Ruby-nosed farmer in the blistering cold
On why I chose Cornell Law over NYU Law despite ‘obvious’ reasons to the contrary
It was an obvious choice, they all thought, between NYU Law and Cornell Law.
NYU faculty is amazing! said a friend at Yale Law. It was true; the faculty was distinguished, well-known, and approachable. One reached out to me directly because of my interests in labor and employment law, and deigned to chat for an hour about to which law school I should go.
A friend at Columbia thought it a shoo-in. NYU is known for public interest, which is exactly what you’d like to do. She then put me in touch with someone who transferred from Cornell to Columbia. Cornell is known for big law, he assured me. You don’t want to go there. And NYU gave you about the same amount in aid? It’s an obvious choice as I see it.
I visited the schools and compared them on a handful of ‘objective’ points, but I reached my decision as I rolled over the bare hills of my husband’s rural hometown of Vermont, peaks still dusted in snow in April. It was the story of the ruby-nosed farmer that led me to Cornell.
Like apple and orange
Cornell and NYU may have both been law schools, but they were entirely different species. At 400-500 students per class, NYU seemed like an institution you could disappear into. You enjoyed anonymity, so you could be as aloof as a 9-5 professional or as involved as a college student. The students chosen for the Admitted Students Day panel seemed weathered by life. They spoke in the liberal tones of today: self-aware, critical, skeptical, and determined to ‘do good.’ The social life seemed to be defined by tight friendship circles. In class, I heard students in one clique giggle discreetly at the answers given by another student.
When I visited Cornell for Admitted Students Day (ASD), I discovered a removed oasis: nestled into a swathe of buildings built into a large hill, the law school was within earshot of the bell tower where volunteers played daily concerts at noon. Campus traditions like these created a sense of cohesion. The embodied place held such charm that the admissions office offered travel reimbursements for ASD. With many students right out of undergraduate, the law school seemed like the students’ primary community. At only 200 students per class, everyone could know each other: at the student panel, the organizers and the panelists communicated with body language.
Students at both schools claimed to be “down to earth,” which struck me as true, but the students at Cornell were more amicable, extroverted, and relaxed. What also made Cornell more down to earth was the makeup of the admitted students: There was no “Yale contingent,” like I’d overheard a group of admitted students at NYU refer to themselves as I walked by. There were many students admitted to Cornell who had never previously stepped foot on an Ivy League campus.
Visiting allowed me to form a concrete impression of each school. If you can visit before you write your “Why X School” statement, I highly recommend you do so.
These were the ‘objective’ axes along which I evaluated the schools (in no order of importance):
Cost of tuition and cost of living
Proximity to family and support for having a baby in our third year
Versatility of future opportunities in public interest (PI)
Quality of faculty and staff
Student body caliber, approachability, connections
Whether I could take advantage of my opportunities
Fit with my personal and professional interests
Cost of tuition and cost of living
Assuming the tuition is around 77,000 a year, it would cost me 47,000 per year to attend NYU (30K merit scholarship) and 32,000 per year to attend Cornell (45K merit scholarship). NYU would leave me ~150,000 in debt; Cornell about ~90,000.
I planned to mitigate these crippling costs by entering the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which dissolves my loans after ten years in public service. This could be coupled with each school’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program, where schools make loan payments on behalf of students in public interest jobs. However, I had no eligibility for NYU’s LRAP due to the stipulation that you must have less than 100,000 in assets during the program (I maxed out my 401K in the years that I worked, so I have half of that already – and my husband fills out the other half) and potentially limited eligibility for Cornell’s LRAP due to the stipulation that you must make under 80,000 in salary.
Cornell is located in Ithaca, upstate New York, where costs of living are drastically lower than NYU’s. We will pay a minimum of 1,000/month on our mortgage and utilities in upstate New York, whereas we would pay at least 2,500/month in NYC. Over three years, the cost difference would be more than 54,000: in Ithaca, we’d keep the 1,500/month difference plus recoup the money we put into our mortgage, minus the closing and selling costs.
Proximity to family and support for having a baby
My family lives in New Jersey and New York City. My husband’s family in Vermont is an equidistant seven-hour drive from both schools. Because we graduated from Princeton, my friends and husband’s closest friends live in New Jersey and NYC. I could visualize myself in a church community in the rich religious life in New York City. Ithaca, however, loomed in the distant recesses of West New York.
New York and Ithaca each had their pros and cons when it came to raising my first child. I shunned the prospect of raising my first newborn without my family’s involvement; Ithaca was a just-out-of-reach four hours away from home. However, I also shivered at the thought of washing my baby in a tiny, broken-down sink that my landlord refused to fix in a century-old Brooklyn, NYC, apartment, even if my mom could visit daily.
