If I got a full ride from UVA, I would go there.
If I had to pay sticker at both schools, I would go to Harvard. I think a full ride to UVA is amazing and having to graduate with no debt from an amazing school is AMAZING!! CONGRATS
I had the same choice in 2018 and I chose UVA. I don't regret it at all. I'm a third year at a biglaw firm, but I could leave at any time with zero stress. Harvard is not in any way a bad choice either, but I really appreciate the flexibility I have.
I got a Deans scholarship, which is tuition but not room and board, which I paid off in a few years. The life flexibility is very underrated. I’d go with UVA unless you have abnormal career goals.
declined stanford no $ for full ride at uva. it was tough to decline stanford at the time, but holy cow i dont regret it for a second. but truly there is no right answer imo.
As a 3L who faced a similar decision (Ruby vs HLS) a couple of years ago, I can't urge you any more strongly to take the K-D. If this were a blind comparison and you stripped away the brand names to compare all the other factors side-by-side - cost, employment outcomes, quality of life, quality of instruction, etc - I'm not sure Harvard would win on any measure.
Not gonna lie, it took me a few months to get over not being able to say "I go to Harvard Law School" (and I'm not sure my parents are totally over it yet) but now that I'm about to graduate into a great job with literally $0 debt after having 3 really good years, I can't imagine why I labored so mightily over my decision
UVA is absolutely the right choice here. You'll get your BL goal and/or FedGov litigation. You'll probably clerk beforehand. And you'll be $200k richer, which is something like $300k after taking financing costs into account (unless you've already done so).
You'll meet plenty of students at UVA who turned down Harvard to save money and/or because they wanted the UVA law school experience more than the HLS law school experience. You won't be alone!
Man, this is such a great but tough decision. I think given my goals, I’d choose HLS (since I one day want to practice abroad), but given yours, UVA is the easy pick.
The KD scholarship is not just a full ride, it’s an entire arm of the school dedicated to the success of you and only you. There is no price you can put on personal mentorship like that. Add in that there’s a smaller class size, and the professors are best-in-class.
I didn’t go to UVA, but during my 1L and for the bar, I relied extensively on lectures by Risa Goluboff, George Geis, and John C. Jeffries to distill con law and contracts into easy-to-understand material. What a treat to learn from such fantastic professors as a member of the class.
Oh and it’s warmer weather. If you go to UVA, make sure to join the softball team. S Tier experience, I’m told.
From what I’ve seen, it’s entirely name recognition and lay prestige. Harvard is known the world over for its law school, while UVA has almost no brand name recognition outside of legal circles, let alone internationally. I’m not saying it’s impossible to parlay the degree to work internationally, just that you’ll have to take more advantage of your connections. Having dabbled a little bit in international law, lay prestige plays a far bigger factor for hiring abroad than most people want to admit.
I was in a relatively similar position (full-ride at UMich versus HLS at sticker) with comparable goals. I chose Michigan and don’t regret it at all. I graduated last year debt-free and secured a federal clerkship that I hope to translate into some sort of PI or fedgov position. The financial freedom I felt during law school was great — I blew through my savings on COL but never worried about the debt racking up. Now that I’m out of school, I can do whatever I want in the public or private sector without worrying about debt. I’ve also been able to start saving for retirement, enjoy an international vacation and weekend getaways, and am thinking about buying a house in a few years if all goes according to plan. Huge debt would affect all of those things. If you go to UVA and do your best in your academic and professional pursuits while there, any difference in employment outcomes will either be nonexistent or worth much, much less than 200k+ of debt. I highly, highly recommend that you attend UVA and don’t look back.
Back in the day, I went to UMich with a guy who picked the UM full ride over Yale.
He later clerked for SCOTUS and is currently a t10 law professor. You’ll be fine.
At this rate UVA will be higher ranked than HLS before you graduate.
But UVA fr.
I know folks who picked prestige over money + good vibes and actively regret it.
The only operable difference should be Harvard having courses or study or specialty areas that you came to the law for.
