| Topic Name: |
4th tier schools? |
| Message Name: |
Average debt is $65K, adjusted gross income only $45K |
| Date Posted: |
08/23/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
There are as many reasons to choose a particular school as there are people trying to get in. I applied to 6 schools and got into all of them. Baylor, Temple, and South Texas College of Law were the top of my list. Admittidly, there were no tier 1 schools on my list, but Baylor and Temple are at the top of tier 2. I chose to enroll at South Texas College of Law instead of a better-ranked school. I chose my schools because I wanted a good litigation program. Temple was ranked #1 for litigation, and Baylor has a highly respected program as well. I was accepted at Stetson, a tier 3 school, but they are ranked #4 in the country for litigation. I chose South Texas College of Law in Houston, Texas because they have an excellent reputation in litigation (ranked #8 in the nation) and have won more awards than any other school hands down. Just last weekend we won our 74th and 75th national win. Also, I am a native Texan and wanted to stay here, which meant no Temple since they did not offer me tons of money. As for Baylor, I prefer Houston to Waco where Baylor is located. Waco has appx. 250,000 people compared to Houston's 4.5+ million. It really was not a very hard choice for me to choose a tier 4 school over a top-of-the-list tier 2 school, and I am glad that I did since I now know that Houston is one of the largest legal job markets in the nation (#4 best place to be an attorney as of last year). I guess the moral of my story is that everyone has to make their own choices. I never even bothered applying to tier 1 schools because none of them had a litigation program better than many of the so-called leser schools. All they had was their tier 1 reputations. If I wanted a job at a huge mega-firm, then I should have gone there. But, since money was and still is not my primary motivator, I am happy with my choice. BTW... the tuition and fees at my school are appx. $18k per year full time, and the avg. and mean salaries for private practicioners out of here is $65-$65k per year. Upon graduation, the average debt from law school for students at my school is appx. $65k, only one years worth of pay. |
| Message: |
. You forgot to tak eout taxes from your calculation, and compute the lost opportunity cost of working in the next best alternative career, and earning money instead of paying for law school. You also will have interest and living expenses when you graduate, so it will probably take 10 yrs before you can pay off the law debt.
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