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Don't go to law school for your career goals.

Can you explain the math of Cornell on a 50k/year scholarship still putting you $100k in debt? That has to be near full tuition, right? If so, do you really think you are going to spend ~32k a year on housing, etc.? That seems high to me.

ph14 wrote:Can you explain the math of Cornell on a 50k/year scholarship still putting you $100k in debt? That has to be near full tuition, right? If so, do you really think you are going to spend ~32k a year on housing, etc.? That seems high to me.

Tuition is still about 9k after the scholly and probably will be 10k+ the year after etc. I know budgets are exaggerated a bit, but according to Cornell, even with 50k a year, it leaves about 29k for tuition, living, personal.

Bajam wrote:

ph14 wrote:Can you explain the math of Cornell on a 50k/year scholarship still putting you $100k in debt? That has to be near full tuition, right? If so, do you really think you are going to spend ~32k a year on housing, etc.? That seems high to me.

Tuition is still about 9k after the scholly and probably will be 10k+ the year after etc. I know budgets are exaggerated a bit, but according to Cornell, even with 50k a year, it leaves about 29k for living and personal whatever.

Cornell is $59,000/year tuition nowadays?

Have you tried leveraging Cornell to get an extra $10k/year scholarship based on your other offers?

ph14 wrote:

Bajam wrote:

ph14 wrote:Can you explain the math of Cornell on a 50k/year scholarship still putting you $100k in debt? That has to be near full tuition, right? If so, do you really think you are going to spend ~32k a year on housing, etc.? That seems high to me.

Tuition is still about 9k after the scholly and probably will be 10k+ the year after etc. I know budgets are exaggerated a bit, but according to Cornell, even with 50k a year, it leaves about 29k for living and personal whatever.

Cornell is $59,000/year tuition nowadays?

Have you tried leveraging Cornell to get an extra $10k/year scholarship based on your other offers?

Bold is insane right? lol

Bajam wrote:

ph14 wrote:

Bajam wrote:

ph14 wrote:Can you explain the math of Cornell on a 50k/year scholarship still putting you $100k in debt? That has to be near full tuition, right? If so, do you really think you are going to spend ~32k a year on housing, etc.? That seems high to me.

Tuition is still about 9k after the scholly and probably will be 10k+ the year after etc. I know budgets are exaggerated a bit, but according to Cornell, even with 50k a year, it leaves about 29k for living and personal whatever.

Cornell is $59,000/year tuition nowadays?

Have you tried leveraging Cornell to get an extra $10k/year scholarship based on your other offers?

Bold is insane right? lol

Beyond insane. For context, my tuition for 1L year at HLS, not even 3 years ago was something like $48k.

That's what I got plugging numbers into the spreadsheet LS22 posted, but it does seem really high. Doing the math out quickly ($10k leftover in tuition plus, say, $15k for living expenses in Ithaca, assuming 3.4% increase in expenses each year and 7% interest), I got $88k. I could be missing something major.

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chicky wrote:That's what I got plugging numbers into the spreadsheet LS22 posted, but it does seem really high. Doing the math out quickly ($10k leftover in tuition plus, say, $15k for living expenses in Ithaca, assuming 3.4% increase in expenses each year and 7% interest), I got $88k. I could be missing something major.

I mean, I think ultimately it'll be less than what the spreadsheet says, but it doesn't hurt to be conservative. Think about health insurance (whether you get it from school or not) and the personal budget is 5k, which I think can be cut down depending on what you spend "personally".

ETA: Considering your other options, I would take Northeastern off the table. Unless you spelled Northwestern wrong lol

chicky wrote:That's what I got plugging numbers into the spreadsheet LS22 posted, but it does seem really high. Doing the math out quickly ($10k leftover in tuition plus, say, $15k for living expenses in Ithaca, assuming 3.4% increase in expenses each year and 7% interest), I got $88k. I could be missing something major.

I don't really love any of your options honestly, given your narrow goals. If you don't reach them, are you going to be happy in some other job for a long time? I would, if I were in your shoes, maximize my flexibility my minimizing my debt (even at the expense of lowering my odds given that the odds are already extremely low for your goals even from HLS). At the same time, I'm not sure I would go all the way down to Northeastern.

I would try and get more money out of Cornell probably. You could try reapplying next year, though given your 177, i'm not sure what you could do that would meaningfully increase your chances next cycle, besides making sure to apply to Chicago.

chicky wrote:Haven't tried leveraging Cornell because I figured, given my international PI focus, that it wasn't really a viable option to achieve my goals. Starting to feel like I've had blinders on (re:everything) for the last couple months and am going to start negotiating with them on Monday.

The thing is, international PI is really difficult to land a job in even coming out of HYS. So I'm thinking about your best option, knowing that your most probable outcome is likely not going to be your desired outcome. I realize that might seem odd.

Have you thought more about the marry rich option? HBS has a lot of eligible bachelors/bachelorettes.

ph14 wrote: The thing is, international PI is really difficult to land a job in even coming out of HYS. So I'm thinking about your best option, knowing that your most probable outcome is likely not going to be your desired outcome. I realize that might seem odd.

No, that makes perfect sense - I know international PI is one of the most competitive fields out there. I think conversations with very satisfied NYU and HLS alums working in IHR have given me this false sense of optimism. I'm trying to weigh their positive experiences with the very, very real possibility that I'll strike out completely. It's just difficult to know exactly how likely that is and how worthwhile it is for me to take the risk.

Worldtraveler is the resident PI/IHR expert around these parts. You should consider reaching out to her and asking for her advice.

