Factoring Unicorn Positions: DCNG with $$$$ vs. MVPB/CCN/HYS with $ or sticker Forum

[lawkools]

Longtime lurker here. I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseum, but I haven't really seen an answer regarding unicorn jobs. I am highly compelled to attend one of DCNG this year, as I have been provided with near full tuition scholarships at two of them. I've been initially offered very little from 4 of MVPB/CCN and sticker from everywhere else. I still have some pushing to do, but don't expect to get near the DCNG offers. As it stands currently, the higher ranked schools would cost over 6 figures more than the DCNGs. Additionally, familial ties and soft factors have me leaning strongly to one of the DCNG schools. Despite these considerations, I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt my career trajectory or ceiling. Unreasonable or not, I, like many students, hope to be in the running for highly competitive positions after law school: i.e. doj, aclu, splc, coa/scotus clerking, appellate lit., sports law, V5, ect. Would attending one of the DCNG significantly reduce my chances at these positions? I'd assume these things would be more difficult to obtain, but would they be substantially more so to the point of being out of reach? On the other hand, would the extra cushion of significantly less debt make it easier to pursue these options?

[abl]

Longtime lurker here. I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseum, but I haven't really seen an answer regarding unicorn jobs. I am highly compelled to attend one of DCNG this year, as I have been provided with near full tuition scholarships at two of them. I've been initially offered very little from 4 of MVPB/CCN and sticker from everywhere else. I still have some pushing to do, but don't expect to get near the DCNG offers. As it stands currently, the higher ranked schools would cost over 6 figures more than the DCNGs. Additionally, familial ties and soft factors have me leaning strongly to one of the DCNG schools. Despite these considerations, I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt my career trajectory or ceiling. Unreasonable or not, I, like many students, hope to be in the running for highly competitive positions after law school: i.e. doj, aclu, splc, coa/scotus clerking, appellate lit., sports law, V5, ect. Would attending one of the DCNG significantly reduce my chances at these positions? I'd assume these things would be more difficult to obtain, but would they be substantially more so to the point of being out of reach? On the other hand, would the extra cushion of significantly less debt make it easier to pursue these options?

It probably depends on which of DCNG and which of MVPB/CCN we're talking about. No, attending Duke instead of Michigan will not significantly reduce your chances at those positions. But attending Georgetown instead of Columbia might. Whether that reduction is big enough to justify six figures of debt is a decision you're going to have to make for yourself. (I'm unclear about whether you're considering HYS or not, but the same goes for that. Harvard vs Duke is a much smaller difference than Yale vs Georgetown.)

Also note that how you actually do at these schools is going to have a huge impact on your chances. If for family reasons you thrive at Cornell, whereas you'd struggle a bit at Chicago, well, I'd rather be in the top 25% at Cornell shooting for one of these positions than median at Chicago. If there are strong reasons to think you're likely to do better at one particular school, that at least should be as strong of a factor in your decision than whatever the small difference between Northwestern and UVA is.

[jbagelboy]

Longtime lurker here. I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseum, but I haven't really seen an answer regarding unicorn jobs. I am highly compelled to attend one of DCNG this year, as I have been provided with near full tuition scholarships at two of them. I've been initially offered very little from 4 of MVPB/CCN and sticker from everywhere else. I still have some pushing to do, but don't expect to get near the DCNG offers. As it stands currently, the higher ranked schools would cost over 6 figures more than the DCNGs. Additionally, familial ties and soft factors have me leaning strongly to one of the DCNG schools. Despite these considerations, I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt my career trajectory or ceiling. Unreasonable or not, I, like many students, hope to be in the running for highly competitive positions after law school: i.e. doj, aclu, splc, coa/scotus clerking, appellate lit., sports law, V5, ect. Would attending one of the DCNG significantly reduce my chances at these positions? I'd assume these things would be more difficult to obtain, but would they be substantially more so to the point of being out of reach? On the other hand, would the extra cushion of significantly less debt make it easier to pursue these options?

