St. John's Law full tuition scholarship vs. Brooklyn Law school half tuition

[RobWreck]

Thanks for everyone's input so far!  RobWreck,  how do you find the student body at SJU?  Is it very competitive to get into the clinics/moot court/and law review journals?  Do you think it would be difficult to keep a scholarship at SJU after the first year?   

My experience in the PT evening program may not be representative of what the FT student body is like, but with that said I haven't seen any serious degree of competitiveness in school, beyond the basic acknowledgment that there's only so many A's to go around. My classmates are willing to share notes, pass along outlines, study together, etc...
I'm in my 2nd year, so I'll be doing the writing competition in mid-May. There's enough journals that most people that are interested in it will get on A journal... of course the law review is the most selective, so if Legal Writing isn't your strong point, your chances aren't that great.
Moot court is an honor society, so you have to be invited to try out for it based on both your Legal Writing grades and your overall GPA. I've heard that if you're close to the cutoff a simple expression of interest will get you an invite to the try-outs...
As for clinical opportunities, there are varying degrees of competitiveness... I've heard that some of the more popular ones (like the prosecution clinic) are hard to get whereas others, like the Elder Law clinic, are open to 2L's.
As for keeping the scholarship, I still have my small partial scholarship as I finish up my 2nd year... your chances are really up to you, just put in the work and you *should* be able to stay in the top half. You'll see it in classes... the people that spend their time on facebook instead of focusing on the professor are often surprised and/or disappointed by their grades.
Good Luck,
Rob

PS: One small factor to consider is whether having an actual campus is of any relevance to you. For me, I like having a campus rather than simply a few scattered towers. Go visit each school and see for yourself... it's too much money and too big of a decision to make without firsthand knowledge.

[jules82]

Thanks Rob.  Can anyone give any views on Brooklyn Law School?

[workingsucks08]

Hey, i'm in the full time program at St. John's with a scholarship (not full).  I pretty much agree with everything Robwreck said and it doesn't seem like the part time class structure is much different than the full.  Top fifty percent is attainable as long as you stick with your work and pay attention in class.  I cannot really tell you how competitive the clinics are yet.  I'm actually interviewing with a few of them over the next couple of weeks.  It seems that securities arbitration has the most interest and therefore probably the most competitve.  The prosecution clinic is only open to 3Ls.  As for the journals, there are a ton of them.  Obviously law review is the toughest to get and they have no gpa cut off.  After law review, all the journals have a cut off, the highest being 3.2.  The lowest cut off is a 2.8.  I have no idea how either rank, but supposedly the top 50% cut off was 3.12.  Any other questions about the full time program, just shoot me a message.

[k0em9u]

It's a close call, but I'd pick Brooklyn in that scenario.