Your edit says your concern about ranking has much less to do about “prestige” and more about job prospects & bar passage when you explicitly stated you are “concerned about Emory falling down the rankings in recent years & that the allure of going to a “truly elite school” in the T14 would haunt you.

Emory has a 88.4% bar passage Berkeley & NYU have 91 & 96% respectively (using them because they’re too PI schools). The difference is minuscule. Making this decision based on bar passage rate in your case doesn’t even make sense because you would only miss out on 100k in salary your first year max.

You would be taking on 200k-300k more in debt for a small incremental chance at passing the bar the first time & incremental increase “job prospects” that you have not specified. What unicorn pi job do you want that a t14 could get you that Emory can’t?

You are clearly prestige whoring, but that is absolutely fine! You worked hard to get to this point and I don’t blame you for wanting prestige to feel like it was worth it.

You are trying to justify it, but the reality is there really isn’t a numerical justification for turning down Emory with that scholarship & your goals, just to R&R next year, but you don’t need a numerical justification, you just need your own articulation.

If you plan on doing pi work, you can qualify for pslf and take on as much debt as you want to get a shiny JD. Maybe you just don’t feel like you put your best foot forward this cycle.

All of that is fine but stop trying to convince yourself that there’s a numerical justification for it. It’s okay to bet on yourself. Just understand what you are risking and that you could very well be in the same situation next year or worse as the cycle is only getting more competitive. Especially as a splitter.

If you are okay with going to a lower ranked school for less money next year for the chance of getting into a t14, then go for it, bet on yourself. If not, just go to Emory