CUNY Law vs New York Law School Forum

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BlueNova

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CUNY Law vs New York Law School

Post by BlueNova » Fri Apr 02, 2021 2:00 am

Hello everyone. I am going to be an evening law school student. I am currently employed, and graduated college 10 years ago manga cum laude. I have been accepted to CUNY Law with no scholarship and New York Law School with a $35,000 scholarship contingent on maintaining a 3.0 or being in the top half of the class. The cost of attendance at CUNY is $15,000 the first year, $10,600 after that, for a total of $46,800 after 4 years. New York Law School would work out to about a total of $28,000 after 4 years, again contingent on a 3.0 GPA or being in the top 50% each year. Any advice on which I should choose? Thank you!

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cavalier1138

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Re: CUNY Law vs New York Law School

Post by cavalier1138 » Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:55 am

Well, NYLS is out unless you can get them to drop the conditions on the scholarship (top 50% is easy to achieve until it isn't).

And both of these schools are only a good choice in a very limited range of circumstances--particularly CUNY. So what are your career goals? And what are your current numbers?

BlueNova

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Re: CUNY Law vs New York Law School

Post by BlueNova » Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:08 am

Hi. Thank you for your reply! Career wise, I am already an executive. I’ve been working at my job for over a decade, since I graduated from college. Being a lawyer would help me for promotion or I could retire early and open a practice. My GPA in college was a 3.8. I attended Villanova. I’ve been out of the academic game since then and didn’t have the time take any LSAT courses; I just bought a guide book (LSAT Trainer by Mike Kim). I scored a 155. I’ve applied to other schools as well and been accepted to them too. Brooklyn Law, which only gave around a $10,000 scholarship, and St John’s which gave no scholarship. I’ve already contacted them to try to negotiate, including eliminating the contingency from NYLS, but none of them will change their terms. Any additional advice would be very much appreciated. Thank you again!

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cavalier1138

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Re: CUNY Law vs New York Law School

Post by cavalier1138 » Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:50 am

BlueNova wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:08 am
Being a lawyer would help me for promotion or I could retire early and open a practice.
Well, it sounds like it might help with one of those things.

With the caveat that I have no idea what promotions look like for executives, are you really in a situation where a JD from any school will get you a promotion? JDs have very little worth outside of legal practice (and JDs from these two schools have very little worth within legal practice). An MBA seems much more useful in your field.

But you can't just get a JD, put it on your shelf, do nothing with it for several years, and then open your own practice (also no clue what kind of practice you envision having in this fantasy world). In general, if you don't want to be a lawyer after graduation, there's no benefit to going to law school.

And in general, you have a good GPA that could get you into pretty much any school with a decent LSAT. If law school really is a good choice for you (which I'm not at all sold on), why not retake and get yourself a good scholarship at a decent school? It doesn't sound like you need to go to NYU or Columbia, but there's nothing stopping you from going to a school like Fordham with a significant scholarship.

CalF123

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Re: CUNY Law vs New York Law School

Post by CalF123 » Sun Apr 04, 2021 5:41 pm

Neither- CUNY is an okay option for public interest law with a good scholarship. It’s no good for much else and certainly not at sticker.

Again NYLS is fine for someone getting a good scholly and quite happy with something like PI or criminal defence work.

Frankly I think you need to work out why you actually want to go to law school, what type of work you want to end up doing and which schools can get you there.

Both schools are only suitable in very limited circumstances and certainly not at sticker. I don’t see at all how either of these two options is going to help someone in your circumstances.

Your GPA is excellent so you will get offers and scholarships from much better schools if you can improve your LSAT.

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