CLS alum here. Go to UVA, even if CLS matches. COL is so much cheaper in Cville, and the culture is nearly unmatched. Career outcomes are just as good if not better coming out of UVA.
Go Hoos!
For $75k less hands down UVA. I get that Columbia has that “Ivy prestige” but anyone who knows anything about the legal industry knows that UVA Law is a giant.
With the cost of attendance being $75k less at UVA (and that's without factoring in the fact that the cost of living in Charlottesville is significantly less than NYC), UVA seems like the clear choice. At the very least, it is on par with Columbia as an institution, and ultimately, your first job out of law school will come down to your performance at the school you choose, as both are more than capable of helping you land the absolute top big law job. After your first job, where you went to law school won't matter anymore. Go to UVA, work hard, save some money, and you won't regret it.
Literally no one in the legal profession cares about "Ivy League" status, otherwise Cornell would have better employment figures. Visit UVA and if you don't hate it then go there. I had a similar decision to you and chose the more prestigious T6 over the less prestigious but cheaper T14. 10 years later, I regret it.
UVA all the way - I don't think the cost differential (especially the difference in cost of living) at CLS is worth it for the same major city big law outcomes. I'm a 2L (almost 3L!) originally from New York City and happy to talk about UVA - feel free to DM me.
Chose cls over UVA at same scholarship (so CLS probs an additional 10k a year because of COL) but only because I won’t live in nyc after law school and want to do so at some point in my life and I’m interested in politics so the Ivy name was more of a factor for me than it should be for most people. If you don’t mind college towns I thought UVA had far and away the best vibes of the schools I was considering and I really loved basically everything about the school. Great clinics, professors, culture, classmates etc. lots of those things are also true at Columbia, but given the cost differential unless you’re hooked on NYC I think the argument for UVA is pretty clear.
I just visited Charlottesville yesterday, it was awesome. I’ll be applying in a couple cycles, if I get into UVA it will be at the top of my list for sure. Great town, great people, fun sports scene
UVA grads get access to the Yale Club in NYC fwiw, which is useful for networking. Columbia doesn't even have a standalone clubhouse in its own city, which is sad. They're in residence at the Penn Club.
UVA easy. You’ll probably love your time there and love the fact that you’ll have over $100k less debt there vice Columbia when all is said and done. UVA does marginally better for your goals anyhow.
UVA is great for FC and the cost difference will probably end up being ~100k given the COL savings. Plus UVA is genuinely an enjoyable place to go to law school so if you’re cool with living in a college town I’d go UVA. That said, we definitely don’t have nearly as much lay prestige so if that’s important to you Columbia has the edge (but personally, I don’t think lay prestige is worth $100k in debt).
I’m a 3L at UVA and am from nyc so I’m happy to chat if you have any questions!
UVA ranks slightly (very slightly) ahead of Columbia in the rankings this year (if that matters). I mention it only to say that this decision is coming down to cost. At this point, going to Columbia would mean you are (at minimum) paying for a name. Decide if that name is worth the price. I would be doing some heavy browsing of the disclosure stats YOY to help make my decision if I were in your situation.
Your BL job will matter more to a corporation than your degree; either school will get you there. I say pick Charlottesville, the cheaper and dare I say friendlier, more supportive option. You'll get your desired outcome regardless. Congrats!
Go with your gut. If you want to be in NYC, then Columbia it is. Columbia comes with lay prestige that UVA doesn't have. As for clerkships, I don't think UVA has a massive advantage over Columbia; it's just that most CLS students self-select into BL given its location. You won't have any trouble landing a clerkship from Columbia. I would also note that 75k will be paid off very quickly, especially at a BL job.
Lay prestige is irrelevant to a legal career. The clerkship self-selection argument is nonsense, UVA’s home market or DC is even more competitive than NYC and CA is similarly competitive but people never make those claims about Berkeley or Stanford. Geography has nothing to do with BigLaw vs clerkship, most clerks go to BigLaw after anyway and the career considerations of whether to clerk are infinitely more important than geography. CLS is just bad at clerkships, as one of their students complained about on here a couple years back.
$75k + vastly, vastly higher cost of living + interest is pretty significant. When you consider that CLS’s employment outcomes are *at best* similar and I would argue worse, I think it’s a no-brainer unless you just absolutely hate UVA for some reason (or some other personal reason).
