GW vs. SMU Dedman Forum

[BigCityDreams]

Hello! Im hoping to get some feedback and opinions on which choice is better. Please give me you feedback
-The schools you are considering
-COA for SMU= 71,388. parents will be covering entire COL
COA for GW= 60,342. parents will still cover COL
-How you will be financing your COA, i.e. loans, family, or savings
- I will be financing the remaining debt with loans
-Where you are from and where you want to work, and other places where you have significant ties (if any)
- I am from Houston and would ultimately prefer to work in Houston after graduation. I currently live in washington, dc and have been here for the last 4 years for undergrad
-Your general career goals
-Would not mind big law if it is an option(preferably oil) but am interested and open to other outcomes
-Your LSAT/GPA numbers
-153, 3.7 URM
-How many times you have taken the LSAT
-once

I look forward to the feedback from everyone. Aside from retaking and sitting out, which option would you choose?

[transferror]

Retake for full $$ from UT

[Poldy]

Is University of Houston an option? I'm far from an expert on any of this but I do know that UH has a good energy program and I know many people in O&G law from UH. SMU may be in a similar situation and I could just not know about it. I was at an O&G legal conference last week and there were tons of people from UH along with a good handful of students from SMU.

Other than that, and I know you said you aren't interested but I'll say it anyway, consider retaking. If you could pick up any land work or something like that in the meantime (idk your background) it would definitely help with finding O&G work. I would think getting into the mid to high 160s would put you solidly into UT and since you're from TX, you would get the benefit of in state tuition.

[BigCityDreams]

Thank you for the responses! I am considering a retake, however, my parents are super against it and making the choice very difficult!

[ilikebaseball]

SMU would give you more if you raised your LSAT to the 160's, which is extremely doable and probably wouldn't even take that long. That should be your option.

Edit: Just saw that you wanted to work in Houston. Don't go to SMU. Go to UH. Raise your LSAT to a 160 and you'll be in great shape. If you raise it to lower to mid 160's you may get UT.

[BasilHallward]

Your COA at SMU is only 70k?? Or is this cost of tuition?
With a 153 it is hard to imagine that you got nearly full ride to smu. My COA is 140k with a 162, 3.8x. Needless to say, I won't be attending at that suicidal cost.

[sandwhich]

Your COA at SMU is only 70k?? Or is this cost of tuition?
With a 153 it is hard to imagine that you got nearly full ride to smu. My COA is 140k with a 162, 3.8x. Needless to say, I won't be attending at that suicidal cost.

OP is URM which alone is worth about $100k to most law schools.

[kalvano]

Tell your parents to shut up. You need to retake. That's a great GPA and with a higher score, you're looking at significantly better options than SMU or GW.

[BigCityDreams]

Your COA at SMU is only 70k?? Or is this cost of tuition?
With a 153 it is hard to imagine that you got nearly full ride to smu. My COA is 140k with a 162, 3.8x. Needless to say, I won't be attending at that suicidal cost.

I did not include anything aside from tuition because my parents will cover all other living expenses.

[BasilHallward]

Agree with kalvano. You MUST retake, unless you have a reason that passes the sniff test

[BasilHallward]

Your COA at SMU is only 70k?? Or is this cost of tuition?
With a 153 it is hard to imagine that you got nearly full ride to smu. My COA is 140k with a 162, 3.8x. Needless to say, I won't be attending at that suicidal cost.

I did not include anything aside from tuition because my parents will cover all other living expenses.

Ok I see that now. Honestly, that's a really decent number from Gwu; receiving 30k a year is solid. Congrats on a killer cycle! But yeah, retake.

[BasilHallward]

Your COA at SMU is only 70k?? Or is this cost of tuition?
With a 153 it is hard to imagine that you got nearly full ride to smu. My COA is 140k with a 162, 3.8x. Needless to say, I won't be attending at that suicidal cost.

OP is URM which alone is worth about $100k to most law schools.

That claim is simply not supported by the data. SMU is in LOVE with the LSAT. It's surprising, but this means your app is strong in other facets.

[BigZuck]

Your COA at SMU is only 70k?? Or is this cost of tuition?
With a 153 it is hard to imagine that you got nearly full ride to smu. My COA is 140k with a 162, 3.8x. Needless to say, I won't be attending at that suicidal cost.

OP is URM which alone is worth about $100k to most law schools.

That claim is simply not supported by the data. SMU is in LOVE with the LSAT. It's surprising, but this means your app is strong in other facets.

wut

URMs outperform their numbers all the time

OP- there are SMU students/grads posting in this thread and they are telling you not to go to SMU. It's a good school, but there are better schools for Houston and especially someone who wants to do Houston big law. If you had modest career goals, U of H would be just fine. But with Houston big law as a goal you have to go to UT at a bare minimum and ideally a T14. Luckily you have tons of room to improve in the lsat and get to that point. There's all the time in the world, law school isn't going anywhere, and if you want to give yourself a realistic shot at achieving those goals you simply have to retake.

[ilikebaseball]

Your COA at SMU is only 70k?? Or is this cost of tuition?
With a 153 it is hard to imagine that you got nearly full ride to smu. My COA is 140k with a 162, 3.8x. Needless to say, I won't be attending at that suicidal cost.

OP is URM which alone is worth about $100k to most law schools.

That claim is simply not supported by the data. SMU is in LOVE with the LSAT. It's surprising, but this means your app is strong in other facets.

