Sticker Price at Berkeley Forum

[jtle624]

Is it worth it? My financial aid package has nothing but unsubsidized loans, no grants/scholarships, and is just under 80k for the first year. This terrifies me. I don't have any student loan debt from my undergrad, just some credit card debt. Are my job prospects with biglaw, and the accompanying salary, worth the debt?

[BasilHallward]

Is it worth it? My financial aid package has nothing but unsubsidized loans, no grants/scholarships, and is just under 80k for the first year. This terrifies me. I don't have any student loan debt from my undergrad, just some credit card debt. Are my job prospects with biglaw, and the accompanying salary, worth the debt?

Short answer is no. I don't think it needs to be fleshed out when you're talking near 300k at graduation. Run.

[jlk411]

Is it worth it? My financial aid package has nothing but unsubsidized loans, no grants/scholarships, and is just under 80k for the first year. This terrifies me. I don't have any student loan debt from my undergrad, just some credit card debt. Are my job prospects with biglaw, and the accompanying salary, worth the debt?

Hopefully you have other T14 options with $$$?

[Pomeranian]

No, if you assume you will only last 2-3 years in big law before being pushed out.

[acr]

Fuck no. Do not go to Berkeley at sticker.

[Mr. Archer]

Definite no. You also shouldn't make any law school decisions based on working big law.

[Eastboundndown]

Fuck no. Do not go to Berkeley at sticker.

[Mack.Hambleton]

do not do that

[lacrossebrother]

I mean what are your other choices, how much do you value three years at Cal, do you want to be in the Bay Area, what was your major, why are you going to law school, are you a great writer, what kind of law do you want to practice, and are you chill with the idea of paying 10% of your income for 20 years?

[acr]

I mean what are your other choices, how much do you value three years at Cal, do you want to be in the Bay Area, what was your major, why are you going to law school, are you a great writer, what kind of law do you want to practice, and are you chill with the idea of paying 10% of your income for 20 years?

you forgot "are you ok with being in a job (big law) that you will most likely hate in order to pay said 10% of income"

[lacrossebrother]

I mean what are your other choices, how much do you value three years at Cal, do you want to be in the Bay Area, what was your major, why are you going to law school, are you a great writer, what kind of law do you want to practice, and are you chill with the idea of paying 10% of your income for 20 years?

you forgot "are you ok with being in a job (big law) that you will most likely hate in order to pay said 10% of income"

I mean PAYE is PAYE. You can do whatever you want and you just need to pay 10% of (salary-17.5k-retirement contribution).
If you make $60k doing crim lit because you love drug users, it's not like you're paying anything different.

[abl]

What are your law school alternatives? What are your non-law alternatives?

From a return on investment standpoint, I don't think it's reasonably debatable that Berkeley is worth it at sticker--it pretty easily is. E.g., if you're only looking at this choice in isolation, yes, Berkeley is definitely "worth it."

But no choice exists in isolation. Most students who get into Berkeley also get into other excellent schools with big scholarships (or could reasonably expect to on re-applying). And many students who get into Berkeley have other reasonably lucrative options available. Whether Berkeley is worth it for you--a decision you're not making in a total vacuum--is going to depend a lot on your other choices, as well as your priorities. How important is it to you to practice law, for example? How dreadful is the specter of debt to you? Some of these factors are things folks on this board can help you evaluate. Others are just going to require some deep introspection. Nobody on this board can answer this question for you; you're going to have to decide for yourself what's important to you.

[BigZuck]

What'd you get at UCLA/USC? I'd probably take that over sticker at Cal.

300K debt for Berkeley is an exceedingly poor decision IMO, especially considering that you might hate being a lawyer (which isn't something you can really predict right now). But YOLO, "Invest in yourself" (he boomed, furiously), etc.

[blackacre10]

.

[BoaltAlumn88]

I am an alumn. I love the school and I love being an attorney at a law firm. I would not do boalt at full debt under any circumstances.

[Clearly]

Thing is, if B is your best option, it prob means you should retake.

[michlaw]

Maybe HYS at sticker. The rest no way. Just not a good bet. 300k of debt at 7% against an average of 2-3 years at 160K. And big law jobs come with big city expenses so that 160K ain't what it seems. The issue is of course what to do instead of this. You only get one life and the fact that they have priced your dream out of responsible reach is a crying shame. Unfettered lenders like the government lead to runaway pricing and eventually exploding bubbles. So it goes.

[krads153]

I mean what are your other choices, how much do you value three years at Cal, do you want to be in the Bay Area, what was your major, why are you going to law school, are you a great writer, what kind of law do you want to practice, and are you chill with the idea of paying 10% of your income for 20 years?

you forgot "are you ok with being in a job (big law) that you will most likely hate in order to pay said 10% of income"

I mean PAYE is PAYE. You can do whatever you want and you just need to pay 10% of (salary-17.5k-retirement contribution).
If you make $60k doing crim lit because you love drug users, it's not like you're paying anything different.

Isn't there a huge tax bomb for PAYE?

Taking out sticker is plain stupid

[Unfathomableruckus]

I ultimately decided that for me, it was not worth it. I, like you, have received no gift aid from then and am unlikely to. I haven't declined yet because I don't want to ask myself "what if?" all my life, and I haven't gotten an email get saying I'm not getting aid. I'm going to UC Hastings with a scholarship instead.

[Clearly]

Honestly, if you are looking at Berkeley at sticker you're prob a reverse splitter. I'm taking an informed guess that a strong retake would give you t14 money instead of the old bad school low debt or good school high debt conundrum.

[abl]

Again, everyone here telling you it's not "worth it," is either basing their opinion on assumptions about your alternatives that may or may not be correct or is bad at math. The expected return on investment for $300k in debt to go to Berkeley is really pretty good. It's just likely that you have better options.

