Is NYU at sticker worth it? Forum

[star fox]

lol some of the people in this thread (mostly 0Ls) are the reason why I believe law schools will always be in business no matter how much they scam away. Funny thing is I've been on this board for almost four years now and it seems instead of getting any wiser due to the explosion of information regarding the scam, 0Ls seem to get dumber and more gullible. it is a bad sign when autoadmit is a better source of information than this site.

This is a law school admissions board, so why the trashing of OLs?

I fully admit to wanting to know more since there are little statistics relating to long-term career prospects for law school grads. Why not help people in my situation out and correct misunderstandings rather than just blanket trashing of people seeking advice?

[smaug_]

This is a law school admissions board, so why the trashing of OLs?

People trash 0Ls when they don't listen to advice from people who have real experience. It's akin to a new hobbyist asking a question on a woodworking forum and then proceeding to argue with professionals when those professionals give their opinion. Only law students are socially inept enough to do shit like this.

Oh, I should add some .

[bfigsan]

This is a law school admissions board, so why the trashing of OLs?

People trash 0Ls when they don't listen to advice from people who have real experience. It's akin to a new hobbyist asking a question on a woodworking forum and then proceeding to argue with professionals when those professionals give their opinion. Only law students are socially inept enough to do shit like this.

Oh, I should add some .

If you're a 1L+ posting on TLS I assume it's in some part to impart some wisdom and offer advice (why else would you waste your time on the admissions thread when you're already enrolled). So if you're trying to give advice why be a douche about it? If you're not good at giving constructive advice go study instead!

[Tiago Splitter]

If there is a real chance that after three years of BigLaw you'll end up back in the position you would have been in had you never gone to law school you are a fucking retard for having gone.

[pastapplicant]

If there is a real chance that after three years of BigLaw you'll end up back in the position you would have been in had you never gone to law school you are a fucking retard for having gone.

This over and over again except most 0Ls here advocate going to law school when you would be in a worse position.

[Tiago Splitter]

If there is a real chance that after three years of BigLaw you'll end up back in the position you would have been in had you never gone to law school you are a fucking retard for having gone.

This over and over again except most 0Ls here advocate going to law school when you would be in a worse position.

My comment was made to show agreement with 02889.

[smaug_]

If you're a 1L+ posting on TLS I assume it's in some part to impart some wisdom and offer advice (why else would you waste your time on the admissions thread when you're already enrolled). So if you're trying to give advice why be a douche about it? If you're not good at giving constructive advice go study instead!

If I'm going to give advice, I'm going to tell the truth even if it isn't what some folks want to hear. Other posters and I gave substantive answers in the first couple of pages in this thread. I'm not sure which is the douche move: being snide in responses after people don't listen to the advice given, or the act of ignoring the advice given in the first place. (Or, maybe the third option of commenting on the snark without answering or asking a question.)

[thelawyler]

If there is a real chance that after three years of BigLaw you'll end up back in the position you would have been in had you never gone to law school you are a fucking retard for having gone.

This over and over again except most 0Ls here advocate going to law school when you would be in a worse position.

My comment was made to show agreement with 02889.

LOL

[star fox]

If there is a real chance that after three years of BigLaw you'll end up back in the position you would have been in had you never gone to law school you are a fucking retard for having gone.

This over and over again except most 0Ls here advocate going to law school when you would be in a worse position.

So why did you go to NYU then?

[sinfiery]

Yeah, but what exactly is real? Non-zero sum exists for practically every field in that regard.

[bk1]

Again, I don't understand why TLS assumes that you work in biglaw for 3-4 years (if you're lucky) and then you become unemployed for the rest of your career, or at best you move to a small firm and make $5/hour, making it impossible to continue making loan payments.

Look at the TLS threads of current associates taking questions. People leave their biglaw jobs to go to companies, equally-sized firms, smaller firms, or government jobs. This does not have to involve 70% pay cuts, and it certainly doesn't involve a sudden inability to continue paying off loans 3 years out of school. Is it a brutal job market? Yup. Does everyone end up unemployed? Not at all.

Nobody is saying it's so extreme that you are unemployed (though that does happen). The reality is that pay cuts can be severe. As a fourth year associate you would be making nigh on 250k. Going to the DoJ instead of working as a 4th year associate at a firm could mean going down to 80-90k which actually gets close to a 70% pay cut. Yes, you could get a job that pays more than GS-13, step 1 (e.g. in-house counsel), but you could get a job that pays less than GS-13, step 1 (e.g. AUSAs who are paid on the AD scale which, iirc, tends to be lower than GS).

