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Hello!

I am deciding between UVA and W&M. After doing math, I am looking at 175K in debt with UVA and about 60K in debt with W&M. I will be taking out loans in that amount and have basically no savings at the moment.

I am wondering whether UVA is better enough to merit the 110K in debt.

As a life plan, I plan on staying in Virginia, but may want to go to Texas instead; working reasonable hours for most of my life; and taking time to have kids within a decade of graduating (and then going back to work forever). I don't mind working 60-80 hours weeks in "big law" for a couple of years to pay off debt and get experience, but I don't want to do it forever or delude myself into thinking I'll pay off all of my debt that way.

As for law areas, I am pretty undecided. I like contracts and mergers and acquisitions, as much as I vaguely understand that stuff to be; constitutional law as a topic, although unsure of applications; and employment injustices and discrimination, especially issues of immigrants and gender. I WOULD like to do a judicial clerkship upon graduating, if I can afford to do that versus biglaw?

Someone suggested to me that I start at W&M and transfer after my first year to save about $30K, or take a year off to "live like a college student" and save money. (One of my friends managed to save $20K in a year at a similar-paying job as mine now with similar COL -- although she ended up working about 70-80 hours a week to do so, so I'm not sure it's better to "prework" off the debt that way.)

I think UVA would be a fine choice for you here. It's roughly what I'm doing and I think it's generally an acceptable decision, given that you have an interest in working a larger firm down the road. I don't know as much about W&M admittedly, but I can tell you that UVA can get you to VA or TX (assuming you have the ties).

The main reason I'm writing however is just to make clear that you should not go to W&M with the idea that you could transfer to UVA after 1L year to save some money. It's incredibly unlikely to happen for any given student and should never be a person's plan going in.

Yes, whatever you do, don't go to W&M with the intent of transferring.

I would probably take UVA but that is a lot of money. I might retake if that could get you some more $$.