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What do you guys think my best option is between these four choices?

- Hoping to work in Southern California
- Not stuck on Biglaw
- Not making decision based on $$, although it does factor in slightly

If you want SoCal, then it is between Davis and Irvine. UC Irvine is in LA, but is less established. Davis has more alumni in LA, and is a well known UC school. I had no problem finding 2L summer work in LA out of Davis. That said, you should probably let $$$ make your decision for you.

Are you sure that you not interested in the San Francisco market?

Why is $ only a slight factor?

What are your connections to SoCal?

I have the money to pay for school so I'm not looking at taking out loans and although I haven't received my offer from all four of the schools I'm figuring similar scholarship offers based on rankings. I'm not set on Southern Cal but that's where I would prefer.

Dr. Nefario wrote:What are your connections to SoCal?

I grew up in an area near Irvine and have family near by. I'm not dead set on Southern California but it is my preference.

I agree that this does largely come down to Davis and Irvine out of these four. BU is a great school but it's a regional school about as far away from Southern Cal as you can be. Obviously, the ideal situation would be to retake and shoot for USC or UCLA, but failing that, I think both of these schools are decent regionals. Davis is older and more established since it was founded in the 60's while Irvine is almost 10 years old. But at the same time, Irvine has outperformed Davis in Biglaw+clerkships every single year since it was founded, which isn't something to ignore. At the end of the day, I'd look at your scholarships and go to whichever school is cheaper. Irvine is probably the better option at the exact same price, but I would go to Davis if it were cheaper. It's still a fine school and neither are giving you amazing odds at a clerkship or Biglaw so let the money speak.

When comparing the employment numbers between Davis and Irvine, I would encourage you take into account Irvine's growing size. As another poster pointed out, Irvine has a higher % of their class getting clerkship's and biglaw (I assume that's accurate). But in 2014 Irvine had only had 93 graduates, last year they admitted 123 students with lower median lsats. Depending on how large they are planning to get, those percentages could change a lot.

I think a better number to consider, given that you aren't hoping for biglaw and you don't know where you will end up in the class rank, is their respective unemployed and seeking work rates -- 10/93 (Irvine) versus 14/169 (Davis).

If I were in your shoes, I would be stuck between UCI or Davis. I think I would go UCI because it's actually located in SoCal whereas Davis is in NorCal. I also like the fact that although Davis has been around much longer, UCI was ranked one higher than Davis in the latest USWN rankings, so that's a promising sign.

Both are great schools, but I think there's more upside to UCI. Letting $ decide wouldn't be a bad decision either.

1) Does "hoping to work in SoCal" mean you'd be really disappointed to work anywhere else?
2) Does "not stuck on Biglaw" mean you'd turn it down if you got it?
3) Does "not making decision based on money" mean your parents are paying for it and they're filthy rich and you won't inherit that money when the die/alternatively, you have a GI bill from your military service?

If the answer to 1), 2) and 3) is "absolutely yes", you should pick either UCI, or reapply early decision to UCLA/USC.

If the answer to any of 1), 2), or 3) is anything other than "absolutely yes" you should retake the LSAT and reapply.

Retake for UCLA/USC at the very least

For me the choice was between Davis and BU (pretty much) and I went to Davis because I wanted to work in California. What I didn't realize is that I have really good ties to my home market (went to Cal UG, grew up there) and so I could have probably made it happen with a little mass mailing, so if I could do it over again I'd probably go to BU, but Davis should be fine for finding something in SoCal.