USD admitted students day:
My youngest brother was in town for the USD admitted student's day. He has a 177 LSAT and pretty good undergrad grades so he has better options but wanted to check out the campus anyway. The admitted students program comes with a +1, so my brother invited me to see "that other law school" in San Diego.
I was really impressed with their admitted students day. The campus is gorgeous. The law school facilities are awesome. I have a few friends there and the atmosphere is much more laid back than California Western. I think this is due to the incredible academic attrition rate Cal West maintains. It makes the 1Ls wound up super tight at Cal West and I think the attitude permeates to the school as a whole. This is my only real complaint about California Western.Back to USD.
My biggest problem I had with the USD admitted students program came from career services and the students they selected to speak. The career services woman basically promised the admitted students the opportunity to practice at a big law firm anywhere in the country. This notion is totally absurd. The recent graduates they lined up to speak graduated in the top 5% or 10% and landed themselves big law jobs, but this is definitely not what the average USD graduate can expect.
The funniest part was the amount they bashed California Western. Each time someone spoke about California Western they prefaced the statement with "California Western is a wonderful school, but __(something awful about California Western)___". They never said anything inaccurate. I found it funny because they spent an awful lot of time campaigning against Cal West as if we were hot on their heals in the rankings or something. We did recently demolish them in bar passage though, so maybe that had something to do with it.
The best part about the admitted students day was the lunch. They put together a very nice meal and sat potential students with faculty members. I sat with professor Kelly and asked a few questions about the school. He's a really nice man. My brother walked around the room and talked to various professors and the administration about scholarship retention (which is 60%, but not everyone has the same stipulations on their scholarships so this number might be deceiving).
The students are much more relaxed, and the campus is really awesome. USD is a good school.
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California Western's Tuition
California Western's tuition is pretty much par for the course for law schools, public and private. Law school is expensive. You can pay for it with scholarships, grants, and federal student loans. Student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. If you land a public interest career you can sign up for loan forgiveness. After working for 10 years your loans go away to make up for the pay hit you're taking to perform a service valuable to society. You can also use income based repayment, so you're not dumping 2k/month into paying off your loans or something large when you're starting salary is small.
Law school is not cheap. Do not go to law school if you want to "make a bunch of money" or whatever. There are much easier ways to get rich in California.
California Western will provide you with the skills to become a good attorney. There are a lot of practice oriented classes, including STEPPS which is a legal research and writing program developed to mimmic a law firm. These classes set California Western apart from other schools who focus on legal theory. California Western will also prepare you for the bar with free BarBri courses, part of the reason we demolished USD in the last Bar examination.
Cheers!
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