Cornell vs BU $$ vs W&L $$$ vs ND $$ vs W&M $$ vs Emory $$ ? Forum

[levg1490]

Having a really hard time deciding where I should be next year. I would appreciate your help.

I'm from New York, I go to school in Upstate New York, love it, but don't necessarily want to live in New York City after law school. I want to stay on the East Coast but I'm also not 100% interested in big law. I don't have any undergraduate debt, and I'm not really sure of my debt tolerance because I have never had to deal with it before. My parents are also not contributing. I do have some money saved up (around 25k) but I know that won't take me too far.

My Cornell indebtedness, using the Georgetown financial planning calculator, would be $265k after the 3 years. As thrilled as I am that it is in the t-14 and that it has a strong national reach, that number terrifies me, especially since I'm not positive that NYC big law is where I will want to be.

Coming out of W&L I would have around 35k in debt, 65k from W&M, around 95k from Notre Dame, BU and Emory.

I'd welcome any comments, especially from those in law school. Thanks for reading this.

[bk1]

Your non-Cornell numbers seem off. BU should be more like 120k. I'd probably take BU in your situation (best rep on the east coast for cheapest cost), but ideally would not pay more than 100k for it.

If you don't want biglaw and don't want NYC then Cornell (or any T14 at sticker for that matter) should be off the table since NYC biglaw is the easiest way to pay off that kind of debt.