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Your exit options from biglaw will be better if you take the full ride because you won't be constrained by debt. Your goals don't really align with Yale other than academia but honestly you don't seem too interested in it.

Yeah, your long-term career goals matter quite a bit here. If you actually want academia (not an idle curiosity in maybe being a professor some day), then Yale is a good bet. If you plan on going to biglaw followed by other traditional exit options, then don't waste the money.

This is, of course, assuming that Yale is charging you sticker.

Edit: Have they already announced the AnBryce scholars? I seem to remember the interview week for named scholarships coming much later last year.

cavalier1138 wrote:Yeah, your long-term career goals matter quite a bit here. If you actually want academia (not an idle curiosity in maybe being a professor some day), then Yale is a good bet. If you plan on going to biglaw followed by other traditional exit options, then don't waste the money.

This is, of course, assuming that Yale is charging you sticker.

Edit: Have they already announced the AnBryce scholars? I seem to remember the interview week for named scholarships coming much later last year.

I think finalists were announced last week. I guess the question is either assuming they will get the Anbryce or asking whether they should interview for it

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Brutus_the_Younger wrote:

TexasENG wrote:

cavalier1138 wrote:Yeah, your long-term career goals matter quite a bit here. If you actually want academia (not an idle curiosity in maybe being a professor some day), then Yale is a good bet. If you plan on going to biglaw followed by other traditional exit options, then don't waste the money.

This is, of course, assuming that Yale is charging you sticker.

Edit: Have they already announced the AnBryce scholars? I seem to remember the interview week for named scholarships coming much later last year.

I think finalists were announced last week. I guess the question is either assuming they will get the Anbryce or asking whether they should interview for it

Yes, I'd prefer not to take a spot from someone if there's no chance I'll accept the thing.

Do people go into law school knowing they'll be professors and scholars? My impression was that many practice for a career and then enter academia. I'm only just exploring these options now because I was honestly initially shooting for lower-ranked schools. I never considered Yale, or even Stanford or Harvard, a real or likely possibility - therefore my career focus was much more narrow than it is now that I've been accept to my dream school and my imagination is running wild.

It doesn't sound like these are serious goals (no offense, just from your statements here): they seem more like 'wouldn't this be cool if it were possible' daydreams; for your primary objective--going into a large firm and making enough money to purchase a home--full tuition at NYU is far superior and will get you there way faster. You would probably be putting the home acquisition back by 4-5 years taking out the loans at YLS.

Of course, if you have serious ambition to become a legal scholar, Yale makes that more realistic (it's still an uphill battle and you still need genuine interest in legal scholarship, publications, faculty support, ect.--it's not handed to you). The window for academia is also 3-4 years after graduation (or more realistically, 1-2 years of clerkship, 2-3 years at most at a firm, then a fellowship), so you would not have paid off your loans by the time you started down the academic track or bought anything, and Yale's loan forgiveness does not cover federal clerkships. So keep this in mind and try to frame more consistent goals in making a choice like this.

As for going in-house, that will depend on your connections at your firm and its clients, not your law school. Yale would help with connecting you to start-ups; do you have any experience in that field or connections to VCs or a relevant sector? What's your background? This doesn't flow very neatly from the firm experience without prior investment.

Lastly, becoming a judge is a very abstract proposition: it's likely that going to Yale makes it more likely than NYU as a cumulation of all the various inputs in a 25 year legal career, but it's extremely difficult to measure and not worth staking out $250,000 for without a more concrete vision.

I totally understand going to Yale for the optionality when you don't know what you want to do, but consider before moving forward that some of what you desire is definitely best achieved with the full tuition scholarship, and the other things are not only inconsistent with each other but difficult to gauge. As has been pointed out before, the financial flexibility of the full ride offers opportunities as well.

Also by the Yale Club do you mean the building in midtown? I mean, decor is nice and all and the bars are okay, but it's mostly for events and you likely won't spend much time there during your lifetime even if you live in the city.

Brutus_the_Younger wrote: Do people go into law school knowing they'll be professors and scholars? My impression was that many practice for a career and then enter academia.

That may have been the case a generation (or two, or three) ago, but these days, you need to set your sites on legal academia early. You certainly don't go into teaching after a whole career's worth of work in another sector.