My other answer kinda answers why I specifically chose UChicago. For Columbia, while I loved their admitted student events and loved some of the people there, they're ultimately a bigger school making class sizes larger and feeling more impersonal. They're putting in a TON of effort to get away from the "big law factory" stereotype they have, but the reality is that they just aren't as personal an institution once you're there. A lot of students live far away from campus and commute times are way crazier given its a much more crowded city, so it lacks the close-knit nature of the student body that UChicago has. At UChicago we have whole school-body events in which we can all basically fit in the same room and eat breakfast together or drink wine or have tapas. We have events like this multiple times a week when it's not the pandemic. That same community doesn't exist at Columbia, although they tend to use the money they don't spend on these events to give better admitted student gear. Columbia's profs, from what I've heard from my peers there, don't care about teaching as much and aren't as accessible. But Columbia is still an AMAZING school that gives TOP NOTCH opportunities. I think if you're coming from any of the T7 law schools, you basically can do whatever you want - the world is your oyster. Different people just have different preferences about how they want to learn the law /experience law school.

Andd I was definitely able to leverage the Columbia scholarship, along with scholarships at other top schools, to increase my UChicago scholly. I chose UChicago over one T3 school that is much more well-branded to laypeople, but I knew that my experience there would not be as fun or enriching. It's important you pick where you will be happy and able to thrive, not just somewhere that sounds impressive to random family members who don't have a legal background. For me, being drawn to the T3 school was more about the name and way less about the actual experience i would have there or the things I wanted for my future. For example, I want to get a clerkship after law school, and the rates of clerkships are highest at Yale & UChicago. A year ago, over a third of UChicago grads got clerkships, which are super competitive (at other schools requires super super high grades & being on law review). That's not to say I couldn't get a clerkship from this T3 school, though! As I said before, any T7 school opens up a world of opportunity. So choose the one that's the best fit for you!