[AnthonyV]

There is some maddeningly terrible advice in this thread.

If you want to go into academia, going to the best school possible should be your number one consideration for the simple reason that you will 100% want to clerk if you want to be a professor. Getting a federal clerkship (and ideally a Circuit clerkship) is almost entirely premised upon two things: 1) Grades/Rank in the context of the difficulty of your school; and 2) Professorial connections/recommendations, which are naturally going to be more valuable as the quality of the faculty increases.

I'm at YLS now. PM if you have more questions about this.