Top 1-14 US News Predictions Forum

[miamiman]

I can only speak from personal experience. I understand fee waivers may generally be worthless and, worse, deceptive. But with my #s, I would never have applied to chicago w/out a fw, and as it turned out, they admitted me - and I'm almost definitely attending. Worthless? Perhaps on average. For me they were transformative.

[jnorsky]

Did they not do well this year? Or did they do worse than Penn and Michigan?

Supposedly too many people at UVA bid only on DC, which meant auto-fail at OCI. DC is defo the hardest market to get into. We can wait for the data, if that ever comes, from the career services.

Why would people do this unless they have a stellar GPA. Do you go to UVA? If so, do you have estimates on how many got big law gigs for the summer in major markets? Do they share that info with you guys? Im interested because I did ED there instead of Penn and I want to know if I should regret it. haha[/quote]

I guess cause they think they had "connections" with DC? Not sure why. The only people I knew here who bid on DC were top 25% (and they did in fact end up getting DC).

I go to Michigan, not UVA. This OCI info is what a UVA 2L posted on TLS. I am pretty sure Michigan had a lot more offices at OCI though.[/quote]

Nice, good shit with michigan, Only reason i didnt ED there was cause I went to Ross for my undergrad, and didnt want to stay in AA another 3 years. This info sucks for me though. Oh well, guess i gotta try for top 10% or something now.

[Bosque]

I see you Bosque. Not kidding. Schools use their USNWR rank to attract students, and students in turn base their decision on that information. If I choose Penn over Michigan because Penn is seen as better in 2009, I should be able to change my decision to Michigan if they're ranked higher in 2010, and Penn should refund my seat deposit. It's practically fraudulent on the schools' parts not to. The bait and switch stuff some of these schools pull is sickening.

Yah, but the rankings are just going to be different the next year, and the next, and the one after that. Should they let you get a tuition refund if your school drops 10 ranks after your 1L year? What if your school drops 25 ranks 5 years after your graduate?

[showNprove]

Nice, good shit with michigan, Only reason i didnt ED there was cause I went to Ross for my undergrad, and didnt want to stay in AA another 3 years. This info sucks for me though. Oh well, guess i gotta try for top 10% or something now.

lol you're going to be fine. I know people who are below median with firm jobs and clerkships.

[fortissimo]

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[jnorsky]

Nice, good shit with michigan, Only reason i didnt ED there was cause I went to Ross for my undergrad, and didnt want to stay in AA another 3 years. This info sucks for me though. Oh well, guess i gotta try for top 10% or something now.

lol you're going to be fine. I know people who are below median with firm jobs and clerkships.

haha I was kidding around. It sucks hearing that shit though after spending a week deciding that UVA was better than penn and michigan (subjective opinion).

Fortissmo - Ross is Ballin, too bad they couldnt get me a job (mostly my fault). At least telling the ladies your in ross is a panty dropper for some. Enjoy Michigan though, freaking love that place.

[sfdreaming09]

You try to find out information about other law schools outside of TLS? Weird. Construction didn't start until this past summer though. Isn't USNews lagged at least 1 to 2 years before the rankings come out? Not sure how much they'd pay for "blue prints."

It's bad because instead of actually recruiting legit applicants, UVA seems to just spam anyone who has an LSAT over 160, even if they have no shot of getting in. It cheapens the process. I guess other schools can also employ this method if they want to game the rankings, but then the admissions process would blow worse than UVA's OCI.

It came up in passing as a side tidbit. I wasn't seeking the information out.

I still don't understand how this cheapens the admissions process or makes it any worse. There's nothing "prestigious" about applying to law school in the first place. Hitting "submit" on LSAC.org doesn't bestow any noble or divine quality upon you. Any average Joe with $75 and a 125 LSAT score can do it.

But you're saying a school should not do a mutually-beneficial act (school gets a bigger applicant pool to choose from and a lower acceptance rate; some marginal applicants get a dream come true by being admitted) because the prestige of writing a personal statement would be tattered?

Yeah, obviously anybody with an LSAT score can shell out $75 and apply to any school they want. But that’s not what’s at issue, though. To me, it just cheapens the instituion when a law school invites people that they KNOW with near 100% certainty that they will end up rejecting to apply to their school. It doesn’t cheapen the admissions process, but the school itself. You just don’t expect a prestigious academic instituion to resort to these kinds of petty tactics. It’s just cheap.

Don’t get me wrong, I think YPing (which Penn, Mich, and yes, UVA, are all guilty of) is almost just as cheap.

[PDaddy]

Cornell is not going to fall out of the T14 and Texas is not going to join the T14. The only changes that I see as being likely is the deadlock b/w UVA, NU, and Duke being broken this year.

Also, I am suprised to have see fewer ant-Berkeley posts w/r/t this discussion.

The thing is, the whole reason the T14 are the T14 is prestige. Even if Cornell or Georgetown (or somewhere else) is ranked 15 next year, it will still be in that elite grouping. Conversely, even if Texas or UCLA or somewhere else breaks into the top 14 on the rankings, it will not gain automatic acceptance into the traditional elite.

No, but the T14 is really a "T18" or "T20". Vandy, UCLA, Texas, USC, Minnesota and WUSTL (and possibly GWU once it gets back to where it belongs) have paid their dues. The sole justification for the mythical T14 is that it denotes schools that have, at one time or another in the history of the USNWR rankings, been ranked in the top-10.

