Hamilton/Vanderbilt/Mordecai vs H/S/C with outside grants Forum

[BizBro]

HLS for no tuition is the easy answer here when you finish 1L with mediocre grades at Columbia/NYU. But as others said, it largely depends on what you actually want to do after law school.

Are you grouping Stanford in with Harvard here or do you think Harvard is the easy answer even over Stanford?

Idk, I'm from the east coast so I'm biased towards H. S is obviously a great school, especially if you want to stay on the west.

[Person1111]

i went to HLS, generally liked it, and would take SLS in a second in your shoes. i think H, S, and Columbia are all fine options though.

[abl]

If you are pretty set on PI, this is easy: to go HS and don' look back. LRAPs make the effective COA identical.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "effective" but no, it's not identical. And I'm someone who'd take Harvard or Stanford. But let's not kid ourselves.

For a student who does PI for ten years after law school, H and S's LRAPs make the COA 0. I suppose there are very, very rare PI jobs and very unusual personal situations that might change that -- but the vast majority of folks doing the vast majority of PI will end up with a 0 COA after 10 years. I suspect if the OP falls into one of the rare exceptions to this, the OP probably is already aware of that. That's good enough for me.

[Tiago Splitter]

At what point under the H/S LRAP's does one have to start contributing?

EDIT: This page gives a good breakdown for Harvard. Someone making 70k is expected to contribute $8400.

[jbagelboy]

At what point under the H/S LRAP's does one have to start contributing?

EDIT: This page gives a good breakdown for Harvard. Someone making 70k is expected to contribute $8400.

And that's per year. You could end up paying quite a bit over 10 years.

[abl]

At what point under the H/S LRAP's does one have to start contributing?

EDIT: This page gives a good breakdown for Harvard. Someone making 70k is expected to contribute $8400.

And that's per year. You could end up paying quite a bit over 10 years.

I'm not sure how that's super relevant. http://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib Most public interest jobs pay between 30k-60k. The wealthiest schools (Stanford and Yale, at the very least) design their loan repayment programs around what people in public interest generally earn, and therefore don't start asking for contributions until you get above what most of their graduates make (I've talked to loan officers at two of HYS about this exact topic).

http://media.law.stanford.edu/calculator/
Looking at Stanford's loan repayment calculator, assuming that you're making at the top of that range (60k) and have an AGI of 55k, your expected contribution will be (55k-50k) x 0.15 or $750 a year -- $62.50 per month even if you took out $250,000 in loans.

Or, let's use your example. Let's say you manage to find a public interest job that pays 70k a year, and that you have an AGI of 65k. And, let's assume you took out 250,000 in loans at 6.5% interest rate --you paid full tuition, didn't really cut back budget-wise during your three years, and broke even during your summers. (Incidentally, I couldn't find the average loan numbers for Stanford, but roughly splitting the difference between Yale and Harvard leaves the average SLS student with 115k in loans at a around 6.5% average interest rate.) In this "worst" case scenario -- where you have massive loans out of Stanford and somehow find a public interest job paying $70,000 per year -- you'd be expected to pay $187.50 per month.

Sure, this isn't free, but it's darn cheap. And this doesn't change my point that the vast majority of folks doing public interest out of Stanford (and the majority of folks doing public interest out of Harvard) aren't going to have to pay back a dime.

[Tiago Splitter]

I assumed a lot of PI people end up in government and those kinds of gigs which could go well over 60k but it sounds like I may be wrong. Also if they use AGI rather than gross you can definitely play some games if you fall into the 50-70k range, so that helps.

I guess everyone has to apply this to their own situation but if you're really committed to the kind of PI that is not going to pay more than 60k over the next 13 years then abl is right.

EDIT: abl your stanford $187.50 example is very different from what Harvard says they'd charge the same guy. From Harvard you'd pay $533.33 a month. So I guess Stanford is the answer if it ends up between those two.

[jbagelboy]

I assumed a lot of PI people end up in government and those kinds of gigs which could go well over 60k but it sounds like I may be wrong. Also if they use AGI rather than gross you can definitely play some games if you fall into the 50-70k range, so that helps.

I guess everyone has to apply this to their own situation but if you're really committed to the kind of PI that is not going to pay more than 60k over the next 13 years then abl is right.

EDIT: abl your stanford $187.50 example is very different from what Harvard says they'd charge the same guy. From Harvard you'd pay $533.33 a month. So I guess Stanford is the answer if it ends up between those two.

