deleted Forum

[Kronk]

Yeah, but look at his goals. "PI" is about as obtainable from NYU or UVA as it is from Stanford.

Employer has two applications. Everything is equal in terms of extracurriculars, dedication to cause, etc. except one is a SLS grad and the other is a UVA grad. Which is the employer taking? If the OP wants PI or government jobs, in my mind SLS is the clear choice since OP won't be repaying a cent of those loans and Stanford opens far more doors.

The only disadvantage is that the OP is precluded from lower-paying private jobs if he or she decides that is what she wants at some later time.

[BigZuck]

I agree with sinfiery that it doesn't sound like the OP has clear career goals in mind but maybe the OP was being intentionally vague (they seem to care a lot about anonymity with the weird NPV thing). I also agree with Kronk that the OP should have no problem getting a PSLF/LRAP eligible job, it's just the actually keeping the job for 10 years thing that would give me pause.

But if this were me I would probably YOLO my ass on down to Stanford.

[Kronk]

I agree with sinfiery that it doesn't sound like the OP has clear career goals in mind but maybe the OP was being intentionally vague (they seem to care a lot about anonymity with the weird NPV thing). I also agree with Kronk that the OP should have no problem getting a PSLF/LRAP eligible job, it's just the actually keeping the job for 10 years thing that would give me pause.

But if this were me I would probably YOLO my ass on down to Stanford.

But bro doesn't have to keep the same job. He just has to have any job in any of those fields for 120 months. I don't know, for someone that doesn't want to work in the private sector, I don't think the negative is all that great. You can hop around 5 times in that 10 years to different positions if you hate one job or the next. If you Job yourself and think after year 5 "I've made a huge mistake, gotta go work for Exxon!" you can either jump ship and start making the big payments you would've been making on a BigLaw salary anyway, or work in the public and non-profit sector for a few years to finish off and still be like, 36 with a SLS degree, 10 years work experience, and no debt.

I'd definitely YOLO.

[twenty]

Yeah, but look at his goals. "PI" is about as obtainable from NYU or UVA as it is from Stanford.

Employer has two applications. Everything is equal in terms of extracurriculars, dedication to cause, etc. except one is a SLS grad and the other is a UVA grad. Which is the employer taking? If the OP wants PI or government jobs, in my mind SLS is the clear choice since OP won't be repaying a cent of those loans and Stanford opens far more doors.

[/quote]

For sure, and I'll even go so far as to say that there are a lot of "PI" jobs (that are actually government, but anyway), where HYS has a very clear advantage over other T14 schools. The thing is, OP isn't saying he wants DOJ Honors or San Francisco City Attorney, he's "interested in PI." That's a huge range of items from JAG Corps/PMF (of which HYS will have very little advantage) to SEC/ACLU (of which HYS will have a tremendous advantage).

[Kronk]

Yeah, but look at his goals. "PI" is about as obtainable from NYU or UVA as it is from Stanford.

Employer has two applications. Everything is equal in terms of extracurriculars, dedication to cause, etc. except one is a SLS grad and the other is a UVA grad. Which is the employer taking? If the OP wants PI or government jobs, in my mind SLS is the clear choice since OP won't be repaying a cent of those loans and Stanford opens far more doors.

For sure, and I'll even go so far as to say that there are a lot of "PI" jobs (that are actually government, but anyway), where HYS has a very clear advantage over other T14 schools. The thing is, OP isn't saying he wants DOJ Honors or San Francisco City Attorney, he's "interested in PI." That's a huge range of items from JAG Corps/PMF (of which HYS will have very little advantage) to SEC/ACLU (of which HYS will have a tremendous advantage).[/quote]

So, you don't see the advantage in keeping the wider variety of options open, then?

[twenty]

Leaning no, for four reasons:

1) 150k debt, IBR/PAYE/LRAP/PSLF or not, is a life-changing-ly large amount of money. I'm not writing off LRAP -- personally, I'm EDing at NYU with a try-or-die attitude towards a fairly specific PSLF-eligible career goal.
2) I think it's really, really fair to assume that OP will not end up in either PI or academia. By the time all OP's loans are paid off (let's assume 70k COA - 20k need aid = 50k a year), he'll either have paid 230k's worth of loans (at 2k a month), or else has to take a very significant take-home-pay cut in order to pay off loans faster. No matter how you look at it, that's still a lot of money, even on the likely-biglaw salary.
3) OP seems to be toying around with non-PSLF/LRAP/etc. eligible items, like politics or academia. It's entirely possible he actually has fewer options coming from Stanford due to the debt.
4) If OP is okay with/gunning for "PI" and really doesn't have any notion of what that ultimately looks like, is he really going to be devastated when he ends up with a less-prestigious PI gig than he might have otherwise had? Chances are, probably not.

