On the law school thing. I went to night school at Duquesne a long time ago and was able to create a nice career as a litigator in Pittsburgh where many of the lawyers went to either Pitt or Duquesne Law schools.
When she was going into her last year at Clemson my D18 came to me and said she wanted to go to law school. I told that was fine as long as she just wasn’t doing it as a place holder because she didn’t know what else to do. In my view law school is too much work and too expensive to just use as something to do because you don’t know what else to do.
She had a 4.0 in Economics from Clemson and got a 168 on her LSAT. Very good but not T-14 necessarily. She got full tuition scholarships from ASU, UMinn and UF. She chose UF when they threw in a living stipend on top of full tuition. She is going to graduate from law school debt free.
She is now a 3L and 7th in her class of 257. She has a job in big law at a Miami office of a national firm. I don’t say this to brag on my kid (Okay maybe just a little bit of a bragging….lol) but to say you don’t need to go to a top ranked undergraduate school to get into a good law school. And you don’t necessarily need to go to a T14 law school to get a big law job if thats what you want. Rather in undergraduate you need to work hard, get great grades, great LSAT scores and then in law school lather rinse and repeat……work hard and make good grades.
Also keep in mind that unlike undergraduate admission, laws school admission is basically about GPA and LSAT. If you are above the 75%tile for both at a particular school there can be great merit money opportunities.