But that's not the important part. The important part is that 150k debt is a lot for somebody only making 100k (or less). As a 3rd year associate you were taking home almost 150k after taxes. If you had been living off 50k and contributing everything above that to loans (which is not necessarily as easy as it sounds), you would be dumping around 100k/year as a 3rd or 4th year associate. Instead of being a 4th year associate, you are now making 90k and taking home something like 60k. Now you either keep your standard of living and dump 10k/year into your loans (150k that is growing at 7-8%). Granted you will get raises, but you are now barely keeping up with the interest. Or you lower your standard of living, which isn't something that is all that easy after you've become accustomed to it for the past 3 years.

[Rahviveh]

Again, I don't understand why TLS assumes that you work in biglaw for 3-4 years (if you're lucky) and then you become unemployed for the rest of your career, or at best you move to a small firm and make $5/hour, making it impossible to continue making loan payments.

Look at the TLS threads of current associates taking questions. People leave their biglaw jobs to go to companies, equally-sized firms, smaller firms, or government jobs. This does not have to involve 70% pay cuts, and it certainly doesn't involve a sudden inability to continue paying off loans 3 years out of school. Is it a brutal job market? Yup. Does everyone end up unemployed? Not at all.

Nobody is saying it's so extreme that you are unemployed (though that does happen). The reality is that pay cuts can be severe. As a fourth year associate you would be making nigh on 250k. Going to the DoJ instead of working as a 4th year associate at a firm could mean going down to 80-90k which actually gets close to a 70% pay cut. Yes, you could get a job that pays more than GS-13, step 1 (e.g. in-house counsel), but you could get a job that pays less than GS-13, step 1 (e.g. AUSAs who are paid on the AD scale which, iirc, tends to be lower than GS).

But that's not the important part. The important part is that 150k debt is a lot for somebody only making 100k (or less). As a 3rd year associate you were taking home almost 150k after taxes. If you had been living off 50k and contributing everything above that to loans (which is not necessarily as easy as it sounds), you would be dumping around 100k/year as a 3rd or 4th year associate. Instead of being a 4th year associate, you are now making 90k and taking home something like 60k. Now you either keep your standard of living and dump 10k/year into your loans (150k that is growing at 7-8%). Granted you will get raises, but you are now barely keeping up with the interest. Or you lower your standard of living, which isn't something that is all that easy after you've become accustomed to it for the past 3 years.

Stupid question but do any LRAP programs kick in if you do a govt job after big law?

[bk1]

Stupid question but do any LRAP programs kick in if you do a govt job after big law?

I think the norm is no, but it isn't universal. Examples:

Yale (does allow it) - "Graduates may join the Program at any time within ten years of graduation."

Northwestern (does not allow it) - "Any graduate who starts work immediately after graduation or after a clerkship as an attorney or manager in any government or non-profit agency is eligible for LRAP."

[JCougar]

Given the OPs numbers, he could attend a T20 in a full ride. It would be insane to pay sticker at NYU.

I'm not saying that NYU at sticker is sane, but these two things are not really comparable. The types of jobs that a majority of the students at GW/WUSTL get look nothing like the types of jobs that a majority of the students at NYU get.

Of course this isn't all that important for OP since OP has numbers for significant T14 schollies (if not full rides), I'm merely nitpicking your T20 comment.

As you should, which is why "T20" should never be used to group law schools.

Someone with his numbers will be top quarter at GW, minimum. Probably top 10/15%.

lolno

I am curious how strong the r^2 is for LSAT/GPA numbers and performance in law school. It is pertinent to a number of questions people pose on these boards, but not one seems to know it. If we knew it, the advice we could offer would be so much more precise.

Its around 0.4 IIRC. I wonder if they've done a study with only T20's. If I had to guess I bet the correlation is weaker, but I have no foundation for that

This may be the r^2, but a major issue, especially at a lot of top schools, is restriction of range. The way top schools admit people, the top half of the class is clumped around median or very slightly above. Thus, even something with an r^2 of 0.4 (which means it really only explains 16% of your GPA variance), the predictability of your LSAT as to whether you end up median or at the top of the class is probably pretty close to nothing. Their predictability over the bottom half of the class is probably a lot higher, since there's a much larger range there. This is even more true if the school is splitter-friendly and has 25/50/75 LSAT median scores of like 169/168/162. LSAT/uGPA might be good enough to say "it is likely that you won't end up at in the bottom 25% if you're above the class's 25th percentile in each," but predicting where in the top 50-75% of the class you will end up is pretty much a toss up.

