I feel for you, but you really have to rethink this.
I have a poor family situation and am practically homeless ... that is a sad term ... "domicile challenged" after I graduate next week. Thus, I am attending law school without any family backing/support. A break in my education will cause me to start paying on my student loans (because I waived my grace period to consolidate them) and with the job market in my area I'm not sure I could support myself for the year. I don't know, perhaps I'm just being negative about the year off option. Do any of you feel that is the best option?
How much debt do you already have? Maybe you could try to pay some of it down before trying law school. For example, if you have a bachelor's degree, you can teach English in South Korea and make some decent coin, you could probably pay down a chunk of it that way. Just think up something.
What you should NOT do, however, is rush off to law school while you're all stressed out over other stuff. You really have to think up a way to beat your fellow classmates, and it's hard to get ready to do all that if you're in a stressful personal situation.
I am very interested in international law and will attempt to transfer to Georgetown, my ideal school, after 1L if I manage to get into the top of either school's class. Which school would give me a better shot at a transfer to Georgetown?
WTF? No. Just no. The answer to all this is NO. "Interested in international law" is a red flag for not truly being interested in practicing law at all. There are easier ways to make a living, you know. You can pick just about anything and it would be easier. You would have to beat ALL your other classmates to transfer up, and what makes you think you can? Do you have some secret preparation method for LS that no one else has? Did you outperform your smartest classmates on the LSAT by 10+ points? No. It is much, much easier to score 10 more LSAT points than it ever is to transfer up.
Villanova @ Cost or Case Western w/ $13,000 per year? ... Tuition @ both schools is absurd.
I plan on practicing in either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. Will a Case Western degree carry to Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh for that matter? Additionally, will a Villanova degree carry to Pittsburgh?
The answers to this are a) Case Western is marginally better, b) the schools will not help you out of their respective metro areas. Listen, are you a Pennsylvania resident? If so, go to Temple/Pitt, or better yet move to a cheaper state. Actually if you go to Rutgers-Camden you can get in-state in NJ after your first year, and that's equivalent to Nova/Temple for the Philly area. These schools will allow you to be a local general practice lawyer and little else unless you completely destroy your classmates. If you're not 100% enthusiastic about doing this--and few people are--then you just shouldn't.