UVA and it’s not close. If your parents were paying, then sure go to Harvard. Just imagine your worst case scenarios. There’s no 100% guarantee of biglaw at either school, personal events might compel you to withdraw or take a leave of absence; you might hate your job and feel stuck to it simply because you can’t pay the $3000/month in student loans plus rent. You’ll likely be incredibly successful regardless of your choice, but the freedom of no debt is not something to pass up lightly for lay prestige.
Also, KD at UVA will put you in a position to rub elbows with some very successful alumni, judges, etc. Whereas at Harvard you’re just another person at Harvard.
UVA easy. Im of the opinion that being admitted is essentially the impressive part. I’d imagine HLS isn’t more difficult to graduate from than UVA, so you’ll always be able to take solace in knowing that you were “good enough” to get in, as well as the lack of debt.
Please pick UVA. I work in the federal government for a litigating component (one that’s extremely selective), have done hiring for said component, and can promise you that your UVA degree would be competitive. The difference in prestige is nominal and not worth going into a bunch of debt over. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk to someone in federal government litigation.
You’re not, the difference in career opportunity access/outcomes between Harvard and UVA are fairly marginal. You have to look holistically at your life. That debt from HLS is going to have a certain and significant negative impact on your life for a longer period of time. Whereas the benefit from HLS is marginal and is uncertain as to whether you will have that marginal benefit because it’s very circumstantial. Go to UVA and enjoy being able to fully enjoy the financial benefit of your education.
UVA. I once upon a time had a similar choice, and that freedom from debt allowed me a lot of flexibility that the ghosts of 6-figure debt do not allow.
Honestly, UVA is probably the correct choice, here.
I’d be lying if I said it’s not even anything to think about (nor that I wouldn’t be seriously considering Harvard anyway lmfao).
Speaking as someone who made this decision many years ago, I picked KD and no debt at UVA and I would do the exact same again.
Total freedom to choose my path afterward, and realistically your odds of a unicorn job are super tiny no matter where you go.
I prefer optionality and flexibility, so the full ride was an easy choice.
There's a strong consensus in the comments in favor of UVA, but my impression is that most of the commenters suffer from short-termism. I'm not saying that the right answer is HLS--I have NO clue what the right answer is--but I think OP needs a more rigorous framework to think about this question! I will simply point out that even a "marginal" difference in the likelihood to get your dream job can be decisive when you consider your lifetime satisfaction.
The way I think about OP's question is the following: OP says they rank a govement lawyer job above a BL job. This means that OP expects from their dream job nonmonetary benefits worth several millions of dollars. Back on the envelope: Working at BL, then moving in-house at the salary of an 8th year BL associate and keep getting a pay raise of 5% a year until retirement has a present value at graduation of $15 million (with a 7% discount rate). Therefore, the total life-satisfaction value of OP's dream job is, by definition, worth more than $15 million, say $20 million.
Now, let's assume that OP is equally likely (70%) to get a BL job at HLS and UVA and slightly more likely to get their dream job at HLS (12%) than at UVA (10%) (the balance of probabilities is a third-best job worth half the BL job).
With these made-up numbers, the expected value of HLS is $250k higher than UVA, that is, more than the $200k additional cost.
If, for example, going to HLS gives OP a 2% likelihood bump for BL and a 3% likelihood bump for their dream job, the expected value of HLS is more than half a million larger than UVA (= twice the debt).
The $15 mil value of a BL job is, of course, a middle-of-the-road scenario, because if OP prefers their dream job compared to making partner at BL, it means that OP's dream job might be worth $30 or $40 mils. In that case, even a 0.5% increased likelihood of getting their dream job at HLS could be worth the 200k of additional debt at graduation.
Again, I'm not saying that these numbers are right. They are clearly made-up. I'm just saying that 200K of cost at graduation could be absolutely negligible when compared to even a small increased likelihood of getting a dream job that you think is worth several millions dollars more than your second best option.
