Weighing two law school scholarship offers

[Peter deVries]

What follows is the transcript of a conversation between a student, Cody, and one of our Admissions gurus, Dave, regarding Cody's choice between two different scholarship offers:


Cody: “Hi Team, While it's a blessing to be in the kind of position described here, it's certainly stress inducing as well.

I'm currently weighing two different scholarship offers:

1. Unconditional full-tuition and fees to the University of Houston Law Center (UH)
2. $20k per year offer from the University of Texas Law School (UT)

I am a long-time Texas resident and likely will want to stay in Texas after graduation. I have an undergrad degree in Electrical Engineering and have been working as an engineer for several years. I think I am interested in intellectual property law, but am drawn to studying law partially because there are so many opportunities to study different topics. Overall not 100% sure what area I'd like to practice in long-term.

A few more things I am considering:

• UT is a top 15 law school nationally; UH is top 50.
• UT sends nearly 10x as many graduates to clerkships as any other school in Texas, including UH. I'm not sure I'll want to pursue a clerkship, but it is certainly a nice option.
• Cost of living in Houston is significantly less than in Austin.
• Without taking any loans for cost of living (my wife's salary will hopefully allow that), I would graduate UT Law with ~$45k in debt. That doesn't seem like much relative to what many others end up with from law school, but feels like a ton relative to going for free at UH.
• For IP Law in particular, UH is typically ranked in the top 10.

I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts on the situation! Thanks in advance, Cody”

Dave Killoran: “Thanks for the question! This is a tough one. I'm generally quite anti-debt, but there are times when it's reasonable to take some debt on. This might be one of those times, so let's look at some factors:

1. I'm a Houston fan. I think the law school is up-and-coming, and the overall school profile is growing nationally (the recent success of the football team cannot be discounted in that; anything that gets the school name in front of more people is a good thing).
2. Relatively speaking though, UT is simply the bigger, more recognized name, and it has national presence. Houston only has regional presence. That is, however, offset by your desire to stay in Texas after graduation.
3. When it comes to specific specialties, I don't give those much weight. First, most employers don't really think about them. employers hire on school name and class rank/grades, and not so much on which school are the best at environmental law. Second, as you readily admitted, your interests are far from certain, and can and likely will change once you get into school. So, using the IP ranking as a factor here doesn't seem like a good idea. In the same way, the relative clerkship success at UT also doesn't influence me, although it is in fact a reflection of the definably higher prestige associated with attending Texas. There no way of knowing if you'll want to go the clerkship route, although one can say that going to Texas preserves that option whereas going to UH lessens it.
4. The free ride at UH is pretty attractive I mean, zero debt more or less speaks for itself, and its why this is a debate at all. On the other hand, the Texas debt is at least manageable. If you can come out under $50K for a T15 law school education, that's pretty solid. with your EE background, you'd probably be in better shape than the average grad, something that I also factor into the equation.

So, all that said, this is a classic "higher prestige with debt" vs "lower rank but free" argument. If it was me, I'd probably lean very slightly towards UT, but I don't think there's a wrong answer here, and that's the good news: you either come out of this with a free law school education (which I find wildly attractive) or a top-level degree and low-level debt. All in all, you're the real winner here

Please let me know if this helps. Thanks, and definitely keep me posted on what you decide!”