Assuming you are decent socially, you should be able to place both of your summers in Houston, which for the most part offers split summers. Use those summers to make friends and network, particularly with UT people, doing the first half of both at ole V&E. If you are more of a lifestyle bro, use the second half at one of the chill Houston firms, meet some bros and have a great time. Regardless of whether you go to V&E, frazzled, scampering, almost Doobs-ian Baker Botts, or some chill, genteel, landed gentry bigtex stoic moneygrab firm, all the people you worked with during the summer will scattershot around the city and you'll have a decent de facto legal network of 100 or so people across your 3 different firms. In any case, I would not recommend going with a carpetbagger that does the full summer program because (with some exceptions) those offices and their dork scam laterals are not as big in the Houston scene, except for their relationships with people at their old firms, of which you are not a part.

If this thread was in any way related to the Dallas market then you're a fuckin commmercial real estate wannabe loser who deserves nothing better than that smugfart-ridden hellhole and I hope W guns you down in Preston Hollow because OHDIDUGOTOSAINTMARKS???DIDU>?? Fuckin Dallas

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2843247&forum_id=2#27605706)

They'll just measure you by the school and class rank like everyone else.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2843247&forum_id=2#27590799)

holding cost of attendance equal, the expected value of a person attending columbia is higher than the expected value of that same person attending UT, by a not insignificant amount. that, along with personal lifestyle factors, is pretty much all there is to evaluate.

if you remove it from the equation by saying "oh well i have a high appetite for risk" then there's nothing left to discuss. the question becomes "if you were me and had all the life experiences that i have and knew the people i know and liked the things i like, would you prefer to live in new york/chicago or austin for the next three years?"

why not instead start the thread: "time traveling BB/V&E/B&J associate who chose UT over CCNP taking questions from the future"?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2843247&forum_id=2#27608809)

Knew a bro about Top third who got Baker Botts but not V&E.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2843247&forum_id=2#27590761)

UT dominates in absolute numbers but if you are bottom half you're fucked.

caveat, any first or second hand experience i had with this was many moons ago. but my guess is texas biglaw firms have not loosened their grade requirements for UT in the wake of ITE, rather the opposite.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2843247&forum_id=2#27590829)

I wish I had taken Vandy's money back in the day, there're definately one of those schools that try to buy USNew rankings by giving student with good numbers money

you should definately throw an application their way and see what they'll give you

(though I guess money was no object to the OP)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2843247&forum_id=2#27601418)

just go to mccombs & be chill man

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2843247&forum_id=2#27591354)

Building the network definitely helps but UT gets its share of people who leave TX for good because Austin attracts a different breed than TX overall. Plus, you can already see people who you were good friends with from law school that are probably going to just drop off the professional radar to a large extent (basically, the average or below-average students at Columbia are going to have it a lot more together I suspect). I personally think undergrad stuff is more valuable for your network.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2843247&forum_id=2#27596202)