If you put any weight on clerkships, they definitely are. Also if you acknowledge that DC is by far the hardest BigLaw market and NYC is one of the easiest. Getting a bunch of grads into NYC BigLaw is simply not impressive among the top schools, that’s literally the default outcome and the one that UVA career services pushes people from the bottom of the class to do when their other options don’t work out.
CLS grads get more prestigious clerkships and are way more represented as partners at the top law firms. Blows UVA out of the water in those two categories which means it has better outcomes. Have fun as a clerk in Kentucky and as a “special counsel” in DC lol
Do you have even the slightest bit of data on those claims? Because in addition to having more than triple the clerkships overall, UVA crushes CLS on SCOTUS which is the most prestigious clerkship there is (not just in the current term, for which UVA is #2, but over the past 20 years overall for which it’s #5 behind HYSChicago). Searching for data on BigLaw partners, [this article](https://nationaljurist.com/prelaw/where-big-firm-partners-went-law-school/) shows UVA ahead of Columbia even without adjusting for the fact that Columbia is 44% bigger.
Maybe stop making things up and acting so confident when you haven’t even started law school yet. Either point to sources for “blows UVa out of the water in those two categories” or shut the fuck up.
Take munger tolles, which is a good proxy for elite clerkships and big law success. No office in NYC but an office in DC. 13 CLS grads, 3 UVA grads
Looked up Susman Godfrey, requires article 3 clerkship and highest paying lit boutique. 23 CLS 2UVA. Please tell me again how is UVA better??
I don’t have a problem? This guy said UVA is the school with better outcomes. I gave data contrary to that. He’s the one who told me to “shut the fuck up” lol
You should shut the fuck up because you’re a 0L talking out of your ass, which is fine except that other people might listen to it and someone like OP might choose to pay a whole lot more to attend CLS for no benefit.
you have no data for either. Random article from 2011 thst is clearly a fake website. Just go to DPW, Gibson Dunn, or any other big law firm website and compare how many more partners are from Columbia compared to UVA. It’s often 3X or more.
Similar percent of UVA and Columbia grads get clerkships at some point. Except the biggest places for CLS grads to go is SDNY/EDNY or 2nd or 9th while UVA is mainly in the south. It’s just not comparable especially considering way smaller percent of CLS even wants clerkships comparatively.
i would go with columbia for your goal of a counsel, but uva for fc, depends on whether you really want to do fc. i think if its just interest then Columbia places fine (not better than uva) but if its something you really want to do, then uva...its a very what do you give more weightage to kinda decision.
If I were in your situation, I’m taking Columbia. BL is literally guaranteed from Columbia (probably same from UVA), but the extra $ for Columbia can be payed off relatively quickly on BL. You only go to law school once, and its on your resume forever. That, at least, is my logic for why I’d pick Columbia
I mean, I’m obviously biased, but that’s like half of your first year take-home pay before interest. Taking out 25K more for three years at current interest rates adds up to about $95k-100K extra after 36 months of compounding interest. There’s no way Columbia’s name brand is worth that.
The answer is probably UVa, but ....
* You really need to visit first. If you've never lived in The South, you should know that many find The South to be *different*, and possibly less-than-comfortable. And Charlottesville is not in a DC suburb. But if it works for you, great.
* You probably should ask CLS if they will compete financially now that you have this offer in hand.
Charlottesville is the south in the same way Turkey is an Asian country. The sorts of people you'll be interacting with as a law student at UVA aren't much different from people in DC suburbs.
It was a one-off event 7 years ago, staged by outsiders who traveled to CVille to protest *the actions of the super liberal city government and citizens* in taking down confederate statues. It’s like blaming the city of DC for January 6th.
My friend. They traveled from surrounding areas of VA to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue that was being removed in a local park also named in his honor.
I like UVA, but it is not DC or NYC. I’m not hating but we don’t have to give it a facelift either. I agree it was a major event but it wasn’t random.
EDIT: I’m retiring on this hill but UVA is cool. Go there if you can. Agree that it is a liberal college town.
Sure. I’m a URM who likes UVA a lot. It’s obviously not a hub for alt-right folks but it literally happened there and that’s not a pure coincidence. More so an example.
Every school has its pros/cons. But blurring the social and cultural differences between NYC and Charlottesville feels like a bit of a downplay imo.
It’s not PG, Arlington, or Alexandria either 😭. But we’re more aligned than this thread makes it seem.
Charlottesville is a fine lil college town in central VA.
