cron1834 wrote:
JC, what level of scholarship would you need to extract in order to justify a lower-half T14, if sticker is too high? Well, excluding GULC, obvs.
Again, that depends on your goals/finances/where you want to live/COL.
GULC isn't bad just because it places worse than the other T14s...it's bad because COL in DC is outrageous. All scholarships are not created equal if you have to spend $45K more over the course of 3 years just to pay rent and eat. I was able to live off of $10K/year COL loans, but I 1) grew up fairly poor for most of my childhood, and therefore living cheaply isn't foreign to me, and 2) went to school in a very low COL city. But a lot of people spend up to $75K on COL alone.
I generally think total debt for a bottom half T14 should be not too far from $100K. So at worst, you should look for about a $15K/year scholarship in a low COL area, or a $25K/year scholarship in a high COL area. But I have a lower opinion of Biglaw than most. 75% of the people I know that went into it either hate(ed) it or didn't last very long in it--but they're forced into it because of their debt. I think keeping your debt around $90K from anywhere other than HYS (where you can get a PI job of your choosing and therefore take advantage of 10-year IBR) is optimal. And yes, good PI jobs are either a) harder to get than biglaw, or 2) don't care much about your school/rank. Try getting a position at
The Southern Poverty Law Center or ACLU from a school outside of the T5. It's hard.
0Ls have no idea what Biglaw is really like. It looks prestigious from the outside in, but in practice, it's mostly monkey work, unpredictable hours, and half the partners you deal with are completely antisocial dicks. Also, the more prestigious Biglaw firms are up and out pyramid schemes, and churn through associates like Taylor Swift churns through boyfriends. Each firm and department can be different, though, so some who hook up with good people really do seem to like it despite the hours. YMMV, I guess. It can be very rewarding, but for most, Biglaw is simply a struggle to pay off the debt you took out simply so you could get Biglaw--and then you either quit or get fired. So counting on Biglaw to pay off debt that can only be paid off with Biglaw is a more complex decision than people on here treat it.
