beachbum wrote:NU_Jet55 wrote:quadsixm wrote:WUSTL.
Everybody's "goal" is "biglaw on the east coast." The odds of one doing well enough to reach that goal, at any school except for YHS, make paying sticker a huge risk. Especially when you've got a full ride sitting on the table.
Is the slightly better chance of getting biglaw over WUSTL really worth that much to you?
This is the best advice you can get OP.
While everybody at Duke and Michigan are killing each other to try to get one of those coveted spots so they can MAYBE pay it off after working themselves to death over the next 10 years, you can rest assured that you won't need a biglaw job to pay off your loans.
But for the OP's stated goals, WUSTL definitely isn't a better choice than Duke/Michigan.
But this is assuming the OP really wants biglaw. The attrition rate at biglaw is alarmingly high, especially given how much money you make. Everyone wants biglaw when they're in law school staring down atrocious loan repayments and for the prestige. But once you actually get a job in biglaw, you realize you have no life and the work isn't very exciting. Some people are made for that kind of job, but a lot aren't.
If you can graduate from law school without feeling forced into biglaw, that's livin' the life. I'd much rather work at a non-shitlaw small firm job making 60K a year with reasonable billable hours starting with no law school debt than make $160K but have $200K in loans to pay off.
If you're good lawyer, you'll move up fast in the small firm world, as long as you can get into a decent one. It's lower stress. The only thing that sucks is the pay, and the pay really doesn't suck that much if you have no debt. My best friend's brother works at a small firm doing tax law and he started out at $60K, but his parents paid for school, so he has no debt. He plays golf with clients half the day and almost never has to work on the weekends, and he loves it. He's making more than that right now...not quite $100K, but he will be soon.
If you're sure you want Biglaw despite the debt, go for Michigan. WUSTL still offers you a fair shot at Biglaw, but if you end up not getting it, the world isn't going to end if you don't have to make $1200 monthly loan repayments.