ADVICE NEEDED! St. John's full ride vs. Cardozo 15k per year Forum

[shmumush]

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[get it to x]

Most posters will say neither and retake. I'd say go with SJU and do your utmost to not lose that scholly. The drop in the rankings is not permanent and I'm sure SJU will rebound. Street cred, I believe, still has SJU ahead of Cardozo since it's still viewed as the new kid on the block. Cost of living in Queens will be anywhere from slightly to moderately cheaper than Cardozo and career prospects are about even.

[shmumush]

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[Magnolia]

What are the stipulations on each of the scholarships?

[shmumush]

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[R.R. Raskolnikov]

What are the stipulations on each of the scholarships?

Top 50% at Cardozo and top 40% at SJU. (I imagine the difficulty of keeping the scholarships would be about the same, considering the level of the school, although I could be wrong)

Show Cardozo the full ride from St. John's and see if they'll up the $$ and do away with the stipulations. And do it yesterday, since they're probably just about out of money at this point.

[get it to x]

Most posters will say neither and retake. I'd say go with SJU and do your utmost to not lose that scholly. The drop in the rankings is not permanent and I'm sure SJU will rebound. Street cred, I believe, still has SJU ahead of Cardozo since it's still viewed as the new kid on the block. Cost of living in Queens will be anywhere from slightly to moderately cheaper than Cardozo and career prospects are about even.

Thanks for not saying retake. Not every person can just retake the LSAT over and over until they get what they want. Thanks for the advice. I agree with your reasoning, except for my concern that SJU will not rebound and will drop out of the top 100... Cardozo is consistently hovering around 50 these days. Are the career prospects really about even? I honestly haven't heard that.

I had a scholly to SJU and chose RU over it because I thought (and still do) that RU has better career prospects with more flexibility between the north Jersey and NYC markets. SJU has a very dedicated alumni network (almost like a good ole' boy network) that I thought was much much stronger than its peers. They take care of their own and a ton of trial/appellate judges in NYC/5 boroughs attended the law school. If the rankings cause much of a dust-up amongst the alumni (again once you're in law school you either marginally care/don't care at all) you'll see them do an about-face ranking-wise. I don't see them dropping out of the top 100 schools. As far as gauging career-prospects, again I think SJU's very established alums create more networking opportunities than Cardozo which has a smaller alumni base. I'd do a search of top/mid-law firms and see how they place young associates for each school. I'd bet SJU comes out with a slight to moderate edge.

[Magnolia]

What are the stipulations on each of the scholarships?

Top 50% at Cardozo and top 40% at SJU. (I imagine the difficulty of keeping the scholarships would be about the same, considering the level of the school, although I could be wrong)

Both stipulations are going to put a lot of pressure on you to do extremely well. However, I think that the huge difference in price make SJU the better choice, despite the stricter stipulations.

[ran12]

Take the full ride at SJU. Cardozo grads get nice jobs but a lot of the time it's due to family connections.

[shmumush]

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[fakemoney]

Do not mind St. John's latest drop in the rankings. It means nothing. The school could just as easily shoot back up to 70 next year. Even if you want to buy into USNWR's methodology and the notion of the rankings outside the top-30 or so meaning anything -- the fact is there are dozens of schools ranked 50-100 only separated by a few points. So their order is going to be shuffled and reshuffled in future rankings.

Cardozo probably offers a little bit better placement prospects, but I don't think anywhere near substantial enough to justify shelling out an extra 30K a year.

[shmumush]

Do not mind St. John's latest drop in the rankings. It means nothing. The school could just as easily shoot back up to 70 next year. Even if you want to buy into USNWR's methodology and the notion of the rankings outside the top-30 or so meaning anything -- the fact is there are dozens of schools ranked 50-100 only separated by a few points. So their order is going to be shuffled and reshuffled each year.

Cardozo probably offers a little bit better placement prospects, but I don't think anywhere near substantial enough to justify shelling out an extra 30K a year.

What I was thinking as well... To be honest, before the USNWR's came out, I was 90% committed in my mind to SJU. I know not to buy too much into the rankings but it is a little disturbing seeing the uproar from current students there. (My brother is attending)

[Robespierre]

Easy one. Going to Cardozo will cost you over 100K more than SJU (~30K/yr tuition plus higher COL). Dozo is better than SJU, but defintiely NOT by a margin of 100K.

SJU all the way. Unless money's not important, which I doubt.

[This assumes (a) Dozo won't raise its offer and (b) you've read all the fine print about scholly stipulations, and the two schollys are comparable.]

[FuManChusco]

I wouldn't even think about attending either with those stipulations.