I'm not saying Stanford is a bad choice, but that just compared to NYU, Penn, or UVA for close to free, it's probably not the right choice for OP.

[Kronk]

I'm guessing--and this is just a guess--that when the OP says that he's "interested in PI" he's not saying "I'm equally happy with any PI job I get, whether that be a shitty position at a non-profit protecting squirrel rights in Montana or a job with the ACLU."

[09042014]

Kronk, OP briefly mentioned PI along with several other pie the sky ideas like politics and academia. Chances he's committed enough to PI to gamble 150k is pretty low.

If she were saying "I'm only doing PI" I'd agree that Stanford is TCR.

[BigZuck]

Kronk, OP briefly mentioned PI along with several other pie the sky ideas like politics and academia. Chances he's committed enough to PI to gamble 150k is pretty low.

If she were saying "I'm only doing PI" I'd agree that Stanford is TCR.

How do you know that the OP is a hermaphrodite?

Regardless, I think the OP needs to share a bit more information to get a more informed answer from the hivemind.

[Kronk]

Kronk, OP briefly mentioned PI along with several other pie the sky ideas like politics and academia. Chances he's committed enough to PI to gamble 150k is pretty low.

If she were saying "I'm only doing PI" I'd agree that Stanford is TCR.

Still, no one is 'tard enough to not care between taking a job making a LOWLY, PROLE 40k salary for a no-name nonprofit and a BIG, PRESTIGIOUS 50k salary with the ACLU / NAACP / something along those lines.

[twenty]

Certainly, but I'm equally sure that when people say they're interested in biglaw, they're not saying they'd be just as happy working in an NYC sweatshop as they would at a Silicon Valley outpost where the lights turn off at 8:00.

I guess I can see that if OP was really that serious about PI (again, I have my doubts), he might be pissed at the idea that he missed out on a couple opportunities he might have had from S, but I think the likelihood of being in that situation is substantially lower than the likelihood OP jumps ship for biglaw.

[chillipepper]

OP is a software geek/ money maker. He was made for stanford/ sv.

[Paul Campos]

In my experience, when somebody trying to decide between elite law schools says they want to do PI without being more specific than that, this generally means "I don't want to work for a big law firm." Such people usually end up working for big law firms, mainly because it's ten times easier to get a big law job out of an elite law school than a prestige PI or BigGov job. Even the best LRAP program doesn't get somebody a job, and big law ends up being the path of least resistance.

[yogi1467]

D

[Ti Malice]

OP here. I was intentionally vague about my career interests as my school knows specifics on what I want to do, and I certainly don't want to out myself here.

I'm leaning toward keeping my full scholarship. Honestly, no one really knows going in if they are actually going to like being a lawyer, so for me, it's too much of a gamble to take out that kind of debt, and I really don't think Stanford is worth 150k plus interest more than my current choice.

Wise decision.

[bizzybone1313]

So, did Stanford never give you an aid package because it is so late in the game? Did they even mention it?

[Ti Malice]

So, did Stanford never give you an aid package because it is so late in the game? Did they even mention it?

Time of application/acceptance has nothing to do with grant amounts at YHS. If OP didn't get anything, it's because he/she didn't qualify.

[nebula666]

I think Penn for free is the winner here.

[dixiecupdrinking]

OP here. I was intentionally vague about my career interests as my school knows specifics on what I want to do, and I certainly don't want to out myself here.

I'm leaning toward keeping my full scholarship. Honestly, no one really knows going in if they are actually going to like being a lawyer, so for me, it's too much of a gamble to take out that kind of debt, and I really don't think Stanford is worth 150k plus interest more than my current choice.

Good call. Take the money.

Your poll here is getting close to a 50/50 response, but I think that if you were to ask SLS graduates, they would overwhelmingly tell you to take the money. In practice, the differences among these schools are just not as significant as you might think.