Top Law Schools

I have a feeling I know how most folks will lean, and I'm leaning that way too. But NYU is amazing for Public Interest, which is what I'm thinking. And it's a full ride. I also really love New York, and NYU as a community seems kinda laid back, which might be nice. But, ya know, Yale. It's Yale.

NYU.

Make a poll.

timebobby wrote:I have a feeling I know how most folks will lean, and I'm leaning that way too. But NYU is amazing for Public Interest, which is what I'm thinking. And it's a full ride. I also really love New York, and NYU as a community seems kinda laid back, which might be nice. But, ya know, Yale. It's Yale.

Don't go to Yale because it's Yale. That is dumb. You know that, right? Is that why you phrased it in that way - so that people would affirm your secret preference for NYU? If you like NYU, go to NYU. With a full scholarship, it is a totally legit choice. That said:

1) Have you visited Yale? It is a pretty laid back place, and it has a great public interest community.

2) Are you sure Yale is at sticker? If you come from a wealthy family this is entirely possible, but a lot of people get need-based aid.

3) I'm in NYC nearly every weekend. (Full disclosure: not the same as living in NYC and I do still miss it)

Feel free to PM me about public interest at Yale. I can't compare it to NYU, but I can tell you what I know.

.

I mean your in an awesome scenario if it was Harvard or Stanford I'd say meh go with NYU probs but Yale ugh Yale my goodness passing on Yale I would regret that the rest of my life - literally 6 of the 10 top 10 schools dean's are from Yale - like look at any faculty guide at Law School they all went to Yale - look at the history of the Supreme Court - Yale, Yale, Yale. Look at the people who run just about anything in Law - Yale. Look at who runs Harvard Law - a Yale Law grad. Yale is just so above and beyond all else I just don't know how anyone could turn it down. NYU full ride by all means go if that's what your heart is set on, but I fear turning down Yale Law will be a life-long regret.

Jchance wrote:Did you not hear about the new PI motto - least debt possible because there might not be those loan forgiveness after 10 years afterall...

NYU wins here easily. Dont buy into Yale's branding and ruin ur life financially.

Yale has 10 year loan forgiveness independent of PSLF

Edit: And can I just add that Yale Law School is not going to ruin anyone's life financially? The TLS mindthink is getting insane lately. Being mostly debt free because you have a full tuition scholarship is a great thing, and maybe even worth a debate on taking it over Yale. But claiming that YLS could ruin OP's life financially is monumentally silly. Especially because if he doesn't get significant financial aid then he's already rich anyway

PrideandGlory1776 wrote:I mean your in an awesome scenario if it was Harvard or Stanford I'd say meh go with NYU probs but Yale ugh Yale my goodness passing on Yale I would regret that the rest of my life - literally 6 of the 10 top 10 schools dean's are from Yale - like look at any faculty guide at Law School they all went to Yale - look at the history of the Supreme Court - Yale, Yale, Yale. Look at the people who run just about anything in Law - Yale. Look at who runs Harvard Law - a Yale Law grad. Yale is just so above and beyond all else I just don't know how anyone could turn it down. NYU full ride by all means go if that's what your heart is set on, but I fear turning down Yale Law will be a life-long regret.

Yeah, I'm not someone who's consumed by prefstige, but I would gladly be an indentured servant for a few decades if it got me a Yale law degree. You can't make a bad choice here, IMO.

Jchance wrote:Did you not hear about the new PI motto - least debt possible because there might not be those loan forgiveness after 10 years afterall...

NYU wins here easily. Dont buy into Yale's branding and ruin ur life financially.

your a fucking idiot

"Thinking about" PI? Isn't this the kind of person who typically goes into biglaw?

Also, this is impossible to answer without knowing how Yale would be funded. Parents paying? Yale. Sticker debt? NYU. Somewhere in between? That's where it gets interesting.

Cicero76 wrote:

Jchance wrote:Did you not hear about the new PI motto - least debt possible because there might not be those loan forgiveness after 10 years afterall...

NYU wins here easily. Dont buy into Yale's branding and ruin ur life financially.

Yale has 10 year loan forgiveness independent of PSLF

Edit: And can I just add that Yale Law School is not going to ruin anyone's life financially? The TLS mindthink is getting insane lately. Being mostly debt free because you have a full tuition scholarship is a great thing, and maybe even worth a debate on taking it over Yale. But claiming that YLS could ruin OP's life financially is monumentally silly. Especially because if he doesn't get significant financial aid then he's already rich anyway

+1

Post removed.

Unless you know you want to be a law professor (which is a tough path even from Yale), NYU.

