Chance Me/Match me for Philosophy Pre-law [4.0UW, 1570 SAT, HS Senior, NJ] ["Parents willing to pay full price to reaches, otherwise looking for significant merit aid"]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Thank you so much for this! I definitely want to reduce debt as much as possible for law school. UIUC is yeah more because my dad went there + I was born there so more nostalgia I guess…

I’ll try to figure out how much I’m sure I will go to law school (maybe see if I can get an internship or something with hands on experience in that field) this summer perhaps, or just find some more people to talk to.

Thank you for all your help :face_holding_back_tears::face_holding_back_tears: this has changed my perspective on a lot of things, genuinely appreciate it sm.

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I think I most likely will not be applying ED/SCEA, do you believe this is a major handicap?

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That doesn’t save you from debt. My kids didn’t apply to my school (they did apply to mom’s but out of desire and relatives nearby).

You’ll chart a new course.

It’s a great school but it’s not a great budget school.

If you must, put others in priority and get to it if you have time - but make sure during EA.

But a Purdue or Ohio State or Michigan State or Minnesota would be a much better choice.

New generation - you’ll start a new family tradition. But unless you want law school debt, it’s a wasted app.

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Testing out your interest in law is a great idea! That said, a lot of students change their minds their senior year of high school and in college. One thing I’ve found useful is to think about “option value” - what options do other colleges give you and how much do you value that? For example, if you decide not to go to law school, what might you do? What colleges would give you a good set of alternative options that are appealing to you? You would, of course, have to take advantages of opportunities to get those options, but it can be a good thought experiment as you go through the process.

And, of course, college isn’t purely about these types of opportunity outcomes. So, the right vibe and feel of a school is important too.

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You should tour one - is it too small? Plenty are great and give big merit - so is Swat at $95K worth it over $40K College of Wooster? If you’re not going to work on Wall Street, it’d be hard to think that.

One student just said they got $28K from F&M. Great school but for you not enough. But schools like Connecticut, Furman, Rhodes, Washington College, Allegheny, Wheaton (Mass), St. Olaf, Kalamazoo, St. Lawrence, Muhlenberg, etc.

The trade off for stats like yours is cost.

If not law, what might you do with a philosophy degree?

Even if you don’t go for law school, ultimately staying within budget keeps your options open.

I’m a budget guy and I believe in avoiding debt at all costs - for a young person. Others are’n’t and that’s fine too.

But I’ll tell you this - if you look at career outcomes from top LACs, they often omit salaries. The ones that don’t are those with engineering and/or business - the Bucknell, Richmonds of the world. Why is that do you think?

Swat is one that does show - though. They show 211 reported but only 107 the salary. Why is that? They show a $71K average but a $60K median - so they have a few heavy hitters in there.

You could ask the career departments about philosophy grads.

Amherst just lists who is hiring grads but not salary - from Bain and Goldman Sachs to Fulbrights, etc.

Williams doesn’t show salaries that I could see but had 3 philosophy grads - two continued in school and one worked in some type of performing, etc.

So you might check each school - but not just the school but major. It is true though - for some types of jobs - high end consulting, investment banking, etc. that level of school does give you an edge - but then you wouldn’t be going to law school. But the reason you see a median much lower than the average at swat is - because most are taking jobs at less pay - and only half of those who reported an outcome reported a salary.

Just food for thought.

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Congratulations on all your work and accomplishments so far!

What appeals to you about law school? Are you wanting to work in private practice or on social justice issues? Or something else?

By the time you graduate from college, not to mention law school, the landscape of the legal profession will likely look very different than it does today. This will be most true for the folks who are not yet attorneys today.

I would not advise making decisions about which type of college you should attend based on the expectation that you will go to law school.

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But if you overspend, then you take away the flexibility to do should you ultimately decide to.

That it may be different doesn’t mean OP won’t apply.

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That’s true!! I think having the ability to explore my interests is something I do value greatly as I’m really interested in a lot of things. How can you measure that ‘option value’ in colleges? is it through like the number of majors offered? advisory provided?

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My daughter and I did it as options like “good for chemistry”, “good for physics”, “good for law school”, “good for getting a regular job”, etc. And then we assigned weights to each outcome like 25% for chemistry, 15% for physics, “20% for law school”, “40% for getting a job”, etc. Then we did a sort of subjective evaluation of each based on what she’d learned about them. What are PhD placement rates like? What types of companies recruit on campus?, etc. Then, when all this is done, you can compare the overall scores to the price paid. So, a school that scores twice as well you can decide do you value it twice the cost? Something more? Something less? Etc.

It’s basically just a decision support tool. It doesn’t mean that the one with the highest score wins, just that you might place a financial or personal value on a school with a higher score. At the end of the day, you’re spending your time at the school, so you want it to work well for you without overly considering specific outcomes since those outcome assessments are already imperfect.

And you don’t have to build a decision support tool like this. But we are finding it helpful just to think through the problem of choice. You might find just a rough idea is enough to help you make a determination.