Versatility of future opportunities in PI
As an ex-IBM consultant, I had no reason to do big law. If I wanted to make money or ascend the corporate ladder, I would have stayed the course at IBM or pivoted to be a software engineer. Committed to public interest work, I was immediately impressed by NYU’s historical and institutional commitment to public interest. It had proven pipelines into public interest jobs, with the largest public interest job fair in the country and an involved alumni network, landed 20% of each graduating class in clerkships, and composed of a ‘woke’ student body. (A clerkship is a 1-2 year term in which you assist a judge, advising the judge on ruling on cases.) Being surrounded by students with like goals gives you a structural boost. You can share knowledge and work together. I actually learned about LRAP from talking to an admitted student at NYU Admitted Student Day. It is not unlike when friends are accepted to high-caliber law schools because they read and critique each others’ law school applications.
Cornell, on the other hand, honed its reputation as a big law feeder. In self-awareness, the clerkship advisor assured that while Cornell placed a lower percentage of graduates right out of school into clerkships, over time 20% of each class did complete a clerkship. Students then asked whether Cornell had any luck with Supreme Court clerkship placements – the most competitive – and the clerkship advisor said it was possible if “they really wanted it” (he did not elaborate). I spoke with the Director of Pro Bono Services and Externships one-on-one during her lunch hour and it was clear that student endeavors in public service, from new technology solutions for underrepresented clients to placements with legal aid clinics, did thrive, albeit in a muted way. Students even started and secured funding for their own Afghan refugee clinic in the last few years.
Quality of faculty and staff
NYU admissions staff worked together like a well-oiled machine. I received notice that my application was ‘complete’ and ready for review a few days after submitting it; received a call about being admitted only four weeks after I submitted my applications; and after I was admitted, I immediately began receiving personalized welcome letters from student affinity groups, individual students, and faculty. The admissions office had earmarked my interests. The self-organization was so sophisticated that the financial aid office used Zendesk to organize queries the way software engineers use tickets to prioritize work and ensure no inquiry is lost.
NYU faculty have a reputation for being eminent in their field yet close with students. This rang true during the many interactions the admissions office proudly facilitated: during a mock class, during a faculty panel, over lunch, over email, and when speaking one-on-one in person. Meanwhile, other admitted students confided that other schools did not have a single faculty-related session during Admitted Students Day.
My impression of Cornell admissions staff formed when I walked into their office to speak with the financial aid officer. Right after we spoke, he emailed me my merit aid offer. This quick action brought me much relief after Cornell’s admissions result came too late for me to apply for their full-ride merit scholarship. I briefly spoke to the Dean of Admissions while in the admissions office and she was responsive over email.
There are fewer faculty at Cornell. This means that class offerings cover a narrower base of topics, and it is less likely I’ll find a professor aligning exactly with my interests. (Being more numerous, NYU faculty covered a wider breadth of topics in their courses. I was, for instance, eyeing a nonprofit law class.) However, hidden gems nest among Cornell faculty. These include the author of the leading civil procedure casebook, law professor Kevin Clermont; the designer of Respondent Driven Sampling for underrepresented populations, sociologist Douglas Heckathorn; and the creator of the first farmworker-specific legal clinic, director of legal clinics and professor Beth Lion.
Student body caliber, approachability, connections
The students at Princeton were memorable. I never once had a group project where anyone slacked off, in or out of class. I sought out the same in law school. I needed people with whom I could work towards a common goal, acquaintances and friends I’d look up to, and confidantes I’d spend late nights with.
I have no doubt I would find my tribe at NYU, but I clicked with the Cornell students too. Bent on securing big law positions, Cornell students have a fearless optimism and lack entitlement. I met young working-class professionals seeking to pivot their careers and international students wishing to make a way in the States– all deeply admirable in the eyes of a daughter of Chinese immigrants. Since probono work is so prevalent for big law firms, I am scheming to have classmates dedicate their probono hours to working with my legal aid clinic.
Taking advantage of opportunities
To actualize my goal of starting a nonprofit for rural communities, I needed to rack up legal skills, experiences and knowledge, build up a network of lawyers, and find funding. I needed to utilize my resources well, and I needed to be able to stand out before faculty if they were to entrust me with more opportunities. Would other students, structures or incentives stand in my way?
