Privatizing my Education

I can safely say that my family is a public education family. Both of my parents went to the University of Minnesota (along with all of my mom's 7 siblings), my brother goes to UC Berkeley, and I've had other family members attend other public schools like University of Wisconsin. So after attending 17 years of public education myself, I have to admit that a little part of my felt like I was selling out when I decided to attend a private school for law school.

I shortly convinced myself that I was being silly, as any future lawyer can justify anything in her head. I'm still a firm believer in the public education system, and spotted an externship at the counsel for the Department of Education that I might want to apply to down the road. But alas, the best option out of the schools I got into happened to be private.

Now that I'm here, I'm starting to notice differences. I've discussed this with Alex, who also went from UCLA to working with students at Syracuse and he's definitely noticed difference. I'm trying to decipher how many of the differences stem from the fact that I'm at a private school and how much of it is just law school in general. Smaller classes and free printing probably just come with the law school turf. But I'm guessing going to a private school lends itself to all the catered lunches, shuttles that run to the school, all the "free" stuff like book bags, mugs, and tshirts, and really annoying undergrads (not to stereotype all kids who go to American/private undergrads but after riding the shuttle with them, oh man).

Overall, I think my route worked for me (which of course easy to say in retrospect and because I don't know otherwise). Going to a big public school like UCLA definitely made me more resourceful and independent. I think it also made me appreciate the different types of perks that I get in law school. While some people are complaining that we don't have free coffee or that the complimentary printer is broken again, I don't come into a school with the expectation that I'll be getting either of those things handed to me.

I think in the end, the quality of education between the private and public shcool systems are comparable. There are a lot of state schools that rank very highly in the law school ranks. But the main differences come in the outside things and each system has strengths in different areas.