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I've seen a lot of postings about the RTK vs Harvard but none for the IILJ. I haven't been told yet how much money I'm getting, so I know that will be a factor, but based on previous years I'm hoping it is significant.
I have some help paying for law school, so I will have debt but not crushing debt.
Obviously I am interested in international issues. (Please spare me the international law speech that everyone on this site loves.)
The IILJ provides mentoring, help with publishing, and help finding internships. Does that outweigh the name power of Harvard? I'm also worried about being lost at a place like HLS and not having the opportunities to do clinics because I will always be competing with a million qualified people.
I'm happy to live in other place and I'm open to a lot of post school opportunities.

bumping this just to see if anyone has any thoughts?

Take Hahvard and run.

Can you post numbers with this? I have no idea what the IILJ scholar is, sorry. How much will each school cost? What are your specific goals?

Wait this is a full tuition scholarship? And you don't know if you should take it, is that the question?

I'm not sure on the money yet, but for me it is more about the mentoring that comes along with the IILJ.

Hanntastic wrote:I'm not sure on the money yet, but for me it is more about the mentoring that comes along with the IILJ.

If it is just mentoring and not significant $$, you should almost certainly take Harvard. No one is going to be able to give you much help here until they know (at least in the ballpark) how much money the IILJ comes with.

Hanntastic wrote:I'm not sure on the money yet, but for me it is more about the mentoring that comes along with the IILJ.

seriously? get your mentoring on TLS

Depends, whose your mentor?

I've heard of IILJ. Sounds cool indeed. Doesn't it come with a full ride? Honestly, I think the main reason NYU would be a strong contender for me would be (1) debt-free graduation at top school with a strong IL curriculum and reputation and (2) studying in NYC with opportunities to network and work with international agencies. That would make NYU VERY tempting. Yeah the mentoring stuff would be nice icing on the cake, but I think the Harvard brand would make up for it, and you could get mentoring at H as well. I mean, you can build relationships with professors in classes and through RA gigs, you'd join IL journals and groups, you can reach out to the H network etc. All that said, I would probably take the money.

Redamon1 wrote:I've heard of IILJ. Sounds cool indeed. Doesn't it come with a full ride? Honestly, I think the main reason NYU would be a strong contender for me would be (1) debt-free graduation at top school with a strong IL curriculum and reputation and (2) studying in NYC with opportunities to network and work with international agencies. That would make NYU VERY tempting. Yeah the mentoring stuff would be nice icing on the cake, but I think the Harvard brand would make up for it, and you could get mentoring at H as well. I mean, you can build relationships with professors in classes and through RA gigs, you'd join IL journals and groups, you can reach out to the H network etc. All that said, I would probably take the money.

If it is full or close to full tuition, definitely take the money. That said, I have no idea what this actually means in practice:

NYU Law wrote: Scholars will receive merit scholarships up to full tuition for the three years of the J.D. portion of the program.

I must be very bored. Why not talk to some of the people who graduated the program or are in it now? I found the link to the current scholars. I skimmed through it and I only saw a few people who were ended up doing something instead of biglaw. On the plus side, it looks like only a very select few get this award each year.

http://www.iilj.org/aboutus/ScholarsArchive.asp

Hanntastic--did you get the scholarship or is this hypothetical? Just asking because I am also a finalist and have not yet heard...

NYstate wrote:I skimmed through it and I only saw a few people who were ended up doing something instead of biglaw...
http://www.iilj.org/aboutus/ScholarsArchive.asp

Just to correct you a bit, IILJ alumni do a lot of non-firm stuff. Firms still take a plurality of the alums, but out of 36 alumni between 2004-2012, I count:

11 at firms
8 in public interest (non-gov)
3 at the State Dept.
4 still clerking
2 getting higher degrees
1 directing the Hauser program (but who had an awesome few years at State)
1 in-house at Citibank
1 filmmaker
1 blogger.

I couldn't find info on 4 grads. This is all Googling and the info on the IILJ site, so you can check my sources on this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByIlxD2 ... sp=sharing

If I'm wrong (I'm still learning law lingo) let me know and I will correct.

ETA: Also, according to this list, something like 14 of the 36 JD grads from 2004-2012 do federal clerkships...it's not a fair comparison, but a nearly 40% fed clerkship rate stacks up pretty well against HYS.

So I have heard, but it via an informal phone conversation about something else. They didn't mention when official requests would go out.

Hanntastic wrote:So I have heard, but it via an informal phone conversation about something else. They didn't mention when official requests would go out.

Congrats! And thanks for the info.

Posting here for posterity:

I chose Harvard. Lots of factors went into this decision, but ultimately I felt that the resources being offered by NYU (except for the straight-up scholarship $) were not anything that I couldn't find at HLS with a little effort. Adding to that that I am trying to avoid biglaw after graduation (and at ~$120k in debt even from NYU, I would still need it if I didn't get an LRAP-eligible job), I felt that the employment boosts from Harvard (prestige & PI fellowships) outweighed the scholarship $ from NYU (counting CoL and $12k/yr need-based aid from HLS, the end difference was probably ~$60k). I didn't negotiate for more money, partially because I got the impression that it wouldn't make a difference (I had no higher offers) and partially because I don't think even a full ride would swayed me.

Any future readers of this post who are making a similar decision and want to know more, feel free to PM me.

I chose Harvard as well for basically exactly the same reasons.

can't wait to meet both of you!

When you're choosing between NYU for basically free and H, you're playing with house money, so you can't make a wrong choice. Congrats to both of you and good luck!