Top Law Schools

My present situation is as follows:
I've been offered a scholarship at Georgetown that would total $13,000/yr, and guarantee the $27,000/yr I received in need based grants for a combined total of $40,000/yr.

I've recently been fortunate enough to get off the WL at Michigan and was offered $8,000/yr, but it currently seems that I may not get any need based assistance.

I've been working out the numbers and it seems that with the aid, Georgetown comes to around $100,000 for all three years, assuming I can keep CoL around $26k, which I hear may be difficult, so it may be more like $110,000, pre interest.

Michigan comes to around $177,000, pre interest.

Although I am leaning towards Mich. more as I believe I'd like to do transactional law later on and their ITC clinic interests me. I also have a major preference for AA and the school culture at Michigan, but I don't think that the difference in cost may be worth it and I do like D.C. and Georgetown. Ultimately I'd really like to be back here on the west coast, but I'd also be interested in returning home to NYC for a while. I figured Mich. would give me slightly better big law prospects in both cases, but I'm not sure if it's worth $70,000 more than Georgetown. If I can secure 10-15k in need based aid I think I'd be more apt to choose Mich., but right now I'm struggling to decide.

I don't think UMich is worth it here unless you can snag something like 15k/year more (if not more than that).

I agree w/ BK. Mich doesn't appear worth the extra debt.

bk187 wrote:I don't think UMich is worth it here unless you can snag something like 15k/year more (if not more than that).

This is similar to my thinking. I'd really love to be there, but I'd like to keep the difference in cost between them at least under $50k, which would require something like $15k/yr like you said. I'd obviously like it to be smaller, but I think I could stomach paying that much more. Additionally, Mich. would allow me greater options to potentially tackle interest and even some principle while I'm in school, whereas Georgetown would likely require me to devote more of my finances to CoL so after interest the gap could potentially be smaller.

GULC with 120K sounds pretty damn good to me. I'm surprised you're even considering Mich at all when Gtown is giving you that kind of $$$.

How did you calculate the debt loads pre-interest? Estimated total debt at graduation for Michigan's Class of 2015 before you discount is now up to $248,000 with interest (source: --LinkRemoved--). Even with the 8K scholly it still looks like you'd be owing north of 200K at graduation once you calculate the interest. That's not an amount that can be repaid easily, even if you land up in the portion of the class (28.2% for 2010) who land jobs starting at $160K. If you net that salary from GULC you could pay off the lesser debt in a few years if you're careful, and you also wouldn't need 160K to avoid going into economic hardship.

Unless you're committed to pursuing public interest work and having your outstanding balance forgiven after 10 years through IBR*, I would say GULC + scholly and need-based aid is the less risky situation for most people. Obviously you may have reasons to prefer Michigan that don't deal only with debt, but the percentage of the class making a high salary would have to be significantly higher at Michigan and currently it's not.

*There's a slight chance new legislation will improve the terms of IBR so that it's 10 years until forgiveness for everyone and just 5 for qualifying public interest work. But that legislation wouldn't apply to loans you've already signed, which means they won't help law students until next year's cycle at the earliest.

Thanks for all the information and everything all. I think you all are right, I'll simply wait to hear back about any additional aid from Mich but otherwise likely be at GULC. I appreciate everyone helping out and getting me to think less emotionally about the decision.

One thing I noticed though, LST has GULCs CoL at 22k, which is 2k less than what Georgetown seems to estimate and I was assuming they were being extremely conservative. From what I could surmise Georgetown CoL ranged more from 27-30k/yr living a pretty average life (not going out too often but still managing to do a bit every other weekend or so). I thought CoA over all three years and interest would be closer to 270k