For fed gov you're not wrong. GS13 step 1 is $72,000 base comp at the lowest CoL. This is what most DOJ attorneys make coming in after a clerkship and a year at a firm; GS-12, with just a clerkship, in a reasonable CoL region you'll be $65-70k. And this is only in the first year so if you aren't well over $60k in Y1 you would be after a few.

[CanadianWolf]

In my opinion, you have six great options. You haven't provided enough information in this thread to enable others to make strong recommendations.

[abl]

I assumed a lot of PI people end up in government and those kinds of gigs which could go well over 60k but it sounds like I may be wrong. Also if they use AGI rather than gross you can definitely play some games if you fall into the 50-70k range, so that helps.

I guess everyone has to apply this to their own situation but if you're really committed to the kind of PI that is not going to pay more than 60k over the next 13 years then abl is right.

EDIT: abl your stanford $187.50 example is very different from what Harvard says they'd charge the same guy. From Harvard you'd pay $533.33 a month. So I guess Stanford is the answer if it ends up between those two.

For fed gov you're not wrong. GS13 step 1 is $72,000 base comp at the lowest CoL. This is what most DOJ attorneys make coming in after a clerkship and a year at a firm; GS-12, with just a clerkship, in a reasonable CoL region you'll be $65-70k. And this is only in the first year so if you aren't well over $60k in Y1 you would be after a few.

Most of the loan repayments go up each year as well. Also, the sort of fed jobs you describe comprise a pretty small minority of the overall public interest scene at these schools. But I agree: for someone who wants to be an AUSA, HS do not cost essentially 0 (although they are still cheap -- arguably cheap enough to justify the cost difference)

[jbagelboy]

I assumed a lot of PI people end up in government and those kinds of gigs which could go well over 60k but it sounds like I may be wrong. Also if they use AGI rather than gross you can definitely play some games if you fall into the 50-70k range, so that helps.

I guess everyone has to apply this to their own situation but if you're really committed to the kind of PI that is not going to pay more than 60k over the next 13 years then abl is right.

EDIT: abl your stanford $187.50 example is very different from what Harvard says they'd charge the same guy. From Harvard you'd pay $533.33 a month. So I guess Stanford is the answer if it ends up between those two.

For fed gov you're not wrong. GS13 step 1 is $72,000 base comp at the lowest CoL. This is what most DOJ attorneys make coming in after a clerkship and a year at a firm; GS-12, with just a clerkship, in a reasonable CoL region you'll be $65-70k. And this is only in the first year so if you aren't well over $60k in Y1 you would be after a few.

Most of the loan repayments go up each year as well. Also, the sort of fed jobs you describe comprise a pretty small minority of the overall public interest scene at these schools. But I agree: for someone who wants to be an AUSA, HS do not cost essentially 0 (although they are still cheap -- arguably cheap enough to justify the cost difference)

When will you start acknowledging there's a difference between "H" and "S"

[Pragmatic Gun]

Is this thread really necessary?

[abl]

I assumed a lot of PI people end up in government and those kinds of gigs which could go well over 60k but it sounds like I may be wrong. Also if they use AGI rather than gross you can definitely play some games if you fall into the 50-70k range, so that helps.

I guess everyone has to apply this to their own situation but if you're really committed to the kind of PI that is not going to pay more than 60k over the next 13 years then abl is right.

EDIT: abl your stanford $187.50 example is very different from what Harvard says they'd charge the same guy. From Harvard you'd pay $533.33 a month. So I guess Stanford is the answer if it ends up between those two.

For fed gov you're not wrong. GS13 step 1 is $72,000 base comp at the lowest CoL. This is what most DOJ attorneys make coming in after a clerkship and a year at a firm; GS-12, with just a clerkship, in a reasonable CoL region you'll be $65-70k. And this is only in the first year so if you aren't well over $60k in Y1 you would be after a few.

Most of the loan repayments go up each year as well. Also, the sort of fed jobs you describe comprise a pretty small minority of the overall public interest scene at these schools. But I agree: for someone who wants to be an AUSA, HS do not cost essentially 0 (although they are still cheap -- arguably cheap enough to justify the cost difference)

When will you start acknowledging there's a difference between "H" and "S"

There are very real differences between H and S -- certainly enough substantial differences to support choosing one over the other on the basis of something other than "do I want to be on the East or West Coast?" Happy?

[jbagelboy]

The lrap commitments seem substantively different

[arewevoting]

Harvard (or Yale).

Next question

[arewevoting]

Is this thread really necessary?