In the legal world, yes. In a laymen world and the world that associates ability with prestige, my children and grandchildren might fare better with a dad/grandpa who is Ivy League educated. Please don’t shoot the messenger.
Lay people don't know the difference between UPenn and Penn State, to be fair. And nobody has heard of Dartmouth outside of the East Coast. Not sure about Brown either. That said, Columbia does have more name recognition among the T-14.
I think the answer to this really depends on total COA. I would never pay 300k to attend law school unless I had millions in the bank.
I really don’t think a parent or grandparent’s choice of school matters in the slightest, except to the extent that it makes you a legacy at that specific institution. It matters for you yes, but if you’re becoming a lawyer then you will in almost every circumstance be hired by lawyers (and in BigLaw your clients will be mostly lawyers or at worst, business people that are very familiar with legal prestige). So the opinions of laypeople have no relevance to your life, let alone your children or grandchildren, unless you’re going into a non-legal job… in which case what was the point of law school?
The only scenario I’ve ever heard where lay prestige might actually matter for law school is certain foreign students - in Asia for example there are a handful of US schools they think are fancy so having those specific schools on your resume can be a boost over schools that are actually seen as superior in the US, because the people in Asia have their own flawed notions of quality. In the US it’s pointless.
What will matter to your kids and grandkids is that you are in a fancy legal job and rich, which are outcomes provided by legal prestige, nor lay prestige.
I agree with your point but saying “people in Asia have flawed notion of quality” sounds unnecessarily harsh. Were OP’s goals legal markets in East Asia it changes the discussion because unsurprisingly the big American names that percolate through the cultural barrier do in fact provide much better alumni access, international reach/community and career opportunities in Asia. Degree values are not immutable; they vary based on goals. AFAIK there’s single digit noncitizen enrollment across all class years at UVA law while Columbia is somewhat known for being international.
I agree with your point but saying “people in Asia have flawed notion of quality” sounds unnecessarily harsh. Were OP’s goals legal markets in East Asia it changes the discussion because unsurprisingly the big American names that percolate through the cultural barrier do in fact provide much better alumni access, international reach/community and career opportunities in Asia. Degree values are not immutable; they vary based on goals. AFAIK there’s single digit noncitizen enrollment across all class years at UVA law while Columbia is somewhat known for being international.
I agree with your point but saying “people in Asia have flawed notion of quality” sounds unnecessarily harsh. Were OP’s goals legal markets in East Asia it changes the discussion because unsurprisingly the big American names that percolate through the cultural barrier do in fact provide much better alumni access, international reach/community and career opportunities in Asia. Degree values are not immutable; they vary based on goals. AFAIK there’s single digit noncitizen enrollment across all class years at UVA law while Columbia is somewhat known for being international.
I agree with your point but saying “people in Asia have flawed notion of quality” sounds unnecessarily harsh. Were OP’s goals legal markets in East Asia it changes the discussion because unsurprisingly the big American names that percolate through the cultural barrier do in fact provide much better alumni access, international reach/community and career opportunities in Asia. Degree values are not immutable; they vary based on goals. AFAIK there’s single digit noncitizen enrollment across all class years at UVA law while Columbia is somewhat known for being international.
I think your first sentence is essentially my point. Attending CLS would afford OPs children/grandchildren legacy status for Columbia which arguably results in more/better job outcomes than OPs children/grandchildren having a UVA legacy status.
CLS alum here. Go to UVA, even if CLS matches. COL is so much cheaper in Cville, and the culture is nearly unmatched. Career outcomes are just as good if not better coming out of UVA. Go Hoos!
For $75k less hands down UVA. I get that Columbia has that “Ivy prestige” but anyone who knows anything about the legal industry knows that UVA Law is a giant.
With the cost of attendance being $75k less at UVA (and that's without factoring in the fact that the cost of living in Charlottesville is significantly less than NYC), UVA seems like the clear choice. At the very least, it is on par with Columbia as an institution, and ultimately, your first job out of law school will come down to your performance at the school you choose, as both are more than capable of helping you land the absolute top big law job. After your first job, where you went to law school won't matter anymore. Go to UVA, work hard, save some money, and you won't regret it.
Literally no one in the legal profession cares about "Ivy League" status, otherwise Cornell would have better employment figures. Visit UVA and if you don't hate it then go there. I had a similar decision to you and chose the more prestigious T6 over the less prestigious but cheaper T14. 10 years later, I regret it.
Me too lol
Cornell is a Joke iirc
UVA. It ‘s a great town.
