Thoughts, Vibes, Advice: As a future Fed Soc member with clerking goals and parental support, my decision was easy(pending Stanford). I felt like Chicago was the best school for my goals and will be free. Minus parental support, I think I would have gone to UVA. People are too prestige-obsessed, especially when it comes to lay prestige. Looking at you, HLS over Ruby takers. They make objectively incorrect school choices a lot of the time, influenced by fleeting emotions like romanticized attachment to a school, city(NYC), or vibes. These feelings will have long disappeared by the time they start paying off their loans. I sympathize with following your heart and paying a little more for your dream school but please don’t turn down a Levy/Vandy/Hamilton to attend HLS. Use cost benefit analysis to decide the best school for you based on an optimized outcome/debt combination. I’m pretty sure my HLS and YLS Rs were because of my C&F. Stats matter, work hard at the LSAT. I had a 168 diagnostic with most of my misses on LG and studied with 7sage for a total of 2 months and scored a 174, 180. My goal was to get into YLS(middle finger) hence the retake, but I think this could have led to some YP at some schools. Write good essays that have a strong why law, especially if you’re KJD. KJDs routinely make up the majority of applicants who underperform their stats and it’s almost always due to lackluster essays with a weak why law. Don’t take your results personal. Admission decisions are so random and this isn’t a meritocracy. Just submit the best app possible and pray.

True T13 (GULC/UCLA are NOT included in this) Outcome Rankings of Law Schools:

Yale, Stanford
Chicago, Harvard
Everything else is basically the same shit, follow the money first. If you’re splitting hairs though at near or equal COA, UVA/Duke have particularly great clerkship offices and NYU/Berk/Mich are good for PI. Other than that, go off location/vibes/perceived future happiness.