It probably depends on which of DCNG and which of MVPB/CCN we're talking about. No, attending Duke instead of Michigan will not significantly reduce your chances at those positions. But attending Georgetown instead of Columbia might. Whether that reduction is big enough to justify six figures of debt is a decision you're going to have to make for yourself. (I'm unclear about whether you're considering HYS or not, but the same goes for that. Harvard vs Duke is a much smaller difference than Yale vs Georgetown.)

Also note that how you actually do at these schools is going to have a huge impact on your chances. If for family reasons you thrive at Cornell, whereas you'd struggle a bit at Chicago, well, I'd rather be in the top 25% at Cornell shooting for one of these positions than median at Chicago. If there are strong reasons to think you're likely to do better at one particular school, that at least should be as strong of a factor in your decision than whatever the small difference between Northwestern and UVA is.

I actually cosign all of this.

Stuff like "dcng" and "hys" and "mvp" only really exist in this online community. It's tough to say without knowing more specifics about the schools and financial aid offers considered. Also, the jobs you mentioned as "unicorn" are quite different: associate at skadden is pretty reasonable from most of these schools (and essentially the same among the t6), whereas for high brow impact litigation at the ACLU or a bristow fellowship, going to Yale rather than Penn is a lot more important.

[Lexaholik]

Longtime lurker here. I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseum, but I haven't really seen an answer regarding unicorn jobs. I am highly compelled to attend one of DCNG this year, as I have been provided with near full tuition scholarships at two of them. I've been initially offered very little from 4 of MVPB/CCN and sticker from everywhere else. I still have some pushing to do, but don't expect to get near the DCNG offers. As it stands currently, the higher ranked schools would cost over 6 figures more than the DCNGs. Additionally, familial ties and soft factors have me leaning strongly to one of the DCNG schools. Despite these considerations, I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt my career trajectory or ceiling. Unreasonable or not, I, like many students, hope to be in the running for highly competitive positions after law school: i.e. doj, aclu, splc, coa/scotus clerking, appellate lit., sports law, V5, ect. Would attending one of the DCNG significantly reduce my chances at these positions? I'd assume these things would be more difficult to obtain, but would they be substantially more so to the point of being out of reach? On the other hand, would the extra cushion of significantly less debt make it easier to pursue these options?

Answer: No it would not.

Go to DCNG. One thing people don't realize is that your law school performance doesn't happen in a vacuum. Your performance is relative to your peers. So if you ended up at DCNG with $$$$ it means you've got a better likelihood of doing really well 1L year compared to someone who got in off the waitlist. It's certainly no guarantee--but you would be surprised at how much of the top 10% or LR at T14s are populated by full scholarship types. (and even if you decide to not gun for the top, you can spend less time on schoolwork and intern for sports law firms, etc. during the year, and still end up at median) If you throw no student debt on top of that, you really can do some super interesting things with your career, like taking that low-paying job that will set you up really well for a true unicorn job. HLS, YLS, or SLS might be a closer call but the same principle holds.

[abl]

Longtime lurker here. I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseum, but I haven't really seen an answer regarding unicorn jobs. I am highly compelled to attend one of DCNG this year, as I have been provided with near full tuition scholarships at two of them. I've been initially offered very little from 4 of MVPB/CCN and sticker from everywhere else. I still have some pushing to do, but don't expect to get near the DCNG offers. As it stands currently, the higher ranked schools would cost over 6 figures more than the DCNGs. Additionally, familial ties and soft factors have me leaning strongly to one of the DCNG schools. Despite these considerations, I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt my career trajectory or ceiling. Unreasonable or not, I, like many students, hope to be in the running for highly competitive positions after law school: i.e. doj, aclu, splc, coa/scotus clerking, appellate lit., sports law, V5, ect. Would attending one of the DCNG significantly reduce my chances at these positions? I'd assume these things would be more difficult to obtain, but would they be substantially more so to the point of being out of reach? On the other hand, would the extra cushion of significantly less debt make it easier to pursue these options?