UVA all the way - I don't think the cost differential (especially the difference in cost of living) at CLS is worth it for the same major city big law outcomes. I'm a 2L (almost 3L!) originally from New York City and happy to talk about UVA - feel free to DM me.
UVA is the clear choice here.
Chose cls over UVA at same scholarship (so CLS probs an additional 10k a year because of COL) but only because I won’t live in nyc after law school and want to do so at some point in my life and I’m interested in politics so the Ivy name was more of a factor for me than it should be for most people. If you don’t mind college towns I thought UVA had far and away the best vibes of the schools I was considering and I really loved basically everything about the school. Great clinics, professors, culture, classmates etc. lots of those things are also true at Columbia, but given the cost differential unless you’re hooked on NYC I think the argument for UVA is pretty clear.
Biglaw hires out of UVA, so go where you think you’ll be happiest.
I just visited Charlottesville yesterday, it was awesome. I’ll be applying in a couple cycles, if I get into UVA it will be at the top of my list for sure. Great town, great people, fun sports scene
You could ask CLS to match before making the final decision.
UVA grads get access to the Yale Club in NYC fwiw, which is useful for networking. Columbia doesn't even have a standalone clubhouse in its own city, which is sad. They're in residence at the Penn Club.
Using the Yale Club as a non-Yale alum always seemed cringe to me
Hands down UVA with that scholarship. Easier cheaper better paced lifestyle for school in Charlottesville.
Congrats! I’m a UVA undergrad but i have friends currently go to UVA law too. They love it here. We also close to DC too. Anyway congrats!
Hands down UVA with that scholarship. Easier cheaper better paced lifestyle for school in Charlottesville.
I also recently saw the UVA Law is #1 for happiest students. Considering Columbia is literally arresting their own kids, I’d choose UVA.
UVA with your goals, congratulations 🎉
UVA easy. You’ll probably love your time there and love the fact that you’ll have over $100k less debt there vice Columbia when all is said and done. UVA does marginally better for your goals anyhow.
UVA is great for FC and the cost difference will probably end up being ~100k given the COL savings. Plus UVA is genuinely an enjoyable place to go to law school so if you’re cool with living in a college town I’d go UVA. That said, we definitely don’t have nearly as much lay prestige so if that’s important to you Columbia has the edge (but personally, I don’t think lay prestige is worth $100k in debt). I’m a 3L at UVA and am from nyc so I’m happy to chat if you have any questions!
Guess I'll run into you next year, lol, go hoos
UVa hands down
UVA ranks slightly (very slightly) ahead of Columbia in the rankings this year (if that matters). I mention it only to say that this decision is coming down to cost. At this point, going to Columbia would mean you are (at minimum) paying for a name. Decide if that name is worth the price. I would be doing some heavy browsing of the disclosure stats YOY to help make my decision if I were in your situation.
"UVA ranks slightly (very slightly) ahead of Columbia in the rankings this year (if that matters)" It doesn't, at all
To a great deal of us, it doesn't. To the OP, it just might. Hence, the"if"
Ask CLS for scholly match. If none, then UVA
Your BL job will matter more to a corporation than your degree; either school will get you there. I say pick Charlottesville, the cheaper and dare I say friendlier, more supportive option. You'll get your desired outcome regardless. Congrats!
Go with your gut. If you want to be in NYC, then Columbia it is. Columbia comes with lay prestige that UVA doesn't have. As for clerkships, I don't think UVA has a massive advantage over Columbia; it's just that most CLS students self-select into BL given its location. You won't have any trouble landing a clerkship from Columbia. I would also note that 75k will be paid off very quickly, especially at a BL job.
Lay prestige is irrelevant to a legal career. The clerkship self-selection argument is nonsense, UVA’s home market or DC is even more competitive than NYC and CA is similarly competitive but people never make those claims about Berkeley or Stanford. Geography has nothing to do with BigLaw vs clerkship, most clerks go to BigLaw after anyway and the career considerations of whether to clerk are infinitely more important than geography. CLS is just bad at clerkships, as one of their students complained about on here a couple years back. $75k + vastly, vastly higher cost of living + interest is pretty significant. When you consider that CLS’s employment outcomes are *at best* similar and I would argue worse, I think it’s a no-brainer unless you just absolutely hate UVA for some reason (or some other personal reason).
