Now, If You'll Just Follow Me...

As of last Thursday, I am officially a tour guide for Our Law School. My first tour is this week.

It’s all very exciting, really. I get the chance to be a voice of truth in the wilderness of law school admissions. While I have no intention of trying to scare anyone away, I won’t lie or whitewash what I see as the downside of Our Law School.

I received a packet of information, including a “FAQ” and a list of interesting facts about the school, including a decoder for the deep meanings behind the mural on the mock courtroom wall. Some of the FAQs are illuminating (the student body is 12% minority), others are blatantly false (rents range from 350- 600 per month—ha! Try “rents start at around $500 if you share an apartment, $600 if you want to live alone”). There’s a lot to remember, but luckily I don’t see why I can’t take the cheat sheets with me.

It’s difficult to put my motivations for doing this into words. I think that Our Law School has its good sides and its bad sides. Some of the bad sides are really, really bad. And I think that prospective students have a right to know about those. But I’m mostly happy here and I think that prospective students also deserve to hear about the good stuff from someone who has no personal stake in “snagging” their acceptance. It’s no skin off my nose if they decide to go elsewhere, and I don’t get a reward if they decide to come here. I wish I’d been able to get a completely unvarnished report on everything before I made my decision.

If I knew then what I know now, I don’t know that I would have come here after all. After two years of almost 10% tuition increases with no corresponding scholarship increase, non-existent help from Career Services, and a far softer job market than I expected, I think the factors that weighed so heavily in favor of Our Law School would carry far less weight now. I know I joked a lot about it last year, but now I’m starting to seriously regret not choosing Cornell. Frankly, if I’m going to end up $80,000 in debt despite the scholarships to attend a lower first tier school, then I should have just gone $150,000 in debt and had an Ivy League degree. I'll never be able to pay off the $80,000 because I won't be able to find a job when I'm done, so what difference would it have made if I'd taken on twice that amount? Stupid, stupid, stupid.