Top Law Schools

I'll try to give enough detail without giving myself away.

Currently at a school ranked around T-25, good softs, top 20%, secondary journal. Have a good group of friends and relationships with professors. Currently no scholarship, paying full tuition.

I am accepted to school in the 5-10 range. These are my questions:

1. If my current school offers me money, how much, in your opinion should it require for them to get me to stay. (Obviously if I am paying the full cost at both institutions, I am going to the significantly higher ranked school).

2. Even if I am offered money, if I want to do Big Law (and perhaps clerk it some point) is it worth making to jump and transferring?

I don't know how much help these people will be without some more details about your coming and going.

What are the personal and career factors: are the two schools in different regions? Is one closer to family? Where do you want to work?

Is it one of the T-25s with appalling placement or one of the T-25s with passable placement?

T-25 w/ subpar placement, particularly in the Northeast where I want to be (NY or DC).

The school I am in at is closer to home in the Northeast.

If you are set on biglaw and 20% at your current school can't get you biglaw, then you'll have to transfer. Just be aware that if you transfer, you may still strike out at OCI as a transfer.

If you aren't totally set on biglaw, then it might make sense to stay if you are offered a lot of money. But you'll need to get an offer from your current school and give us more specifics to get a better analysis.

Say I get half tuition? 25K or so.

are the long term benefits/career prospects worth it? Lets say the school I am in at is NYU, and the school I currently attend is WashU.

SoNorthern wrote:Say I get half tuition? 25K or so.

are the long term benefits/career prospects worth it? Lets say the school I am in at is NYU, and the school I currently attend is WashU.

If that is the case, I would say you should go. WUSTL's placement is abysmal, but not necessarily because it is viewed as a shit school, but because of its location. Therefore, you would probably stand to gain considerably by transferring merely because of how many screeners you will get (20-25 v. a sad handful). Then, your top 20 percent is almost certainly within the firm's cutoff range and you will have a much better shot. It's true that WUSTL would be a much cheaper option, but you have to think of the cost of the school in terms of how easy it will be to pay it off (also remember that NYU has a good LRAP program).

That's just my two cents though, and there are others on this board who probably are more informed than me.

Would you say the same for schools like W&L, Emory, or Notre Dame? To schools like UVA or Penn.

As much as the short term concept of scholarship money seems appealing, I feel that the long term career prospects (potential salary/ability to pay off loans in a shorter amount of time) perhaps outweighs the value of even a half tuition scholarship (though I am already about 95K in the whole between first year and the little bit of I still owe from undergrad).

As well, I feel like to have any sort of shot at a position in the DOJ and certainly for clerkships, UVA or Penn make you far more competitive.

I am trying to set aside the personal factors (closer to home) to be objective about it.

Sorry if I am not seeing this in the thread, but why don't you share where you are actually in school and where you actually got in? It will make it easier to give concrete advice.

I think you should go. Transfers tend to place very well into NY and though DC is competitive, they do well there, too. If you are at all worried about getting a job with your grades, then I think you can (mostly) allay that concern if you go. That said, if your total COA at your school were reduced to less than 20k per year (or hopefully less), in my opinion, it might be worth staying

I also agree that you should share the schools, or at least the school you're considering.

Disclosure: I transferred law schools, so I might be biased.

I can PM it, but would prefer to try and stay as anonymous as possible.