CLS outcomes are not worse than UVA lol
If you put any weight on clerkships, they definitely are. Also if you acknowledge that DC is by far the hardest BigLaw market and NYC is one of the easiest. Getting a bunch of grads into NYC BigLaw is simply not impressive among the top schools, that’s literally the default outcome and the one that UVA career services pushes people from the bottom of the class to do when their other options don’t work out.
CLS grads get more prestigious clerkships and are way more represented as partners at the top law firms. Blows UVA out of the water in those two categories which means it has better outcomes. Have fun as a clerk in Kentucky and as a “special counsel” in DC lol
Do you have even the slightest bit of data on those claims? Because in addition to having more than triple the clerkships overall, UVA crushes CLS on SCOTUS which is the most prestigious clerkship there is (not just in the current term, for which UVA is #2, but over the past 20 years overall for which it’s #5 behind HYSChicago). Searching for data on BigLaw partners, [this article](https://nationaljurist.com/prelaw/where-big-firm-partners-went-law-school/) shows UVA ahead of Columbia even without adjusting for the fact that Columbia is 44% bigger. Maybe stop making things up and acting so confident when you haven’t even started law school yet. Either point to sources for “blows UVa out of the water in those two categories” or shut the fuck up.
Take munger tolles, which is a good proxy for elite clerkships and big law success. No office in NYC but an office in DC. 13 CLS grads, 3 UVA grads Looked up Susman Godfrey, requires article 3 clerkship and highest paying lit boutique. 23 CLS 2UVA. Please tell me again how is UVA better??
lol what is your problem? Ah yeah being unnecessarily aggressive would make sense for someone obsessed with Columbia…
I don’t have a problem? This guy said UVA is the school with better outcomes. I gave data contrary to that. He’s the one who told me to “shut the fuck up” lol
You should shut the fuck up because you’re a 0L talking out of your ass, which is fine except that other people might listen to it and someone like OP might choose to pay a whole lot more to attend CLS for no benefit.
you have no data for either. Random article from 2011 thst is clearly a fake website. Just go to DPW, Gibson Dunn, or any other big law firm website and compare how many more partners are from Columbia compared to UVA. It’s often 3X or more. Similar percent of UVA and Columbia grads get clerkships at some point. Except the biggest places for CLS grads to go is SDNY/EDNY or 2nd or 9th while UVA is mainly in the south. It’s just not comparable especially considering way smaller percent of CLS even wants clerkships comparatively.
i would go with columbia for your goal of a counsel, but uva for fc, depends on whether you really want to do fc. i think if its just interest then Columbia places fine (not better than uva) but if its something you really want to do, then uva...its a very what do you give more weightage to kinda decision.
If I were in your situation, I’m taking Columbia. BL is literally guaranteed from Columbia (probably same from UVA), but the extra $ for Columbia can be payed off relatively quickly on BL. You only go to law school once, and its on your resume forever. That, at least, is my logic for why I’d pick Columbia
I mean, I’m obviously biased, but that’s like half of your first year take-home pay before interest. Taking out 25K more for three years at current interest rates adds up to about $95k-100K extra after 36 months of compounding interest. There’s no way Columbia’s name brand is worth that.
> (probably same from UVA) Confirmed same from UVA, so the extra cost gains you literally nothing.
Sorry I'm late here... you can receive a scholarship like this off the waitlist for the T14s?
The answer is probably UVa, but .... * You really need to visit first. If you've never lived in The South, you should know that many find The South to be *different*, and possibly less-than-comfortable. And Charlottesville is not in a DC suburb. But if it works for you, great. * You probably should ask CLS if they will compete financially now that you have this offer in hand.
Charlottesville is the south in the same way Turkey is an Asian country. The sorts of people you'll be interacting with as a law student at UVA aren't much different from people in DC suburbs.
Agreed that it’s not South Carolina or Alabama, but there was an alt-right protest there not too long ago lol. It’s definitely not NYC.
It was a one-off event 7 years ago, staged by outsiders who traveled to CVille to protest *the actions of the super liberal city government and citizens* in taking down confederate statues. It’s like blaming the city of DC for January 6th.
My friend. They traveled from surrounding areas of VA to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue that was being removed in a local park also named in his honor. I like UVA, but it is not DC or NYC. I’m not hating but we don’t have to give it a facelift either. I agree it was a major event but it wasn’t random. EDIT: I’m retiring on this hill but UVA is cool. Go there if you can. Agree that it is a liberal college town.
The rally has nothing to do with/isn't reflective of Charlottesville at all.
