine did too, but I chose Irvine in the end because I wanted to work in Southern California. I also think Irvine will end up having better employment prospects than Davis.
Here's a good comparison between the three schools:
http://www.lstscorereports.com/compare/ ... loyola-la/Davis' employment score is currently higher than Irvine's, but look at that school funded rate on Davis' part you can see it inflates Davis' employment. School funded jobs are not the kinds of jobs you want when graduating, they often don't pay much and are not long term jobs.
Both are about equal for big law. Irvine's got the third best federal clerkship rate in the country, which is an amazing achievement on Irvine's part, even though Chemerinsky's influence probably helped, this is still a huge deal for a new school to get that many clerkships.
At the end of the day though, both are regional schools. If you would rather work in Norcal then I would recommend Davis, but if you want Socal then Irvine. If you are fine with either then I think Irvine will end up being the better choice by the time we graduate.