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Thanks for the help everyone.

I mean, you can't seriously take on 270K from CLS/NYU is you already have 75K undergrad debt. Do you have any idea what it would mean to be 345K in debt? You would be ruining yourself for life, regardless of employment outcome. I guess the best of the worst here is to choose MI, since it would "only" leave you a total of a quarter million in debt. Though honestly, to someone in your position, you should be looking into the full scholarship options you got from T15-30 schools that are located in the market where you want to work.

kaiser wrote:I mean, you can't seriously take on 270K from CLS/NYU is you already have 75K undergrad debt. Do you have any idea what it would mean to be 345K in debt? You would be ruining yourself for life, regardless of employment outcome. I guess the best of the worst here is to choose MI, since it would "only" leave you a total of a quarter million in debt.

I think the undergrad debt has already been included in the COA numbers that your quoting.

^^^

My bad, missed that. Still vote Michigan. You would be pretty crazy to go 275K into debt

I vote Michigan as well, less debt and you should be able to get Chicago from Michigan without having to do NYC

So after interest you're going to be looking at around 215k, that's a steep price to pay.

OP, I"m not joking when I ask this, but are you absolutely 100% certain you want to be a lawyer? And is that an informed and researched decision?

Would any opinions change if both my spouse and I were ok with working biglaw to pay off the debt fast?

I think all these responses ASSUME you're willing to do that.

dixiecupdrinking wrote:I think all these responses ASSUME you're willing to do that.

+1

And its all the more reason to choose Michigan, since you can get the debt paid off much faster

dixiecupdrinking wrote:I think all these responses ASSUME you're willing to do that.

I'm assuming that. Though you might be overestimating the ease of paying of that debt. Do you know what your tax rate will be? You should. Don't forget state and city income tax (yes NYC has city income tax). Do realize how quickly interest accumulates on each of those numbers? You should. And be prepared to spend more on food, bars, clothing, entertainment, and housing than you would have ever dreamed of. You're not going to be able to keep up with your co-workers if you don't spend like them.

And last . . . what if you don't get biglaw?

Not getting biglaw at Michigan is a very very real possibility. Its less likely at Columbia, but if you burn out in 3-4 years you're likely to still have 150k of debt (and that's assuming you did a good job of living cheaper than your biglaw coworkers).

One last thing - becoming an AUSA is a great goal. But, its the preferred exit option of at least half of all young biglaw associates. And you're also competing against state and local prosecutors and JAG lawyers. Getting the AUSA gig will be vastly harder than getting into biglaw. What's plan B, C, D, etc?