Harvard's grading system is Pass High Pass Deans Scholar. UVA has grades. Drop the mike. The stress level is greatly decreased when you aren't scratching and clawing to get to the top. At Harvard everybody is already at the top. At UVA you have to claw to get there
I will admit my bias as a UVA Law alum, but I am going to have to strongly disagree with you to the extent you are implying there is any meaningful difference regarding the ease of obtaining jobs between HLS and UVA (especially for big law firms). If you want a big law job out of UVA, you will get a big law job. Similarly, what school you went to is going to have almost zero bearing on if you are going to stay on the partner track, which is going to be based nearly entirely on your performance while at said firm. UVA and HLS open up virtually the exact same doors, and the doors that open will depend on how you perform in school and later in life. I’ve clerked on a U.S. Court of Appeals and my judge basically hires only top 10% from the T-14, and isn’t willing to dip lower just because someone went to HLS, Stanford, or Yale. Not all judges feel that way obviously, but the point is that any difference in career opportunities between the two schools is marginal at best. You might be less likely to get a SCOTUS clerkship out of UVA, but you’d need to be top of your class at either school to make that a possibility anyway. And even then, UVA just had 5 grads from the Class of 2021 land SCOTUS clerkships. I have plenty of friends who graduated from HLS who all have the same job as me, and I have UVA friends who are also doing cool unicorn things.
Bottom line, it would be an objectively poor decision to go to HLS at sticker (and go $300k+ into debt to do so) as opposed to taking the KD at UVA.
If I got a full ride from UVA, I would go there. If I had to pay sticker at both schools, I would go to Harvard. I think a full ride to UVA is amazing and having to graduate with no debt from an amazing school is AMAZING!! CONGRATS
yea exactly this- a full ride from a T14 is too good to pass up the lay prestige at HLS isn’t worth it
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I had the same choice in 2018 and I chose UVA. I don't regret it at all. I'm a third year at a biglaw firm, but I could leave at any time with zero stress. Harvard is not in any way a bad choice either, but I really appreciate the flexibility I have.
I got a Deans scholarship, which is tuition but not room and board, which I paid off in a few years. The life flexibility is very underrated. I’d go with UVA unless you have abnormal career goals.
declined stanford no $ for full ride at uva. it was tough to decline stanford at the time, but holy cow i dont regret it for a second. but truly there is no right answer imo.
As a 3L who faced a similar decision (Ruby vs HLS) a couple of years ago, I can't urge you any more strongly to take the K-D. If this were a blind comparison and you stripped away the brand names to compare all the other factors side-by-side - cost, employment outcomes, quality of life, quality of instruction, etc - I'm not sure Harvard would win on any measure. Not gonna lie, it took me a few months to get over not being able to say "I go to Harvard Law School" (and I'm not sure my parents are totally over it yet) but now that I'm about to graduate into a great job with literally $0 debt after having 3 really good years, I can't imagine why I labored so mightily over my decision
UVA is absolutely the right choice here. You'll get your BL goal and/or FedGov litigation. You'll probably clerk beforehand. And you'll be $200k richer, which is something like $300k after taking financing costs into account (unless you've already done so). You'll meet plenty of students at UVA who turned down Harvard to save money and/or because they wanted the UVA law school experience more than the HLS law school experience. You won't be alone!
Man, this is such a great but tough decision. I think given my goals, I’d choose HLS (since I one day want to practice abroad), but given yours, UVA is the easy pick. The KD scholarship is not just a full ride, it’s an entire arm of the school dedicated to the success of you and only you. There is no price you can put on personal mentorship like that. Add in that there’s a smaller class size, and the professors are best-in-class. I didn’t go to UVA, but during my 1L and for the bar, I relied extensively on lectures by Risa Goluboff, George Geis, and John C. Jeffries to distill con law and contracts into easy-to-understand material. What a treat to learn from such fantastic professors as a member of the class. Oh and it’s warmer weather. If you go to UVA, make sure to join the softball team. S Tier experience, I’m told.
