Going to a T14 at full COA vs. t20 with half scholarship Forum

[PatrickAtkins1989]

To preface, I am a 24 year old who has worked as a paralegal for just over two years. I am interested in Corporate, Finance, Tech, Energy, or Real Estate areas of practice. Ideally, I would work at a big law firm for 3-5 years to develop experience and to repay any outstanding student loan debt. Afterwards, I would exit to an in house role and stay there to become a GC, or I would exit into mid law and begin building up my own book of business. Until very recently, I was set on attending a law school that I had been accepted to several months ago.

During this admissions cycle, I had been accepted into BC, BU, Fordham, USC and SMU relatively early, with relatively good scholarships ranging from 1/3 to 2/3 of tuition and fees being covered. I was planning to attend USC, given it had the strongest big law placement, over half scholarship, and I was happy to be located in Southern California. That said, I recently got off of the waitlist at both NYU and Georgetown, with no scholarship from Georgetown and a marginal scholarship from NYU.

Geographically, I do not have a strong preference early on in my career, assuming that the city does not have such a small market to only have a handful of areas of practice.

I recognize that the opportunity cost of turning down NYU/Georgetown could be enormous, even with the colossal amount of debt which I would on take. However, I have no way of telling if the career opportunities that present themself from going to NYU/Georgetown over USC are significant enough to warrant the 150-200k premium that I would have to pay.

I have already done extensive research into this online: viewing forums, checking different law school ROI calculators, and looking at job placement statistics. I would appreciate if any current Big Law, in-house, or mid-law lawyers could weigh in on this.

[siri949]

Between NYU and 1/2 off USC is tough. I would pick based on whether I would rather live in LA or NYC. I don’t think there’s a “right” answer.