. Forum

[elm84dr]

Thanks for the replies! They've been helpful.

Some things have changed in the last few days. It turns out my relative wants to finance pretty much all of my law school expenses (she said up to $200,000 is fine), which is awesome! My parents can pick up whatever is left over if it's less than $15,000 max and I can pay them back later. Should I just attend the highest ranked school then, knowing now that the cost is going to be covered by my family (which I'm very grateful for)?

These are the schools I got into/got waitlisted to and the estimated cost of attendance per year, including fees, room and board. I'm assuming that waitlisted schools don't give out any scholarships so I'm listing them at sticker price.

UPenn (waitlist) - sticker $68,994
Cornell (waitlist) - sticker $68,520
Georgetown (priority waitlist) - sticker $66,970
Duke (priority reserve) - sticker $64,536
William & Mary - $25,150 (including $28,000 scholarship)
GW - $52,740 (including $16,000 scholarship)
BU - $41,790 (including $15,000 scholarship)
BC - $57,645 (no scholarship info yet)

I have no idea where I want to live or work. My family doesn't live in this country so I don't need to be in any particular location. My partner is in the military and moves around every 2 years, and he advised me to just choose the highest ranked school in hopes that it will give me the connections I need to possibly work in more than one state, should that become necessary. The current plan is for me to stay put in one state and for him to live with me when he's not deployed.

So is choosing based on ranking a stupid idea knowing all this? I'm going to visit BU, BC, and GW within the next few weeks. I'm trying to avoid visiting William and Mary because it's 8 hours away from me and I have classes/work Mon-Fri so it would be very inconvenient. I'm leaning towards GW because of its ranking.

If you are that much into rankings, please follow this one:

http://abovethelaw.com/careers/law-school-rankings/

Rather than the meaningless USN ranks.

If I were you, and assuming that I ride those waitlists and get in, and assuming I were in your fortunate financial situation, I would take

Penn > Duke > Cornell > G-town for the top 14 (based on ATL & LST),
and personally would take BC=BU > GW (GW has too many students and I believe has somewhat of a IP-inflated employment prospects)

THIS

[staysha]

You should retake. If you're not going to retake, negotiate. A couple cycles ago I had worse numbers than you and negotiated BU into offering me 33k per year. That was after I put a deposit or two down I think. Also, I had other offers that they were comparing.

[Informative]

If you aren't going to graduate with six figures in debt, BC/BU/GW are definitely worth it. While I'd lean towards BC, these three are pretty much equal schools so you should just visit the three and pick the one where you can see yourself performing the best and having the least distractions.

If you get into a T14, def attend.