Bluesteele, thanks for your candid inside look at the dilemma, one that many here have experienced, and will experience, with perhaps other schools substituted in (BU for Fordham; Hastings for Cardozo —not that Hastings would ever cough up merit $$
).
You raise an interesting issue:
The old calculus for deciding this dilemma is based on a legal environment where higher-ranked school has usually meant more freedom/better odds to snag the high-paying biglaw job, if you want it. But with the current purging of associates going on nationwide, the pull of the higher-ranked school seems to bring less clout. As you say, if you are not top 15% at Fordham, to some degree you may be seen by hiring firms as a middling student at a good school, in a massive legal market that has seen a particularly large drop-off in staff and hirings in one year (with no guarantee of a return to fame just yet).
Of course, if the dilemma involved Columbia or Fordham with $$, going with Columbia would seem to be a no-brainer, because of the near-certainty for a big law job that Columbia's prestige would bring (again,
if you want it).
You say that if I feel top 15% is not a shoe-in (and I don't. I'm smart and hard-working, but so will most of my classmates), then it would be better to accept that fact, and then enjoy the freedom Cardozo with $$ and therefore less debt would afford me. Less debt equals less "need" to go for BigLaw, and less financial constraint on the ability to seek out jobs in government, small firms, etc...
But I am worried about the assumption you make: that with this current economic downfall, and subsequent purging of jobs, it would therefore be
easier to find jobs in that salary range than it would to find them in $120,000/year biglaw firms. I mean, from what I've heard, many former associates from Skadden, Piper, Orrick, et al, have been finding solace in the very jobs you suggest I could seek with the smaller debt I could get coming out of Cardozo. I even know friends who decry the fact that getting jobs at NFPs and with $45,000/year PD offices has become difficult now that law school's "best and brightest" have moved into public interest law out of necessity.
Anyway, thought I'd bring that up.
Fact is, I asked my initial hypothetical, because I have been adjusting my older expectations. My 161/3.80 numbers will 80 - 90% chance not get me into Fordham anyway. But even if I did get accepted there, or at UC Davis, eg., the idea of going to a lower school in a great legal city could mean graduating with considerably less debt, and with the knowledge that biglaw would be harder to come by, perhaps chart a path whereby I could find government work where I could still pay off the debt in 10 years or less.
I have been deciding hard, along with probably thousands of us here on TLS, whether to wait a year, and get that eye-opening WE you talked about, or to cobble together one of these headache-inducing Feb. LSAT/WL/latest application in the world equations. Tough call. Outside of a miracle acceptance I may wait till next year, and then see if my opportunities substantially improve.