Yale by a wide margin. If you go to NYU it will always be assumed it was the best school you got in. You can carry around your Yale acceptance and your scholly but it will not make a difference. Your peer group will be NYU. I had similar choices and picked Harvard over the full rides and Y S. I wasn't interested in teaching and believe that the depth and breadth of H is unmatched (happy as a clam). Also a joint MBA left Y out of the mix. Grading at CCN is a crap shoot with absolutely no way to predict how you will do. A named scholly and heaven forbid median grades, which you must assume, is a distant second to Yale. Over a life expectancy of 60 more years the cost difference is meaningless. Hell in NYC lots of parents pay Yale prices to send their kids to 1st and 2nd grade and swear its a good investment.

eph wrote:Yale by a wide margin. If you go to NYU it will always be assumed it was the best school you got in. You can carry around your Yale acceptance and your scholly but it will not make a difference. Your peer group will be NYU. I had similar choices and picked Harvard over the full rides and Y S. I wasn't interested in teaching and believe that the depth and breadth of H is unmatched (happy as a clam). Also a joint MBA left Y out of the mix. Grading at CCN is a crap shoot with absolutely no way to predict how you will do. A named scholly and heaven forbid median grades, which you must assume, is a distant second to Yale. Over a life expectancy of 60 more years the cost difference is meaningless. Hell in NYC lots of parents pay Yale prices to send their kids to 1st and 2nd grade and swear its a good investment.

This is profoundly stupid (except the joint mba bit), don't listen to this - still, I voted Yale nonetheless - if your goal was just large firm work, I would actually say CCN full ride is superior, but Yale will open a lot of opportunities in public interest/government to the average student that NYU kids will have to claw for a little harder. I disagree the debt would be necessarily ruinous. Yale will remain immune from the PLSF changes due to its independent relief structure & tiny class size. Truly no grades first semester, unlike HSCC, would be such a blessing. I would not feel as frightened about debt at Y as H or CC.

Aaand now we have dipshit arguments on both sides. Wins all around.

Riddle me this. Isn't a Vanderbilt a LL.M. scholarship?

the Vanderbilt Scholarship is awarded to a select group of extraordinarily talented LL.M. candidates who have demonstrated outstanding academic promise and/or achievement in their respective field(s) of interest

So are we talking the same at Yale, a LL.M.? Do you already have a JD? From where? The cost difference for 1 year of study is not nearly as meaningful as 3 years.

This is Yale's LL.M. description. Doesn't seem to mesh with your PI interest.

The Law School admits a limited number of graduate students each year to pursue one year of full-time study leading to the degree of Master of Laws (LL.M.). Admission is generally open only to those committed to a career in teaching law.

michlaw wrote:Riddle me this. Isn't a Vanderbilt a LL.M. scholarship?

the Vanderbilt Scholarship is awarded to a select group of extraordinarily talented LL.M. candidates who have demonstrated outstanding academic promise and/or achievement in their respective field(s) of interest

So are we talking the same at Yale, a LL.M.? Do you already have a JD? From where? The cost difference for 1 year of study is not nearly as meaningful as 3 years.

This is Yale's LL.M. description. Doesn't seem to mesh with your PI interest.

The Law School admits a limited number of graduate students each year to pursue one year of full-time study leading to the degree of Master of Laws (LL.M.). Admission is generally open only to those committed to a career in teaching law.

No, they started offering the Vanderbilt to JD admits last year. It's not on their website; you don't apply, they just give it to you.

eph wrote:Yale by a wide margin. If you go to NYU it will always be assumed it was the best school you got in. You can carry around your Yale acceptance and your scholly but it will not make a difference. Your peer group will be NYU. I had similar choices and picked Harvard over the full rides and Y S. I wasn't interested in teaching and believe that the depth and breadth of H is unmatched (happy as a clam)

Don't discount depth and breadth, OP. Depth and breadth is where it's at. The words even rhyme.

And if eph is finding depth and breadth at lowly H, just think what it will be like at Y. You will practically be drowning in breadth.

To sum up, YLS is like NYU but with depth and breadth....oh, and also with $150K of additional debt.

eph wrote:Yale by a wide margin. If you go to NYU it will always be assumed it was the best school you got in. You can carry around your Yale acceptance and your scholly but it will not make a difference. Your peer group will be NYU. I had similar choices and picked Harvard over the full rides and Y S. I wasn't interested in teaching and believe that the depth and breadth of H is unmatched (happy as a clam). Also a joint MBA left Y out of the mix. Grading at CCN is a crap shoot with absolutely no way to predict how you will do. A named scholly and heaven forbid median grades, which you must assume, is a distant second to Yale. Over a life expectancy of 60 more years the cost difference is meaningless. Hell in NYC lots of parents pay Yale prices to send their kids to 1st and 2nd grade and swear its a good investment.