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chicky wrote:

ph14 wrote:Worldtraveler is the resident PI/IHR expert around these parts. You should consider reaching out to her and asking for her advice.

Will do, and will report back if there's anything that might be helpful for other folks in a similar position. Thanks for your time.

Of course. Always happy to talk through an applicant's situation with them.

Is there a reason you're choosing law school and not a development economics MA or public policy? I'm a little confused as to how what you want really needs a law degree.

I'm not sure taking out 200k in loans for law school is a great idea when you're more into development. There are way more jobs in development and you can get there without the time and expense of law school.

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chicky wrote:

worldtraveler wrote:Is there a reason you're choosing law school and not a development economics MA or public policy? I'm a little confused as to how what you want really needs a law degree.

I'm not sure taking out 200k in loans for law school is a great idea when you're more into development. There are way more jobs in development and you can get there without the time and expense of law school.

I'm really interested in using litigation to create incentives to regulate the development sector, and my volunteer experience is with an organization doing exactly that (albeit one of very few such organizations that exist). That was the best blueprint I could find for the kind of work I wanted to do, although I'm still considering applying for joint degree programs with policy schools during 1L.

This isn't just a unicorn, this is an endangered species of unicorn. You would need a joint degree and I'm inclined to say you should get some work experience in development before law school.

You almost certainly aren't getting a job in this area of interest. What is your backup and safety net? Tailor your approach based on the likely assumption that you will have to settle for the safety net rather than the unicorn-esque goal.

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chicky wrote:Endangered species of unicorn . . . excellent. I think that makes me the most delusional of all the 0Ls in the land. (Maybe even impressively delusional? No? K. Moving on.)

Backup plan: human rights in any capacity, including domestically. If things really don't go as planned, I'm also interested in domestic housing policy (I believe once dubbed the least sexy area of PI, so I'd have that going for me). I'm more interested in policy than in direct legal services but would be happy to work in direct legal services for a few years if there were an obvious route to bigger-picture work from there.

Law and development is actually a significant academic field (although it had a rough patch in the 80s) and it features a practitioner/scholar duality, so I can see the appeal. There are definitely people working in what you described. I'm heavily involved in the international law community at my school and we sent grads to do border migration work in Myanmar, Iraqi refugee work in Amman, students helping drafting the new Libyan constitution, ect.. so for all the unicornizing on TLS these positions do exist for students at top universities with large networks.

The problem is commitment and financing. None of this work is well paid, and it takes sincere commitment; you can't just jump into it. Your friends will be going to firms and making a lot of money with stable post-grad prospects, which means 95/100 times you will jump on board (which is why the PI crowd diminishes every semester). LRAP is unpredictable, and for post-grad work you can find funding, but its slim. When TLS says "there are no jobs in this" or "don't go to law school for these goals" I think the message is not a strictly literal one (because obviously there are JDs tasked on development projects), it's that you won't be making six figures at first, or potentially ever - I mean you REALLY won't be making any money - and that's really tough to swallow for people who largely go to law school for a second chance to claw their way into the upper middle class when they couldn't make it in/into finance. These cognitive dystopic illusions are then projected onto every naive bright-eyed incoming student.

Have you met with/dialogued with professors and students at NYU, CLS, and Harvard who work on your goals? These three schools, in addition to Yale, would serve best for your interests. They are narrow but definitely exist; don't listen to what we say on this board and let that turn you away from law school as a professional avenue. You might not have time before the scholarship deadlines, but do your best to contact the human rights/development/international faculties at HCN and ask them to place you in touch with students in those fields (although it would probably have to be 3L cause the grads won't necessarily be reachable).

I know there are resources at CLS for what you're looking for, but with Harvard at that price it's probably where I'd go. Congrats on your great cycle and best of luck.

Yeah you can work on development issues as a lawyer, but is it worth it to go in debt for law school when you could go to a shorter and cheaper program and still enter the same field?

OP sounds like she/he doesn't really want to be a lawyer. You can work on international and domestic policy issues a lot of other ways.

I have a friend who works at USAID and I think she does something similar to what you want to do. It's something like monitoring aid programs and developing mechanisms to monitor their effectiveness and create better regulations on the programs USAID funds. She went to public policy school and did pretty rigorous stats and economics training. Law school really doesn't prepare you do do anything close to that.

worldtraveler wrote:Yeah you can work on development issues as a lawyer, but is it worth it to go in debt for law school when you could go to a shorter and cheaper program and still enter the same field?

OP sounds like she/he doesn't really want to be a lawyer. You can work on international and domestic policy issues a lot of other ways.

I have a friend who works at USAID and I think she does something similar to what you want to do. It's something like monitoring aid programs and developing mechanisms to monitor their effectiveness and create better regulations on the programs USAID funds. She went to public policy school and did pretty rigorous stats and economics training. Law school really doesn't prepare you do do anything close to that.

worldtraveler, obviously you are far more knowledgeable on these topics than me or almost any other poster. So I'm not going to disagree with you; I agree that this does depend on exactly what type of work OP wants to do. I'll second that if it's empirical or analytically-driven and revolves around a particularized type of policy making, an MPA makes more sense. OP should check out the programs at Kennedy, WW and SIPA.

But if it's development legal aid work (helping build local jurisprudence/legal education or constitutional governance training or legal aid for disenfranchised populations) or institution-building/implementation of international standards, where legal training appears more closely related, then the JD or JD-MPA serves as a better route.

I also think, despite the bad reputation for this view on TLS, a top JD with some policy/international background can do more of the work an MA/MPA could do than vise versa.

OP, maybe you could defer from Harvard or Columbia and take a year to finesse your goals and maybe apply to a joint program?

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