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Hoping to get opinions on the following situation:

- 15k/year at Duke
- 45k/year at USC (hoping for more, negotiations pending)
- full-ride at BU.

I am mostly interested in public interest/government work and have zero interest in biglaw. I currently work in pi in nyc as a paralegal and have really good connections here and would ultimately prefer to end up in NY, but not essential for me. I am very debt averse and I'm only considering Duke due to its excellent clerkship numbers. Family contribution would be roughly 5k/year. I have less than 20k saved up for law school so would mostly be paying via loans.

Any opinions are greatly appreciated (other than retake).

Where do you want to practice? Both USC and BU are regional schools; you shouldn't attend BU if you want to practice in CA, and vice versa with USC if you want to practice in Boston.

What particular type of PI/government work are you interested in? Do you aspire to go into the "emergency room of law" as a public defender? To join local or state government? To sign up to a local or state nonprofit?

Or do you aspire to become a federal prosecutor at a U.S. Attorney's office, or at the Department of Justice? Do you want to clerk at a federal court? Is the root of your passion for PI/government work impact litigation, such as the type of work performed by the ACLU or EFF or similar organizations?

Finally, when in the cycle did you apply? Do you have any other options besides Duke, USC and BU (a somewhat odd collection of schools)? For example, did you apply to any of the other T20s, like Vandy or WUSTL?

Although BU is a regional school, it sends a quarter of its grads to NY. With your ties, you should easily be able to get back to a PI role in NYC. You might not be able to get ACLU or AUSA for SDNY out of BU, but the median Duke grad is not going to get those opportunities either. https://www.lstreports.com/schools/bu/.

With family contributions, savings, and the fact that you would only have to pay COL, you'd come out of BU with less than $50k debt. That's an amazing result. And if you change your mind and decide to do a stint in Biglaw, BU gives you a good shot at that type of work (anecdotally, 4 of the 5 PI-focused students in my 1L section last year decided to sell out to the AmLaw 100 for a year or two).

Could you do better with a retake? Most students would. I don't know your stats, but with a full ride at BU, you're probably a few points off HCCN admission and maybe a half/full ride at a lower T14. https://mylsn.info/r/pre-law/scholarships/graph/

But graduating BU with >$50k debt and not being tied to LRAP/PLSF for a decade is an amazing result for general-PI goals in the northeast.

THANKS