Mexican lawyer, admitted to Columbia (no financial aid), NYU (no financial aid) and Northwestern (30K). I want to hear your opinions regarding the three schools, considering that the $ is not the deciding factor (although it does matter). I am in corporate / securities law and my plan is to get a job in NYC big law after the LLM.

It'll be extremely hard for a foreign lawyer to get into big law in NYC and considering this I'd vote for Columbia if it's okay for your financial status.

Not sure about how hard it really is to get into big law, especialy if you take the NY bar. This depends on many individual factors. If you have several years experience in you field, it might be not impossibly hard to find something.

In any case, Columbia is very close to big law and would offer most chances to connect I guess.