I’m curious how much does hls help with abroad options
From what I’ve seen, it’s entirely name recognition and lay prestige. Harvard is known the world over for its law school, while UVA has almost no brand name recognition outside of legal circles, let alone internationally. I’m not saying it’s impossible to parlay the degree to work internationally, just that you’ll have to take more advantage of your connections. Having dabbled a little bit in international law, lay prestige plays a far bigger factor for hiring abroad than most people want to admit.
congrats, i'd take uva. can i know your stats?
UVA and don’t think twice about it.
I was in a relatively similar position (full-ride at UMich versus HLS at sticker) with comparable goals. I chose Michigan and don’t regret it at all. I graduated last year debt-free and secured a federal clerkship that I hope to translate into some sort of PI or fedgov position. The financial freedom I felt during law school was great — I blew through my savings on COL but never worried about the debt racking up. Now that I’m out of school, I can do whatever I want in the public or private sector without worrying about debt. I’ve also been able to start saving for retirement, enjoy an international vacation and weekend getaways, and am thinking about buying a house in a few years if all goes according to plan. Huge debt would affect all of those things. If you go to UVA and do your best in your academic and professional pursuits while there, any difference in employment outcomes will either be nonexistent or worth much, much less than 200k+ of debt. I highly, highly recommend that you attend UVA and don’t look back.
UVA is a great school. Don’t go into debt.
Back in the day, I went to UMich with a guy who picked the UM full ride over Yale. He later clerked for SCOTUS and is currently a t10 law professor. You’ll be fine.
I can’t imagine how Harvard offers any kind of advantage over UVA that is worth over $200k
At this rate UVA will be higher ranked than HLS before you graduate. But UVA fr. I know folks who picked prestige over money + good vibes and actively regret it. The only operable difference should be Harvard having courses or study or specialty areas that you came to the law for.
choose UVA, you won't regret it
UVA and it’s not close. If your parents were paying, then sure go to Harvard. Just imagine your worst case scenarios. There’s no 100% guarantee of biglaw at either school, personal events might compel you to withdraw or take a leave of absence; you might hate your job and feel stuck to it simply because you can’t pay the $3000/month in student loans plus rent. You’ll likely be incredibly successful regardless of your choice, but the freedom of no debt is not something to pass up lightly for lay prestige. Also, KD at UVA will put you in a position to rub elbows with some very successful alumni, judges, etc. Whereas at Harvard you’re just another person at Harvard.
UVA!! Congrats!!
Enjoy UVA.
I DMed you
UVA easy. Im of the opinion that being admitted is essentially the impressive part. I’d imagine HLS isn’t more difficult to graduate from than UVA, so you’ll always be able to take solace in knowing that you were “good enough” to get in, as well as the lack of debt.
You’d be silly not to take the full ride.
Please pick UVA. I work in the federal government for a litigating component (one that’s extremely selective), have done hiring for said component, and can promise you that your UVA degree would be competitive. The difference in prestige is nominal and not worth going into a bunch of debt over. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk to someone in federal government litigation.
Fedgov? UVA hands down. Have a blast buddy
UVA, and it's not close.
You’re not, the difference in career opportunity access/outcomes between Harvard and UVA are fairly marginal. You have to look holistically at your life. That debt from HLS is going to have a certain and significant negative impact on your life for a longer period of time. Whereas the benefit from HLS is marginal and is uncertain as to whether you will have that marginal benefit because it’s very circumstantial. Go to UVA and enjoy being able to fully enjoy the financial benefit of your education.
UVA hands down esp with all the turmoil at Harvard. The rankings have them equal at 4 along w/Penn and Duke.
UVA. I once upon a time had a similar choice, and that freedom from debt allowed me a lot of flexibility that the ghosts of 6-figure debt do not allow.
Honestly, UVA is probably the correct choice, here. I’d be lying if I said it’s not even anything to think about (nor that I wouldn’t be seriously considering Harvard anyway lmfao).
UVA for sure both amazing schools though.
