Post
by Law Sauce » Sat Mar 29, 2014 1:18 pm
If almost guaranteed a job out of FL, I would definitely take that route. Its free and you've just taken away the downside. Further, in the short term, 60k with no debt in FL is living like a king compared to 160k with 300k of debt in NYC.
I would think that down the road far enough the name value of the degree starts to melt away. Yea if you do big law you could end up with a strong resume and some opportunities down the line that you would not have from FL, but, by year 7 or 8 is it not clear what you would be doing from either school. With hard work and some luck you may be making a great salary doing something that you cannot imagine now from FL as well. Especially since you seem to have connections in FL, having no debt will allow you to be more flexible and take advantages of opportunities that you would have to ignore from Cornell (like transitioning to business side of something, starting a firm with some colleagues several years down the line, or taking advantage of some investment that arises through your connections). You will have no capital to work with or room for error from Cornell, thus, you could make an argument that your upside chances of doing really well (in net worth terms) at actually higher at FL than they are at Cornell (stuck being a lawyer on the traditional route), but such an argument would only be speculation and would deal with low probabilities on both sides.