I am having a really hard time deciding between the two. I am most concerned with
Value of the degree
Mobility
Salary
I want to go into business law—> get work experience—> then become in house at a company
I think I am preferential to the NYC market, but my SO may transfer to San Antonio which isn’t very far from Austin. I don’t want to do long distance for 3 years ( but I will if I have to) and I also don’t want to regret where I go to law school. Please help!
The NYC market is “better” than the Texas market so in terms of overall job prospects, Cornell is the better choice. It sounds like you want biglaw, so you are more likely to get that at Cornell than at UT. I could be wrong but I believe Texas has had below 40% biglaw placement for the past couple years.
You can look at LST too, Cornell just seems significantly stronger.
I’m not sure that’s necessarily true - Dallas and Houston are filled with corporations and law firms, and even graduating from a lower-ranked (but still good) school like SMU can land you a biglaw gig. I don’t know the exact stats either, but the UT law students I know had very little trouble finding jobs.
That being said, Cornell is ranked higher and has the “T14” prestige. If you’re concerned about mobility, Cornell may give you more options.
I don’t see how your post disputes what I said about the NYC market being stronger? We can only go by the statistics, even before the crash Texas was placing less than 40% of its grads into biglaw, and for 2010 only 26% compared to Cornell’s 58%. I think the consensus is that we shouldn’t expect Cornell to have such great placement again going forward, but its track record is just much better than UT’s.