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« on: August 13, 2008, 09:24:57 AM »
Sorry to sort of hijack this thread, but BLOND37, I was going to start a new one along similar lines, so I'll just post my question here because I'm sure the responses would be helpful to both of us (and many others). I'll post a little more info about my case than you have with yours so people responding have a bit more context.
Here goes: I want to get into as high a school as possible for Fall 2010. My friend who went to a borderline T2/T3 school tells me to apply to mostly T2's, many T3s and just one or two T1s. In his words, "aim high, but not too high". Is he jealous? Am I crazy? The only T2 I'm serious about right now is Northeastern. When I first started looking, I checked out Western New England College, a T4. Some people, BLOND37, might consider that school to be somewhere "that pretty much will take anyone." After I looked into the prices and the whole debt thing, I thought that'd be senseless for me and I gradually started aiming higher and higher into delusional territory where I'm not ruling out T14 as long as I can pull my LSAT around their 75% numbers.
BLOND37, I'll answer your question from my perspective. I'm no authority; an LSD newbie, so you don't need to put much weight in it. Plus, others have already covered it well here. Financial concerns drive my decision. I've been working full-time for four+ years and I'm paying off college loans. Average starting salaries for schools that take just about anybody are just about what I make now. And I don't make alot; I work in education. 40-50K? I won't give up three years of earning potential so I can get 200K in debt and make the same amount of money I make now. So, I'm going to try to do the whole high T1 thing and be just another hopeful trying to rank high, get on law review and land something in biglaw so I can pay off the loans relatively quickly. Of course, as time goes on, I may find that after a biglaw Summer Associateship, the lawfirm lifestyle just isn't for me and I want to go a different career route. Or, I simply couldn't out-compete the competition for those jobs. A better school would have better non-biglaw options and the name recognition would probably work better for the individual networking that I'd do to try to land a job.