If OP needed a solid argument for why NYU is the right choice, I think this post sums it up

Cicero76 wrote: Yale has 10 year loan forgiveness independent of PSLF

Didnt know that.

With this, I change my vote. Haha.

I would go with Yale for the incredible safety net and the extra doors it opens. The no grades thing is great too. I heard that YLS students don't even bother making outlines their first semester. Then they get 1L SAs with nothing on their transcript. You make up ~30k of the difference right there.

Look: When people say that there are benefits to going to HYS (and ESPECIALLY Y) that you can't get from NYU, they're not wrong. When they say that people will assume that NYU was the best school you got into, they're right. You're giving something up by taking the scholarship, there is no doubt. That's why they're giving you one. They know you wouldn't go without it.

I do hate the "what's [insert astronomical amount of money here] over the course of your career" and the "NYC parents pay this for first grade" lines of thinking, though. What's that amount of money over the course of a career? Well, for starters, for many middle class folks it's more than their parents' mortgages, and more than 2-3 times their parents' salaries, to say nothing of the student's undergraduate debt. It is a. lot. of. money. And while NYC parents may well pay that for first grade, it actually gets at the main point I am trying to make: Wealthy parents pay that. Middle class parents don't, because if they did, it would be reckless.

That said, I don't think Yale is reckless. But I do think it's a lot of money and it's not crazy to choose NYU, if you are not of means.

PrideandGlory1776 wrote:I mean your in an awesome scenario if it was Harvard or Stanford I'd say meh go with NYU probs but Yale ugh Yale my goodness passing on Yale I would regret that the rest of my life - literally 6 of the 10 top 10 schools dean's are from Yale - like look at any faculty guide at Law School they all went to Yale - look at the history of the Supreme Court - Yale, Yale, Yale. Look at the people who run just about anything in Law - Yale. Look at who runs Harvard Law - a Yale Law grad. Yale is just so above and beyond all else I just don't know how anyone could turn it down. NYU full ride by all means go if that's what your heart is set on, but I fear turning down Yale Law will be a life-long regret.

This is your attempt at trolling, right? It's quite possibly the stupidest comment I've seen on this board. You're using metrics such as T10 law school deans to define Yale's prefstige? Do you realize what school a majority of the current Supreme Court came from? This is laughable.

sah wrote:Look: When people say that there are benefits to going to HYS (and ESPECIALLY Y) that you can't get from NYU, they're not wrong. When they say that people will assume that NYU was the best school you got into, they're right. You're giving something up by taking the scholarship, there is no doubt. That's why they're giving you one. They know you wouldn't go without it.

I do hate the "what's [insert astronomical amount of money here] over the course of your career" and the "NYC parents pay this for first grade" lines of thinking, though. What's that amount of money over the course of a career? Well, for starters, for many middle class folks it's more than their parents' mortgages, and more than 2-3 times their parents' salaries, to say nothing of the student's undergraduate debt. It is a. lot. of. money. And while NYC parents may well pay that for first grade, it actually gets at the main point I am trying to make: Wealthy parents pay that. Middle class parents don't, because if they did, it would be reckless.

That said, I don't think Yale is reckless. But I do think it's a lot of money and it's not crazy to choose NYU, if you are not of means.

Very well said.

eph wrote:Yale by a wide margin. If you go to NYU it will always be assumed it was the best school you got in. You can carry around your Yale acceptance and your scholly but it will not make a difference. Your peer group will be NYU. I had similar choices and picked Harvard over the full rides and Y S. I wasn't interested in teaching and believe that the depth and breadth of H is unmatched (happy as a clam). Also a joint MBA left Y out of the mix. Grading at CCN is a crap shoot with absolutely no way to predict how you will do. A named scholly and heaven forbid median grades, which you must assume, is a distant second to Yale. Over a life expectancy of 60 more years the cost difference is meaningless. Hell in NYC lots of parents pay Yale prices to send their kids to 1st and 2nd grade and swear its a good investment.

Bolded isn't true. I feel like this conventional wisdom gets passed on year after year by the TLS masses, most of whom are at/around median and who shout down those who aren't. There are some people who can probably predict that they'll do reasonably ok in law school. People who've had perfect grades since kindergarten and through challenging college classes with written exams (latter bit is rather important) and who actually work hard rather than just rely on talent usually don't flame out once law school starts. Idk if OP is one of these people, but my two cents anyway.