<p>IMHO, the reason to go to Harvard ($200k) over GULC (free-ish) would be that HLS has its own, very generous, loan repayment programme ([Eligible</a> Employment](<a href=“http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/lipp/eligible-jobs/index.html]Eligible”>http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/lipp/eligible-jobs/index.html)) If you earn $50,000 per year, for example, HLS will pay all but $800 of your loans for you. Functionally, no matter what you do, your HLS debt will be very manageable - and you have access to jobs that you can really only get out of a top 3 law school. (The one caveat is that the parental leave payments only last for six months, and any part-time work is converted into a full-time salary to determine eligibility.)</p>
<p>Ergo, unless you are going to Harvard (or Yale or Stanford, if they do the same guarantee), go for free. It seems like the law students here are projecting a few years into the future - saying, hey, if you’re 28 years old and working at BigLaw to pay down your loans, that’s fine, you’ll get the BigLaw job. But I think that when you’re much older than that and still paying down loans and working 80 hour weeks to do it, your opinion of the wisdom of taking out those loans is really, really different.</p>
<p>I would especially caution against taking out those loans if you are a woman who wants children. I’m not one to run around saying that women need to have kids at age 25, but if the most optimistic scenario of your life plan involves having them after age 35, then, IMHO, you’re making a life-changing mistake. Women ought to also consider that their husbands may have similar debt loads (given that they will often marry law students whom they meet at school or lawyers at their own firm), and a young married couple with $400,000 of student loan debt is one that is going to make heart-wretching choices.</p>
<p>One woman I know said something about “I would give anything to trade in the initials after my name [B.S., J.D.] to be called ‘mom.’”</p>
<p>Just my opinion.</p>