Answer: No it would not.

Go to DCNG. One thing people don't realize is that your law school performance doesn't happen in a vacuum. Your performance is relative to your peers. So if you ended up at DCNG with $$$$ it means you've got a better likelihood of doing really well 1L year compared to someone who got in off the waitlist. It's certainly no guarantee--but you would be surprised at how much of the top 10% or LR at T14s are populated by full scholarship types. (and even if you decide to not gun for the top, you can spend less time on schoolwork and intern for sports law firms, etc. during the year, and still end up at median) If you throw no student debt on top of that, you really can do some super interesting things with your career, like taking that low-paying job that will set you up really well for a true unicorn job. HLS, YLS, or SLS might be a closer call but the same principle holds.

Eh. I wouldn't stake much on your chances of finishing at the top of the class at a lower ranked school because of your incoming numbers.

Remember, how you do in law school is primarily going to be a factor of two things: your innate ability relative to your classmates and the amount of effort you put in relative to your classmates. My instinct would be that these are in the same range of importance. The difference between students at DCNG and CCN is maybe a point or two on the LSAT on average and a couple hundredths of a point on GPA. There might be some other small "soft" factors around the edge, but I think we can all agree that they won't be anything too significant. Given how mediocre of an indicator GPA and LSATs are for law school performance, the difference between you being 1.5 LSAT points and 0.3 GPA points "ahead" of the rest of your class on average is going to be pretty darn negligible. On the other hand, there are some pretty real cultural differences between these schools re hard work. This is going to be most obvious at a place like S or Y where just about everyone in the class gets a good job and there are no grades or GPA. I would be shocked if students at Y in particular don't work less hard on average towards getting a good grade than students at Penn, for example. Ironically, as the placement power of a school increases, it probably gets easier to outwork your classmates.

I'm not arguing that finishing in the top 10% of the class at Yale (however you would determine that) is a lesser accomplishment than finishing in the top 10% of the class at Georgetown. I'm just trying to point out that things are not nearly so cut and dry as to indicate that a student is definitely or even likely going to do better at a school that is ranked lower according to USNews. I guess if you want to be really strategic about things, you should be looking for schools like Yale that have particularly strong placement power but cultures that don't lend themselves to overwork, and avoiding places that have strong work cultures relative to their placement power. But I think these differences are so marginal that what you should really do is mostly ignore them and make your choice on other factors.

[Lexaholik]

Eh. I wouldn't stake much on your chances of finishing at the top of the class at a lower ranked school because of your incoming numbers.

I don't disagree. For most students--your 3.9/167 and 3.5/170 students, there's not much of a difference. But based on my experience, the 3.8/173 student is qualitatively different than most of the entering class, and will almost certainly to outperform the 3.8/163s in the class. It's not so much the numbers themselves as much as what the numbers say about what type of person the student is, and their strengths/weaknesses. They may not necessarily make top 10% but they tend to avoid the bottom half of the class with little effort.

I guess if you want to be really strategic about things, you should be looking for schools like Yale that have particularly strong placement power but cultures that don't lend themselves to overwork, and avoiding places that have strong work cultures relative to their placement power.

I agree and to the extent you have an opportunity to go to YLS (or maybe even SLS) you should, because it'll help you land that unicorn job. I was talking more about the CCN/MVPBs of the world. I'd even throw HLS into the latter category. Then again, if you have family money or independent wealth, none of this matters.

[fliptrip]

I agree and to the extent you have an opportunity to go to YLS (or maybe even SLS) you should, because it'll help you land that unicorn job.

I'm a complete Stanford shill and I still think that if you're going to gun for a unicorn job, you better go to Yale, if you can. Doesn't look like that's what we are talking about here, though.

[lawkools]

Thanks for the responses, I'm leaning towards the $$$ but will wait out acceptances and try to negotiate. The general consensus seems to be that the increased chances aren't commensurate with the advantage of the $$$ within these schools (with G and Y being outliers?