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You may look at schools with more open curriculums - Brown, Rochester, Grinnell. I think Amherst, Wesleyan and Vassar to some level too. For the affordable, has a high % of PhDs btw - safe with mainly open - Kalamazoo - fine school. That’s your - they’ll throw insane money at you school.

You might also find something interdisciplinary - a PPE or PPL (Politics, Philosophy, Law or Econ) major - and others like Urban Studies at College of Charleston (they have 3 tracks I put one below), International Studies at a lot of schools. Look at curriculums.

Those majors span multiple departments. I’m sure there’s more too. Some colleges let you create your own major. There’s many interdisciplinary majors out there - these are just a few. You’d still have the school core curriculum - whereas those schools above have less restrictive core curriculums.

Politics and Philosophy, BA | Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Studies

Program: Urban Studies, Urban Policy and Social Problems Concentration, B.A. - College of Charleston

Philosophy Politics and Law | Binghamton University

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Ohhh that’s really interesting!! I’ll try that out. Are the options eg for your daughter chemistry and physics what she would like to study in the future? what she’s just generally interested in but may or may not study?

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I believe only the engineering school goes as high as 20k, others max out at 15k. This is because engineering tuition is higher. Just a detail…

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Thank you so much!

I would like to work with social justice issues, maybe with a focus on the international side of things (hence why Georgetown interested me; I thought of majoring in international relations/global affairs for a while. Debate has really impacted me in this aspect). I recently semifinaled to High School Diplomats (yay!) so ,along with NSLI-Y, I have a couple of diplomacy/international exchange opportunities in the coming summer to see how things go.

I am very concerned about the future especially considering AI/general changes in the job market. Not sure if I should maybe double major with something in the engineering field in case humanities/social sciences implodes or something…

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Is that for OOS?

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Yes. In state students don’t receive the same level of merit. It helps to offset OOS tuition for students Pitt wants to attract.

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Ohhh I see :0 I think I’ll probably keep Pitt on my list then!!

UIUC, I might take off. idk.

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For philosophy both Pitt and Rutgers are top schools :slight_smile:

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Yes!! Interdisciplinary majors really appeal to me: yale’s Ethics Politics and Economics, Swarthmore’s PPE and Peace and Conflict studies, Oxford PPE, UPenn PPE (originally) so those are a big plus.

UPitt stays on my list, I’ll probably add Charleston for the Charleston Fellows. Binghamton seems to be around 50K OOS, they give 30K to 5 incoming freshman so attendance is around 20K total if I receive that?

Also one more general thing– I got a 1500 PSAT with a 224 selection index. Unfortunately I’m in NJ so I may or may not get semifinalist/finalist… :downcast_face_with_sweat:

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So a few things.

Many schools will have a human rights or Social Justice club. My daughter actually started a club to help resettle Afghan refugees in the local community at her school. Fortunately it’s still going the year after she’s gone but even while there I wasn’t sure it was going to sustain. So having a club is one thing. Hoping it sustains is another. I think that’s for many clubs.

Given your interests, should Charleston select you for the interview weekend and you are so far above the school academically, I’m sure they will - they also have international scholars (you need to double major with Int Studies as one). Mine was both. These are subgroups of Honors. Like many schools, there’s also a scholarship for kids with service interests. At Charleston it’s the Ketner Scholars and you can have all three mentioned above. It’s housed in Women’s and Gender Studies (another inter disciplinary major) but it needn’t be your major to win. I know U Colorado had a similar service scholarship program. I’m sure others do as well if you look.

Finally, given your interest in poverty studies, check out schools in the Sheperd Consortium - which focuses on this and even has access to internships.

I get you are a stud academically but sometimes certain schools just fit better. That may, or may not be the case here. some, like Bucknell, Ga Tech, Hamilton, Midd and W&L are top names but some not affordable (a Bucknell or W&L are worth tries). Others like Juniata, UVM and Sewanee likely will be.

If you do get Natl Merit, now you can go maybe for free. Certainly free tuition at least. Some schools give tuition and room so maybe a cost of $25k over 4 years - total. If you get that, you can reassess. Your parents can decide if the name alone is worth $375k more than a Tulsa, Bama, UTD, NJIT etc

And yes, Bing can go lower if they want you - so worth keeping.

One other crazy suggestion - may not be right for you, but like Williams mentioned in the comment below, Ohio U has the Honors Tutorial Program for 1:1 or small group study. Their topics include your interests. It’s a great budget beating program whereas a Williams is budget crushing. Forget the name / rank of certain schools - you need to dig deeper. This is that kind of thing - link below. Many schools have strong programs and outcomes - as mine achieved from a “lesser”ranked or perceived school in both two internships and job post college.

My only suggestion now is if the budget stuff has changed per this conversation, to change your upcoming visits to schools that keep law / grad school on the table whereas your list is very limiting in this regard.

Good luck.

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If this is the case, check out Wesleyan’s College of Social Studies and Williams College’s Political Economy major. Maybe these won’t work for you, now that you’re rethinking funding and aid for undergrad with an eye toward law school, but those majors could be appealing to you.

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