This dude literally goes from thread to thread dissing SMU and he doesn't even know the merits of being URM. Yes it is ABSOLUTELY supported by data, and I'm pretty sure a 5 second google search could show you.

[BasilHallward]

Your COA at SMU is only 70k?? Or is this cost of tuition?
With a 153 it is hard to imagine that you got nearly full ride to smu. My COA is 140k with a 162, 3.8x. Needless to say, I won't be attending at that suicidal cost.

OP is URM which alone is worth about $100k to most law schools.

That claim is simply not supported by the data. SMU is in LOVE with the LSAT. It's surprising, but this means your app is strong in other facets.

This dude literally goes from thread to thread dissing SMU and he doesn't even know the merits of being URM. Yes it is ABSOLUTELY supported by data, and I'm pretty sure a 5 second google search could show you.

Possibly, if all things were equal. But, when lsat is well below 25th, getting a 100k is incredibly rare. OP got close to this from SMU and did get this from GWU. Again, he or she must have a strong app in other areas, which is awesome. Retake and reap greater results

[Clemenceau]

Dear god.

Please retake.

[starry eyed]

if you do go to one of those schools i would go with GW. GW could get you back to Houston-plus it opens up the DC market.
SMU may do you more harm than good at getting back to houston bc houston firms wonder why you went to law school in dllas.
Zuck- i've heard that having ties in dallas can make getting a job in houston problematic and vice versa, do you find that to be true?

[BigZuck]

if you do go to one of those schools i would go with GW. GW could get you back to Houston-plus it opens up the DC market.
SMU may do you more harm than good at getting back to houston bc houston firms wonder why you went to law school in dllas.
Zuck- i've heard that having ties in dallas can make getting a job in houston problematic and vice versa, do you find that to be true?

I've heard that too. My experience with that is very limited but Dallas firms wanted absolutely nothing to do with me at OCI (all my Texas ties are to Houston)

I think the presumption is that you're really just dedicated to whichever city that you have stronger ties to. But of course presumptions can be overcome.

[chuckbass]

if you do go to one of those schools i would go with GW. GW could get you back to Houston-plus it opens up the DC market.
SMU may do you more harm than good at getting back to houston bc houston firms wonder why you went to law school in dllas.
Zuck- i've heard that having ties in dallas can make getting a job in houston problematic and vice versa, do you find that to be true?

Lol, and Houston firms wouldn't wonder why you went to school in DC? This is awful advice.

[CanadianWolf]

If you've only taken the LSAT one time, then consider retaking for a higher score & better law school options.

Wouldn't the University of Houston be better than either of your current options for placement in Houston ? Also, focus on getting an offer from the Univ. of Texas ?

[BVest]

if you do go to one of those schools i would go with GW. GW could get you back to Houston-plus it opens up the DC market.
SMU may do you more harm than good at getting back to houston bc houston firms wonder why you went to law school in dllas.
Zuck- i've heard that having ties in dallas can make getting a job in houston problematic and vice versa, do you find that to be true?

Lol, and Houston firms wouldn't wonder why you went to school in DC? This is awful advice.

Yes, this is terrible advice. OP expresses no desire to work in DC, but rather in Houston. SMU students who want Houston and have ties do fine in Houston, commensurate with their law school performance. But OP should retake and sit out a cycle or two.

Just getting that score up to 160 would mean great opportunities at Texas and T14s.

[BigCityDreams]

Thank you to everyone for the advice

[starry eyed]

if you do go to one of those schools i would go with GW. GW could get you back to Houston-plus it opens up the DC market.
SMU may do you more harm than good at getting back to houston bc houston firms wonder why you went to law school in dllas.
Zuck- i've heard that having ties in dallas can make getting a job in houston problematic and vice versa, do you find that to be true?

Lol, and Houston firms wouldn't wonder why you went to school in DC? This is awful advice.

He could say GW was the most prestigious school he got into. And no one will dispute that GW travels further than smu. It's def less suspicius than displaying interest in Houston rival, dallas

But neither is ideal

[BigZuck]

if you do go to one of those schools i would go with GW. GW could get you back to Houston-plus it opens up the DC market.
SMU may do you more harm than good at getting back to houston bc houston firms wonder why you went to law school in dllas.
Zuck- i've heard that having ties in dallas can make getting a job in houston problematic and vice versa, do you find that to be true?

Lol, and Houston firms wouldn't wonder why you went to school in DC? This is awful advice.

He could say GW was the most prestigious school he got into. And no one will dispute that GW travels further than smu. It's def less suspicius than displaying interest in Houston rival, dallas

But neither is ideal

GW isn't prestigious though. And I'm not sure that it "travels further" than SMU, or that if it does, it travels to TX. I definitely don't think that it would travel from DC to Houston better than SMU would travel from Dallas to Houston. Quite the contrary, actually.

Both schools are rando regionals that place predominantly in their region. GW is probably better for some things like NYC big law but that's all relative of course.

I can't think of a scenario where I would recommend someone go to GW if they wanted to work in TX. Square peg, round hole. There are rounder pegs out there.

[mi-chan17]

GW grad here. My law school friends/acquaintances that were from Texas and were targeting Texas all managed to get back there. That being said, they had to put in a solid amount of hustle and work to make that happen. It wasn't necessarily easy. I can't say that it'd be any more or less work than getting to Houston from SMU, because I don't know enough about the Texas market to say with any certainty how easy it is to make that move. I do think, though, that if your be-all, end-all is Texas, that retaking and going UT makes the most sense.