ANY Insight?: Chapman VS Southwestern +(USF/UOP/Santa Clara) Forum

[disso]

Finally registered to make this post because my 'last' summer is very quickly passing me by as I continue to deliberate between schools. Any comments, opinions, insight, and advice whatsoever would be greatly appreciated!

For context: I currently aspire to be a DA, in the SoCal-LA County area. I want to go to a school for their criminal litigation/trial advocacy programs, clinics, academia, and alumni network. Quality of life inherent from their campus and location is of consideration to me.

So I’ve been accepted to: [My Goal was Loyola. Due to family circumstances, I was forced to apply on the last second, of the last hour for each of these school's deadlines, instead of waiting to retake the LSAT and to apply at the beginning of the next cycle, and I'm certain this substantially hurt my admission potential. I'm thus forced to choose from the following]

- Chapman - with an 80%, $37K/a year scholarship, renewable at 2.9GPA.
- Southwestern - initially admitted with no scholarship, but was just recently able to negotiate a 53% 25K/year scholarship, renewable at 2.7GPA.
- Santa Clara - with a 10k scholarship/year, renewable with 3.0GPA.
- USF – with a 27K/1st year, renewable at 20k for 2nd/3rd year with min of 3.2GPA or top 28%
- Pacific McGeorge – with 23K1st year, renewable if in top 50% of class.
- Applied to California Western & Western State and received 90% scholarships from both. (I applied to them specifically so I could utilize their scholarships to negotiate other schools with)
- Waitlisted to: Loyola + USD. Waiting to hear back from Pepperdine. I've already submitted LOCI's and attained a secondary LOR for all of these schools.

I’ve visited most of the schools already and have pretty much ruled out USF, pacific, santa clara because I don't want to go to school in and live/work in NorCal. Santa Clara doesn't seem to have any real criminal presence at all, UOP great trial advocacy program but horrible location.

Right now I'm therefore essentially forced to have to choose between Southwestern with a 50% scholarship and Chapman with an 80% scholarship. I would be finding and moving to an apartment near either of the schools I choose to attend. Still trying to negotiate for more money from each school.

Prior to my visit, I knew nothing about Chapman. However, after visiting Chapman, I was very surprisingly impressed in all regards. Quality of life seems high, as I loved their new clean building on a beautiful undergraduate campus, location in upper-scale residential Irvine/orange, largest scholarship, sharp faculty, proximity to home, friendly student vibe, strong criminal/DA socal/orange/irvine alumni network and criminal/trial clinics/programs/academia. The fact that they do 'slower?' year-long courses also seems like it would be a positive thing. Chapman is also 'ranked', while southwestern is 'not ranked' at the moment, and Chapman has always been higher ranked . They had many programs in place to facilitate and aid student success. Students at Chapman seem sharper than at SW. Chapman is still new, and I see it as a positive investment with a lot of potential to only improve and establish itself. Of course this is all just what I had garnered on face value though the tour and from speaking to their admissions/students, so I definitely am considering it with a grain of salt. Feel free to correct/educate me on any point.

Southwestern, in terms of quality of life, for me, seems low; located deep in LA, hellish traffic, small, old and dated campus, students and faculty generally don't seem as sharp. lower rank. substantially smaller scholarship. That aside, I'm aware of their long history and very large criminal/DA/PD alumni network, especially for LA. They seem to have a strong criminal/trial advocacy academia/track, and I'd be very interested in joining their TAP program. If I had to go to SW, I wouldn't doubt that it would get the job done and provide me with what I need to become a successful DA. I see SW as a solid, fundamental, basic law school, but Chapman just seems like it would provide me with a far greater, more pleasant and enjoyable experience. .

Of course, If I am admitted to Pepperdine, or to Loyola/USD off their waitlist, that would change everything.

Any comments/opinions/insight whatsoever regarding ANY of the aforementioned schools would be exceptionally appreciated ASAP! Second seat deadlines are right around the corner for me and I want to finally figure everything out so I can be sane by the time I start school.

Kind Regards and thank you in advance!

[TheSpanishMain]

Pepperdine or USD for anything besides free would be catastrophic so forget about the waitlist.

Gotta retake

[yadiermolina]

Ya to put it bluntly, please don't ruin your life with that debt or these schools.

[TheSpanishMain]

What are your numbers? Just based on your ability to write coherently (believe me, it's not universal on TLS), you seem like a fairly bright guy.

As of right now, you have no good options. Most of these schools just flat out aren't worth attending at all, and USD/Pepperdine are only worth attending with no-stipulations full rides. You would be doing yourself a huge disservice by attending law school this year.

[BigZuck]

Most of the stuff you're concerned with doesn't matter (can't imagine that the student or professorial quality is any different at those two schools, for example).

http://www.lawschooltransparency.com is a site you should check out. That site will tell you what percentage of the class becomes lawyers. The grim reality is that both schools are really, really bad and should probably be shutdown- it's criminal to take all that money from so many people and give them nothing in return. Pepperdine/Loyola are also really bad and should somehow be consolidated or something, if not shut down. The legal market in CA is really, really rough and right now there are only 4 schools worth attending- Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and USC.

Schools like Davis, Loyola, etc. might be ok if they are really cheap (we are talking like 50-60k debt max, which means you need to go on a full ride or have a rich benefactor paying your way) and even then you should only attend of you are ok with the very real possibility of spending three years of your life and having nothing to show for it.

Looks like in your situation you need to retake the LSAT or just not go to law school.

[McAvoy]

Prior to my visit, I knew nothing about Chapman. However, after visiting Chapman, I was very surprisingly impressed in all regards. Quality of life seems high, as I loved their new clean building on a beautiful undergraduate campus, location in upper-scale residential Irvine/orange, largest scholarship, sharp faculty, proximity to home, friendly student vibe, strong criminal/DA socal/orange/irvine alumni network and criminal/trial clinics/programs/academia. The fact that they do 'slower?' year-long courses also seems like it would be a positive thing. Chapman is also 'ranked', while southwestern is 'not ranked' at the moment, and Chapman has always been higher ranked . They had many programs in place to facilitate and aid student success. Students at Chapman seem sharper than at SW. Chapman is still new, and I see it as a positive investment with a lot of potential to only improve and establish itself. Of course this is all just what I had garnered on face value though the tour and from speaking to their admissions/students, so I definitely am considering it with a grain of salt. Feel free to correct/educate me on any point.

You'll have plenty of time to reminisce about their surprisingly beautiful undergraduate campus when you're living in a van, down by the river.

If a school has good employment stats and gives you a good scholarship, but is housed in a trailer park and is universally regarded as having the worst faculty of any law school, ever, you should go there over a raging dumpster fire like Chapman, which is one of the worst law schools in the country by the only metric that should matter: http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/chapman/2013/.

You absolutely must retake, sit a year or two out, and get some legit options. Otherwise, you need to make other career plans. It will suck telling your family and friends you're not going this fall, but it would suck worse to be unemployable in three years with > 150k of nondischargeable debt, which is your most likely outcome at any of these options.