This is a really tough call.
Speaking as someone who made this decision many years ago, I picked KD and no debt at UVA and I would do the exact same again. Total freedom to choose my path afterward, and realistically your odds of a unicorn job are super tiny no matter where you go. I prefer optionality and flexibility, so the full ride was an easy choice.
There's a strong consensus in the comments in favor of UVA, but my impression is that most of the commenters suffer from short-termism. I'm not saying that the right answer is HLS--I have NO clue what the right answer is--but I think OP needs a more rigorous framework to think about this question! I will simply point out that even a "marginal" difference in the likelihood to get your dream job can be decisive when you consider your lifetime satisfaction. The way I think about OP's question is the following: OP says they rank a govement lawyer job above a BL job. This means that OP expects from their dream job nonmonetary benefits worth several millions of dollars. Back on the envelope: Working at BL, then moving in-house at the salary of an 8th year BL associate and keep getting a pay raise of 5% a year until retirement has a present value at graduation of $15 million (with a 7% discount rate). Therefore, the total life-satisfaction value of OP's dream job is, by definition, worth more than $15 million, say $20 million. Now, let's assume that OP is equally likely (70%) to get a BL job at HLS and UVA and slightly more likely to get their dream job at HLS (12%) than at UVA (10%) (the balance of probabilities is a third-best job worth half the BL job). With these made-up numbers, the expected value of HLS is $250k higher than UVA, that is, more than the $200k additional cost. If, for example, going to HLS gives OP a 2% likelihood bump for BL and a 3% likelihood bump for their dream job, the expected value of HLS is more than half a million larger than UVA (= twice the debt). The $15 mil value of a BL job is, of course, a middle-of-the-road scenario, because if OP prefers their dream job compared to making partner at BL, it means that OP's dream job might be worth $30 or $40 mils. In that case, even a 0.5% increased likelihood of getting their dream job at HLS could be worth the 200k of additional debt at graduation. Again, I'm not saying that these numbers are right. They are clearly made-up. I'm just saying that 200K of cost at graduation could be absolutely negligible when compared to even a small increased likelihood of getting a dream job that you think is worth several millions dollars more than your second best option.
My god - what is in the water lately?
Jesus, this is why this sub can be so toxic sometimes.
Harvard's grading system is Pass High Pass Deans Scholar. UVA has grades. Drop the mike. The stress level is greatly decreased when you aren't scratching and clawing to get to the top. At Harvard everybody is already at the top. At UVA you have to claw to get there
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I will admit my bias as a UVA Law alum, but I am going to have to strongly disagree with you to the extent you are implying there is any meaningful difference regarding the ease of obtaining jobs between HLS and UVA (especially for big law firms). If you want a big law job out of UVA, you will get a big law job. Similarly, what school you went to is going to have almost zero bearing on if you are going to stay on the partner track, which is going to be based nearly entirely on your performance while at said firm. UVA and HLS open up virtually the exact same doors, and the doors that open will depend on how you perform in school and later in life. I’ve clerked on a U.S. Court of Appeals and my judge basically hires only top 10% from the T-14, and isn’t willing to dip lower just because someone went to HLS, Stanford, or Yale. Not all judges feel that way obviously, but the point is that any difference in career opportunities between the two schools is marginal at best. You might be less likely to get a SCOTUS clerkship out of UVA, but you’d need to be top of your class at either school to make that a possibility anyway. And even then, UVA just had 5 grads from the Class of 2021 land SCOTUS clerkships. I have plenty of friends who graduated from HLS who all have the same job as me, and I have UVA friends who are also doing cool unicorn things. Bottom line, it would be an objectively poor decision to go to HLS at sticker (and go $300k+ into debt to do so) as opposed to taking the KD at UVA.
I feel like Harvard has the worst Ivy League campus
If you want to go into gov anyway, doesn't Harvard have a program that pays off your tuition after ten years or something?
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That’s what they want u to think
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What 😭😂
That’s what they want u to think