Adelaide said the Office of Public Interest Advising told her that while her eventual job might not be exactly what she wants to do or where she wants to do it, she will secure public interest work.

"It's good to know you have people behind you with experience who really want to help you [and] see you succeed," she said.

The resources the Law School has devoted to helping students in this field is not in spite of the difficulties, but because of them.

Harvard offers Summer Public Interest Funding, which is guaranteed summer funding for a broad range of summer jobs that offer little to no compensation. The Law School also has a Low Income Protection Plan in which graduates can pay a portion of their loans while LIPP covers the remainder depending on their income.

Gegenheimer received two separate fellowships for international public service work. The first was the Insight Collaborative Fellowship, which allowed her to spend a year between college and law school in Cyprus, Cambodia, and the Hague. She later spent a summer at a Sudanese refugee camp in Chad with funding from Harvard's Chayes International Public Service Fellowship.

“I think it’s a shame to let external pressures push you away from that goal, especially at a place like HLS where there’s so much support for students who want to do public interest work,” Gegenheimer said.

—Staff writer Juliet Bailin can be reached at jbailin@college.harvard.edu.