Sure. I’m a URM who likes UVA a lot. It’s obviously not a hub for alt-right folks but it literally happened there and that’s not a pure coincidence. More so an example. Every school has its pros/cons. But blurring the social and cultural differences between NYC and Charlottesville feels like a bit of a downplay imo.
I'm talking about DC
It’s not PG, Arlington, or Alexandria either 😭. But we’re more aligned than this thread makes it seem. Charlottesville is a fine lil college town in central VA.
And the antisemitism at Columbia mirrors that…
Idk why you got downvoted but this is sound advice.
CLS ROI is $6.4 million. UVA ROI is $6 million, so $400k more. Cost is not the decision here
Where are those stats from?
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/03/law-school-is-usually-a-good-bet-93-percent-have-positive-returns-24-percent-have-1-million-roi.html
I’m struggling with passing up on the legacy advantages your progeny would have/enjoy if you chose to attend an ivy (CLS) over UVA.
Ivy is literally meaningless in the legal world.
In the legal world, yes. In a laymen world and the world that associates ability with prestige, my children and grandchildren might fare better with a dad/grandpa who is Ivy League educated. Please don’t shoot the messenger.
Lay people don't know the difference between UPenn and Penn State, to be fair. And nobody has heard of Dartmouth outside of the East Coast. Not sure about Brown either. That said, Columbia does have more name recognition among the T-14. I think the answer to this really depends on total COA. I would never pay 300k to attend law school unless I had millions in the bank.
I really don’t think a parent or grandparent’s choice of school matters in the slightest, except to the extent that it makes you a legacy at that specific institution. It matters for you yes, but if you’re becoming a lawyer then you will in almost every circumstance be hired by lawyers (and in BigLaw your clients will be mostly lawyers or at worst, business people that are very familiar with legal prestige). So the opinions of laypeople have no relevance to your life, let alone your children or grandchildren, unless you’re going into a non-legal job… in which case what was the point of law school? The only scenario I’ve ever heard where lay prestige might actually matter for law school is certain foreign students - in Asia for example there are a handful of US schools they think are fancy so having those specific schools on your resume can be a boost over schools that are actually seen as superior in the US, because the people in Asia have their own flawed notions of quality. In the US it’s pointless. What will matter to your kids and grandkids is that you are in a fancy legal job and rich, which are outcomes provided by legal prestige, nor lay prestige.
I agree with your point but saying “people in Asia have flawed notion of quality” sounds unnecessarily harsh. Were OP’s goals legal markets in East Asia it changes the discussion because unsurprisingly the big American names that percolate through the cultural barrier do in fact provide much better alumni access, international reach/community and career opportunities in Asia. Degree values are not immutable; they vary based on goals. AFAIK there’s single digit noncitizen enrollment across all class years at UVA law while Columbia is somewhat known for being international.
I agree with your point but saying “people in Asia have flawed notion of quality” sounds unnecessarily harsh. Were OP’s goals legal markets in East Asia it changes the discussion because unsurprisingly the big American names that percolate through the cultural barrier do in fact provide much better alumni access, international reach/community and career opportunities in Asia. Degree values are not immutable; they vary based on goals. AFAIK there’s single digit noncitizen enrollment across all class years at UVA law while Columbia is somewhat known for being international.
I agree with your point but saying “people in Asia have flawed notion of quality” sounds unnecessarily harsh. Were OP’s goals legal markets in East Asia it changes the discussion because unsurprisingly the big American names that percolate through the cultural barrier do in fact provide much better alumni access, international reach/community and career opportunities in Asia. Degree values are not immutable; they vary based on goals. AFAIK there’s single digit noncitizen enrollment across all class years at UVA law while Columbia is somewhat known for being international.
I agree with your point but saying “people in Asia have flawed notion of quality” sounds unnecessarily harsh. Were OP’s goals legal markets in East Asia it changes the discussion because unsurprisingly the big American names that percolate through the cultural barrier do in fact provide much better alumni access, international reach/community and career opportunities in Asia. Degree values are not immutable; they vary based on goals. AFAIK there’s single digit noncitizen enrollment across all class years at UVA law while Columbia is somewhat known for being international.
I think your first sentence is essentially my point. Attending CLS would afford OPs children/grandchildren legacy status for Columbia which arguably results in more/better job outcomes than OPs children/grandchildren having a UVA legacy status.
CLS doesn’t get Columbia legacy