In your position, I would choose Chicago. The money thing is no joke, and not having an MA thesis would concern me. I think the most important thing you should ask yourself (outside of personal stuff like, "am I willing to spend $73k for a year-long program," which some people are more okay with than others) is: at the end of this year (or two), will I have three letter writers who have worked with me/gotten to know me/can attest to the quality of my work? I personally feel this is easier wen an MA thesis is involved, but it is also largely up to you.
I don't know any people pursuing MAs at these schools, but if you could get in touch with some of them and ask them whether the faculty makes time for them, that would probably aid your decision more than any advice we can give here, unfortunately.
From my understanding by reading similar posts and responses on this forum, Colubmia's MA program is not that great. With some exceptions, MA programs are just a way for schools to get extra money from students in order to pay for and support the PhD students, and Columbia seems to be no different. There isn't much cross listing of courses between the MA program and the PhD program, which is what you want if you were to attend an MA program. Without scholarships, Columbia's tuition is very expensive, and doesn't include the cost of living in new york, which is incredibly expensive. Taking all these factors into account, in my opinion it's just not worth it; what you could get out of it is outweighed by other negative factors. I have heard great things about Chicago's IR program. It's rigorous and the professors who teach your classes are the same ones that teach courses in the Phd program. They tend to have excellent placements for students.
As far as getting a JD, may I ask why you want to get a JD? I have a JD, and after experiencing the hell that was law school, I think it's important to seriously think about your true intentions for going to law school. It's certainly not for the faint of heart. You should only get a JD because you want to practice law, not because you want to have it on your resume to help you get a leg up in another profession (trust me, it won't help). I made the mistake of going into law school and not understanding what law school actually required of you, nor did I understand what it was that lawyers actually did. I wish I had done the research and interned at a law firm for a year before making the decision to waste over 300k in loans for a degree I will not end up using (going back to school to get a PhD in poli sci instead, lol). The only reason you should go to law school to become a lawyer is because:
you enjoy reading boxes full of legal documents, cases, statutes, and regulations--often written in arcane language and legal jargon--for 10-20 hours a day
you have an adversarial, competitive personality and don't mind getting in other lawyer's faces when they invariably start threatening you with lawsuits
you are cool working more than 12 hours a day in an incredibly high stress environment
you are okay with working in a profession with a high rate of narcissistic personalities with inflated sense of egos, who sometimes engage in shady practices to win cases or negotiate better deals for their clients and screw you over
you are okay with spending the first five or so years of your legal career doing all the grunt work for senior associates and getting yelled at for simple editing errors (like accidentally misspelling a word or forgetting to put a comma in the correct place)
you enjoy doing fairly mundane, monotonous work, such as tracking how many billable hours you have billed clients, and lots of proofreading: memos, letters to clients, legal briefs, and written motions to the court
Now, I don't want to completely disparage the legal profession. There are some phenomenal lawyers out there doing a lot of amazing, selfless work. Not all lawyers are jerks and being a lawyer isn't always stressful. I have plenty of friends who I graduated with from law school who love their jobs. I'm just making you aware of what the legal profession actually entails, because there is a lot of misconceptions put out their by the media. Film and tv glamorizes lawyer's lives, and portrays lawyers always in court, standing up for justice, and making big, passionate speeches. However, cases rarely go to trial, because it's expensive, time consuming, and awful. Most people just settle out of court. And the legal profession has one of the highest rates of chronic alcohol abuse.
And the legal profession itself is changing. More and more people are leaving the profession because they are realizing some of the negative effects it can have on living a normal life. It's a very old profession, and consequently much of the culture, structure, and rules are ossified and out of date, so it's been struggling in recent years to catch up with advances in technology. Now, jobs that first year associates and paralegals do (which is basically looking up case law), can be done much more efficiently (and error free) with artificial intelligence, so it's harder to get a job. If you are seriously considering getting a JD because you want to practice law, I would try to intern at a law firm first and see how you like it. Also, read this article on whether or not you should go to law school:
https://abovethelaw.com/2013/10/deciding-to-go-to-law-school-in-one-epic-flowchart/?rf=1
Hope this helps!
