Top Law Schools

Schools I am most strongly considering:
Cornell w/ $50,000 per year
NYU w/ $25,000 per year ($12,500 during 3L if substantial earnings during 2L summer)

Other potentially applicable schools for scholarship negotiations or whatever:
Michigan w/ $25,000 per year, same stip as NYU
UVA, haven't heard scholarship info yet, if any (I heard they were out of money?)
Georgetown, haven't heard scholarship info yet, if any
Harvard, JS1, no JS2 thus far
Columbia, held until April
Stanford (lol at being accepted)


I will be financing the education largely through loans, although the first $100,000 in loans can be taken out at ~2% interest from a family member (and will have to be repaid in full). I also anticipate maybe $10,000 per year in family aid.

General career goals are Biglaw for as long as I survive in it. I would like to have solid exit options after my time is up.
Location is not particularly important to me as I am from Florida and don't have big city ties.

LSAT 175, GPA 3.69, LSAT taken once.
Minor C+F or a lack of Why X? addenda may have caused me to underperform my numbers slightly, i.e. WL at Chicago, Penn and Duke.

I am somewhat debt averse in that I don't want to graduate from somewhere with 250k in debt, right in the middle of a recession, and be forced to take a 40k per year doc review job in an attempt to stay afloat. However, I am not completely anathema to loans.

Right now I don't see any real negotiation leverage with NYU. I guess I could approach them with a Harvard acceptance should I be so lucky to receive one?

What are ya'll's thoughts?

As of right now, Cornell seems to be the best value for you, if you'd be content with NYC BigLaw.

I don't think you'd have much success leveraging a Harvard acceptance (if you get it) against the NYU scholarship offer, but it'd be worth a shot, I suppose. You might try to leverage NYU against Michigan, which probably won't be successful, or Cornell against Michigan if you're interested in the latter, with which you might have some chance of success.

I had this same choice and chose Cornell. Wasn't interested in paying $100,000 just to stay in NYC. Don't regret it.

If you want, you can probably try using the Cornell offer to negotiate with NYU. I never bothered trying, but I think the difference between 150K and 62.5K should be enough to get them to at least drop the stip on the extra 12.5K even though Cornell is lower ranked. And I remember people in my cycle successfully negotiating with NYU using Cornell offers.

Cornell has excellent placement in NYC. why pay the extra 100k?

That nyu offer seems low to me