There is a Chinese saying, 人山人海 (the people are as numerous as the sea), that suggests too many people can become a hindrance. At NYU, the synergy between like-minded PI-focused students also stifled. I witnessed an admitted student approach Professor Robert Jackson, the charismatic and well-known leader in business law, and win his approval because of her shared background in investment banking. I sat with a professor at lunch who hosted a legendary podcast about Supreme Court politics, Strict Scrutiny, that I had never listened to – other students gaped when I mentioned that I sat at her table. I knew I’d have to work extra hard to stick out among the already-initiated. (Entering law school has been a sanctifying exercise in swallowing my pride and admitting I might be one step behind for a while.) I was a small fish in a big pond.
At Cornell, I would be a bigger fish in the pond. The director of clinical studies enthusiastically emailed back and forth with me about serving rural communities; all of her students in her farmworker legal assistance clinic had big law jobs lined up after graduation. I surmised my non-industry focus coupled with my intellectual rigor would sustain a memorable reputation among faculty. That held allure.
Overall, employment law is not as competitive a field as gender studies, race and ethnicity, housing, politics of uprising, etc. If I stuck with it, I’d find opportunities and faculty mentors whether I headed to NYU or Cornell.
Fit with my personal and professional interests
NYU had the Public Interest focus, the distinguished faculty and like-minded students – the obvious fit, but Cornell offered the rare opportunity to learn and work in a rural setting – a niche fit. I was confident that I could make the most of either education. (I had applied to T14 schools to ensure that I was structured to succeed, especially if my focus split over being a new wife and potentially a mother.)
The weekend of the decision in April, I flew back to Vermont to visit my wedding venue and finalize terms with my food and drink vendor. In between meandering drives over the still-desolate landscape, my then-fiance and I debated to which law school I should go. The last five years of our coming together had no shortage of tribulation; no couple as stubborn as us falls effortlessly into the rhythms of marriage. I still tended to view our interests as adversarial.
Yet, I had been inspired to pursue the law because a friend at church was brought to suit by her former divorce attorney. Meanwhile, her ex-husband dragged out a battle over custody of their younger daughter. Church was an intimate study of both failed marriages and blossomed marriages. Both extremes stressed the importance of building a healthy marriage.
“Living in NYC would be the best way of loving me,” I pleaded to my husband, “especially after we have our first kid – so that my mom can help.” When I was met with stony silence, I retorted, “I mean, how else do you plan to love me?” He ventured in reply, “I would upkeep the home, fix what’s broken, keep it clean and functional.” I reflected on this as we rolled over the yellow and gray mountains of Vermont, which were sweating their winter ice in a muddy deluge. I reflected on it as I crept up the steps of his childhood home and heard his father grumble about the many house ‘projects’ that had appeared over the winter: A rotted wall, a disheveled shingle, the need for new heating ducts.
The North is a harsh, unrelenting place. The freezing temperatures warp the roads and cause sections of solid asphalt to heave into the air. Snow, hail and wind assault the windows, roofs and sidings; paint crackles quickly and reveals rotted wood underneath. It struck me that New Jersey did not wear on the habitats of its humans in the same way. Keeping the house standing was a hard labor in the North.
It was also a labor of love. The northern rural man’s masculinity and family identity rested in his ability to keep the house standing. My husband picked up a book called Vermont from a local bookstore in Colorado when on a quest to marvel at even grander mountains than in his home state. One essay, “On Enjoying the Cold,” begins,
“Vermont farmers, back each side of the turn of the century, loved a good blizzard.
“Oh, I realize that all farmers will deny this fact indignantly. Love a blizzard? How absurd can you get? Think of the work. The shoveling; the hardships; the destruction…”
Yet, the author unfolds, this secret love manifests each winter. As the blizzard sweeps in, the farmer sits in a warm home heated by a fire fed by wood he chopped, insulated by walls and windows he restored year after year, surrounded by his children and animals that are in his stead. To deny my husband the satisfaction and duty of stewarding our home and caring for me was to deny his identity.
Choosing a law school entailed carving out the first few years of married life. Choosing the legal profession entailed embarking on a mission with my husband. This is how we landed on Cornell. It was a short-term fit with my marriage goals and a long-term fit with aspirations shaped by my husband’s background. Making my own choices before God, and not the choices others would have made, felt foreign to a rule-following conformist like me, but in choosing to put aside my individual will for a covenantal relationship, I was freed.
Past articles:
My experience applying to the top 14 law schools in the U.S.
Think twice about what you choose for your diversity statement
Future articles:
Stories from an ex-IBM consultant about how we treat Indian and Chinese subcontractors, see humans as ‘resources,’ and incentives that go against good software
How I plan to finance law school, negotiated merit aid, and my assessment of Loan Repayment Assistance Programs
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