[BigZuck]

Again, everyone here telling you it's not "worth it," is either basing their opinion on assumptions about your alternatives that may or may not be correct or is bad at math. The expected return on investment for $300k in debt to go to Berkeley is really pretty good. It's just likely that you have better options.

If you know you'll get a good outcome and you'll be able to ride out that good outcome and you'll be happy with that outcome then yeah, sure, it's worth it.

The OP probably will get a good outcome. Riding out that good outcome is somewhat less likely (though hard to quantify and perhaps the downside there is mitigated by PAYE). The OP doesn't know if they'll be happy with that outcome, it's nearly impossible to predict that.

Life is a gamble, invest in yourself, blah, blah, sure. But there's a risk of ruin that you can't fully wrap your mind around because you're blinded by your boomerism. I get that you're trying to turn it into a math problem but to me, even the average outcome that you say is good is iffy. 5 years from now maybe the OP has lateraled into a midlaw job and still has 100K debt. That's probably ok if the OP really wants to be a lawyer. What if the OP hates being a lawyer? That scenario isn't particularly unlikely. Hell, it might even be expected.

Is it a particularly high risk of ruin? Maybe not. But I wouldn't stake 300K to find out. Especially when (as everyone is acknowledging, even the most boom-tastic among us) there are other options. Berkeley or bust is almost certainly a false dichotomy. Somehow even you understand that.

Don't do it OP, that would be a poor decision IMO.

[mogwli]

I don't think sticker price is a good thing any law school, except maybe HYS. Sticker price anywhere is so much freaking debt jesus.

[abl]

Again, everyone here telling you it's not "worth it," is either basing their opinion on assumptions about your alternatives that may or may not be correct or is bad at math. The expected return on investment for $300k in debt to go to Berkeley is really pretty good. It's just likely that you have better options.

If you know you'll get a good outcome and you'll be able to ride out that good outcome and you'll be happy with that outcome then yeah, sure, it's worth it.

The OP probably will get a good outcome. Riding out that good outcome is somewhat less likely (though hard to quantify and perhaps the downside there is mitigated by PAYE). The OP doesn't know if they'll be happy with that outcome, it's nearly impossible to predict that.

It's obviously not that simple. Take, for example, a hypothetical lottery worth $1,000,000. Let's imagine you have a chance of buying a $50 ticket at 1/100 odds. If you win, you get the full million--a good outcome. If you lose, you get nada--not a good outcome. Should you buy the ticket? Any economist will tell you that the answer is a pretty clear yes. Despite the fact that your chances of winning are only 1% -- there's a 99% probability that you'll not get a good outcome -- you should buy the ticket. So no, it's not only worth it if the OP "knows" she'll get a good outcome and is "able to ride out that good outcome" and that she'll "be happy with that outcome." You're imposing a bizarrely stringent meaning on what constitutes "worth it."

Moreover, the implication in your quote is that it's only worth it to the OP if she gets biglaw and is able to ride out biglaw, and will be happy with biglaw. The reason why you've implied as much is that we all agree that this is a particularly unlikely scenario: although the OP's likely going to be able to get biglaw if she wants it, she probably will not be happy staying in biglaw long enough to pay off all of her debt. Fortunately, this is far from what's necessary for the decision to attend Berkeley at sticker economically to make sense. If the OP follows a more standard Berkeley grad path and does biglaw for 3 years followed by a midlaw/in house/government position, her decision to attend Berkeley at sticker will be easily economically justified over the course of her career. (My bet is that she starts profiting from this investment around year 10 -- e.g., relatively early on.)

Life is a gamble, invest in yourself, blah, blah, sure.

Yea, life is a gamble. Any feasible choice the OP makes wrt her career is going to come with a somewhat real risk that she's not going to like it. And I totally agree with you that it's probably a bad idea to invest $300,000 and three plus years of your life in figuring out if you like law if you haven't thought about it / researched it a fair bit. That's a pretty incredible investment of money and, more importantly, time in something that you're not pretty darn sure about. I think it's fair to assume for purposes of threads like this that the OP has done her due diligence wrt law as a profession and has made the educated decision that it is right for her.

You can be as dismissive as you want about the fact that we have to live our life making education guesses, and about the fact that it's hard to advance in society without taking educated risks and investing in yourself. For most people--although who knows how many on this board--getting to a comfortable income and profession requires as much. (If you're born wealthy, it may not be necessary.) You can "bla bla bla" this as much as you want, but it's not going to change anything.

But there's a risk of ruin that you can't fully wrap your mind around because you're blinded by your boomerism. I get that you're trying to turn it into a math problem but to me, even the average outcome that you say is good is iffy. 5 years from now maybe the OP has lateraled into a midlaw job and still has 100K debt. That's probably ok if the OP really wants to be a lawyer. What if the OP hates being a lawyer? That scenario isn't particularly unlikely. Hell, it might even be expected.

This whole boomerism shtick is tiring. It's not tiring because I'm in any way offended by the insult. It's tiring because it's such a piss-poor substitution for an argument. The fact that you seem to think that you can just dismiss a fellow poster's arguments by calling him a boomer is disappointing. You know I'm not a boomer. And if I were, why would it matter? I suspect you're better than this, and that you'll make a better lawyer than what your posts indicate. So seeing you take such a cheap and lazy approach in these threads time and time again is tiring. I could accuse you of having a young-millenial's myopic view of debt; and that your brief experience in the real world has corresponded with an economic downturn, and that has led you to take an overly risk-averse, pessimistic, and short-sighted view of life and career planning. But because I respect our fellow posters on this board, our profession (which is supposedly built on arguments), and, yes, you, I won't.

[krads153]

^ Berkeley adcomm account. By the way, I think you're forgetting something called "opportunity cost".