Top Law Schools

Made the mistake of not visiting either school.

My goal is CA big law > any big law in a major market > everything else.

My COA at Duke is about 57k/year, and COA at Cornell is about 45k/year. The prospect of being in Ithaca freaks me out a bit given what a lot of people say about it (but that isn't necessarily fair since I've never visited). I don't know if quality of life in Durham is considerably better (although I am a huge basketball fan).

Parents would be willing to cover cost of living and I have access to very favorable loans to cover the rest.

According to LST:

CA
Cornell 6.8%
Duke 10.7%

NY
Cornell 56.5%
Duke 26%

Decide how much you really want CA and are willing to pay for that small increase at Duke, though tbh you probably need good grades from either to get there. Cornell offers the bigger safety net for biglaw in case you can't get into CA biglaw. I'm assuming you have CA ties?

At Cornell the weather can suck and getting to Ithaca is a pain but the college town atmosphere itself is cool. Obviously Duke just won the national championship and has a strong basketball program but I wouldn't factor that into my calculus unless things were even otherwise. I would say either school is a good choice though and you should be happy with yourself wherever you choose.

I think Duke probably has the slight edge on getting you back to CA, but I still say take the offer at Cornell. If you have ties, you're likely not much worse off trying to get back to CA, as neither places a ton of grads there, and you say you'd be okay with another market (read: NYC) so save the $$. I can't speak to whether you'd like Ithaca better than Durham, but it sounds like not, so if that's worth $36k to you then Duke is obviously also a fantastic school.