This may be different if you are way above the school's entering class statistics (for example, if you have a 170/3.9 and go to Brooklyn instead of NYU), but simply going to George Washington with a 170 on your LSAT when their median is 167 means almost nothing. Also, keep in mind that LSAC reports the margin of error of your LSAT score to be 2.7 points. So really, a 170 isn't different than a 167 to some level of statistical certainty.

The problem is that law school exams are not standardized or professionally developed. There's very little quality control, and they are highly unreliable and only marginally valid at measuring any sort of skills that predict any sort of outcome. Because the error variance in law exam scores is so high, and reliability is a major issue, there's simply not a lot of factors that can predict your performance on them to any significant degree.

[Rahviveh]

Stupid question but do any LRAP programs kick in if you do a govt job after big law?

I think the norm is no, but it isn't universal. Examples:

Yale (does allow it) - "Graduates may join the Program at any time within ten years of graduation."

Northwestern (does not allow it) - "Any graduate who starts work immediately after graduation or after a clerkship as an attorney or manager in any government or non-profit agency is eligible for LRAP."

Looks like Michigan allows it too

--LinkRemoved--

"No, but you must enter within five years of graduation. Graduates whose first job is a clerkship are granted an extension for the duration of the clerkship (usually one or two years"

[JCougar]

Nobody is saying it's so extreme that you are unemployed (though that does happen). The reality is that pay cuts can be severe. As a fourth year associate you would be making nigh on 250k. Going to the DoJ instead of working as a 4th year associate at a firm could mean going down to 80-90k which actually gets close to a 70% pay cut. Yes, you could get a job that pays more than GS-13, step 1 (e.g. in-house counsel), but you could get a job that pays less than GS-13, step 1 (e.g. AUSAs who are paid on the AD scale which, iirc, tends to be lower than GS).

But that's not the important part. The important part is that 150k debt is a lot for somebody only making 100k (or less). As a 3rd year associate you were taking home almost 150k after taxes. If you had been living off 50k and contributing everything above that to loans (which is not necessarily as easy as it sounds), you would be dumping around 100k/year as a 3rd or 4th year associate. Instead of being a 4th year associate, you are now making 90k and taking home something like 60k. Now you either keep your standard of living and dump 10k/year into your loans (150k that is growing at 7-8%). Granted you will get raises, but you are now barely keeping up with the interest. Or you lower your standard of living, which isn't something that is all that easy after you've become accustomed to it for the past 3 years.

Excellent post.

[sinfiery]

150k over 7 years around 7% is roughly 27k a year. 90k in nyc is 60k take home

33k COL plus any raises for 7 years and then you are debt free. If only the situation used here could be relied upon to happen.

[Elston Gunn]

Stupid question but do any LRAP programs kick in if you do a govt job after big law?

I think the norm is no, but it isn't universal. Examples:

Yale (does allow it) - "Graduates may join the Program at any time within ten years of graduation."

Northwestern (does not allow it) - "Any graduate who starts work immediately after graduation or after a clerkship as an attorney or manager in any government or non-profit agency is eligible for LRAP."

Looks like Michigan allows it too

--LinkRemoved--

"No, but you must enter within five years of graduation. Graduates whose first job is a clerkship are granted an extension for the duration of the clerkship (usually one or two years"

Lol at LRAPs being helpful when you're making $90k.

I've done some back of the envelope calculations on COAP--supposedly the best around--and it would only be helpful in a big city GS scale job for a few years. LRAPs really for people who work for 40-60K at nonprofits and state government.

[DaleCooper]

Stupid question but do any LRAP programs kick in if you do a govt job after big law?

I think the norm is no, but it isn't universal. Examples:

Yale (does allow it) - "Graduates may join the Program at any time within ten years of graduation."

Northwestern (does not allow it) - "Any graduate who starts work immediately after graduation or after a clerkship as an attorney or manager in any government or non-profit agency is eligible for LRAP."

NYU does, sort of:

F5. What if I Work at a Firm Before Entering LRAP?

For graduates entering LRAP following non-LRAP-eligible employment, NYU will make an adjustment which recognizes earnings during such period(s) of ineligible employment and anticipates accelerated repayment of law school debt on that basis. This adjustment deducts from qualifying debt as otherwise calculated as described above, an amount equal to 40% of the amount by which the participant’s gross income exceeded the qualifying base income amount(s) applicable during such periods of ineligible employment. Qualifying debt will be adjusted by this amount regardless of whether the participant actually made such payments. NOTE: The base qualifying income in this calculation is not $80,000. For this calculation, we will use the annual LRAP income scales that are published by the Office of Student Financial Services.

[Davidbentley]

Stupid question but do any LRAP programs kick in if you do a govt job after big law?

SLS allows you to transition as long as it's within 5 years of graduation.
--LinkRemoved--