I turned down a scholarship at UPenn to attend the more expensive Columbia. I still wonder if I made the right choice.

When I decided to pursue a master’s degree in the US, I was not simply looking for a good school.

I had built up an idea of what studying there could mean for my career and, if I am being honest, for my life.

I applied to several universities, but Columbia University and New York were the dream I had absorbed from years of movies and television while growing up in Mexico.

The other schools felt like alternatives until the University of Pennsylvania unexpectedly offered me a $40,000 scholarship and forced me to ask how much that dream was actually worth.

Until UPenn’s offer arrived, I had never really forced myself to interrogate why I wanted New York so badly.

Columbia had the prestige I was looking for, but it also came wrapped in a city I had romanticized for years.

I had treated those two things as one package and assumed they were worth paying for.

Philadelphia was not the city I had fantasized about, but UPenn was every bit the kind of elite institution I had wanted.

More importantly, the scholarship turned an abstract alternative into a serious option.

Suddenly, I could get the academic credibility I was chasing without taking on the same financial burden.

That mattered because I did not come from money.

I had saved, but I knew an American master’s degree meant much more than tuition: rent, insurance, flights, food, and a year away from full-time work.

For the first time, I had to separate what I actually needed for my career from what I simply wanted because I had fallen in love with the idea of New York.

In the end, I followed my instinct and chose Columbia.

The decision was not financially comfortable.

Once I sat down and compared the two options properly, I realized New York would require me to borrow money, while Penn’s scholarship would let me begin the degree from a much stronger financial position.

I knew I was choosing the more expensive path.

What tipped the balance was that I did not see New York as just the place where Columbia happened to be.

I saw the city itself as part of what I was paying for.

I wanted to study law there, but I also wanted to understand its legal market, meet people working in it, and experience the professional world I hoped to enter.

In many ways, that instinct proved right.

I built relationships there, eventually worked in New York, and had experiences outside the classroom that became central to what came next.

But New York also taught me something I had not expected: the life I had idealized was not necessarily the life I wanted forever.

I loved the city’s ambition and energy, but eventually realized its relentless hustle culture was not for me.

I later moved to London, changed jobs, and built a career that looks very different from what I imagined when I was choosing between UPenn and Columbia.

Studying law in the US exposed me to a more practical and participatory style of legal education and helped prepare me for an international career.

I am grateful for that experience, and I do not regret having gone.

But COVID made the financial side of my decision harder to ignore.

I had chosen the more expensive option partly because I wanted everything that came with being at Columbia and in New York.

Then the pandemic changed university life almost overnight.

Had I chosen UPenn, I would still have lived through those same disruptions, but I would have done so with a scholarship and more money left in my pocket.

Looking back, that difference feels much more significant than it did when I was making the decision.

Years later, I am still paying off two loans from my studies.

Columbia helped shape the life and career I have now, and I am grateful I chose it.

But every loan payment is also a reminder that UPenn offered me another route, one I will never know the outcome of.