Well, each school in the T18/T20 has been ranked in the top-20 for much if not most or all of that history, and certainly over the recent decade. The T14 receives its prestige from this notation. Hence, once we recognize a "T18" or a "T20", that group will gain similar prestige, and the schools deserve it. Their undergraduate programs are prestigious, they are research institutions, and their other graduate and professional programs are also tops in their fields. So this T14 stuff really has to go.

[showNprove]

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[miamiman]

Yping is worse. Yping prevents qualified ppl from getting in. Fee waivers allow unqualified ppl to have a small - albeit almost entirely subsidized - chance at striking it big.

[sfdreaming09]

Show, do you really, honestly think that Yale employs the same petty tactics as UVA? Sure, they'll once in a while invite people (who based solely on their numbers or URM status appear qualified) to apply, and then they reject them once they see the entire package...But they sure as hell don't resort to cheap UVA-esque rankings-boosting games.

[rayiner]

Well, each school in the T18/T20 has been ranked in the top-20 for much, if not most or all, of that history, certainly all of the recent decade. The T14 receives its prestige from this notation. Hence, once we recognize a "T18" or a "T20", that group will gain similar prestige, and the schools deserve it. Their undergraduate programs are prestigious, they are research institutions, and their other graduate and professional programs are also tops in their fields. So this T14 stuff really has to go.

The difference between T14 and T20 is this:

Vault 100 placement (C/O 2007):

14 Georgetown 34.4%
16 Texas 28.7%
8 Boalt 27.7%
15 UCLA 19.9%
27 Illinois 19.1%
17 Vanderbilt 19.0%
17 USC 18.4%
22 Notre Dame 18.3%
32 Fordham 15.3%
18 GWU 12.5%

Two similar schools in nearly the same location, separated by only 4 ranking spots (at the time), but with a huge difference in placement.

[superserial]

Yping is worse. Yping prevents qualified ppl from getting in. Fee waivers allow unqualified ppl to have a small - albeit almost entirely subsidized - chance at striking it big.

YPing after sending me a letter encouraging me to apply, with a hand-written note about how Michigan loves grads from my school was not cool.

[Flanker1067]

I don't know how you could possibly say it cheapens the school. All schools want to admit good people. Sometimes those people don't quite have the numbers and are thus discouraged from applying. This way, they can find them. Plus, even if they are just gaming the rankings, bring it on, I loved every waiver I got.

[showNprove]

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[vanwinkle]

It's bad because instead of actually recruiting legit applicants, UVA seems to just spam anyone who has an LSAT over 160, even if they have no shot of getting in. It cheapens the process. I guess other schools can also employ this method if they want to game the rankings, but then the admissions process would blow worse than UVA's OCI.

How does it cheapen the process? It doesn't boost anything for UVA unless the person actually uses the fee waiver. A lot of people want to apply to T14 schools despite not having the numbers, and this actually saves them the $70 or so UVA normally charges. If people don't want to apply, they can simply not apply. It's not like UVA is putting a gun to people's head and making them fill out the applications with these things. (That'd be something I expect more from a Jersey school; Rutgers, perhaps?)

Bitching about UVA because they hand out a lot of fee waivers is really stupid.

+1

I didn't really know much about UVA early in the cycle when I got my UVA fee waiver. I figured what the heck, it's one more school, I want to apply to a lot of schools since I'm a splitter. A year later I'm here and I'm loving it, and without the fee waiver I probably wouldn't have applied at all.

Yeah, there are categories of people who are almost auto-dings at UVA who get these things, but like I said above, nobody's making them use it.

[fortissimo]

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[miamiman]

Yping is worse. Yping prevents qualified ppl from getting in. Fee waivers allow unqualified ppl to have a small - albeit almost entirely subsidized - chance at striking it big.[/quote

YPing after sending me a letter encouraging me to apply, with a hand-written note about how Michigan loves grads from my school was not cool.

Dean Z tell you that she LOVED your school's grads too!!???

I thought I was UNIQUE

[vanwinkle]

Sure, every school does games the system to some degree, but UVA is like barbie on steroids in terms of playing games - cheap, used, and abused. It's by far the worst in the t-14 for gaming the system and by far the worst in terms of yield protection. Some of its gaming tools can only be used once to game the system though (i.e. the ED option). I just hope the other schools don't start resorting to the same tactics, or else the application process will just be a major shit fest.

Did UVA run over your puppy when you were little or something? There has to be an explanation for this palpable hatred you carry. Perhaps counseling would help you deal with these feelings.

[Flanker1067]

Show, do you really, honestly think that Yale employs the same petty tactics as UVA? Sure, they'll once in a while invite people (who based solely on their numbers or URM status appear qualified) to apply, and then they reject them once they see the entire package...But they sure as hell don't resort to cheap UVA-esque rankings-boosting games.

Of course not, but every school cares about the rankings, even Yale. Could you imagine what New Haven would be like if Harvard surpassed them? There would almost certainly be one stroke, maybe more.

And how long are these things going to be called "cheap, TTT tactics" when most schools in the T14 are doing them? No one cares about fee waivers when the school has top-notch professors, top-notch students, and top-notch job placement.

Sure, every school does games the system to some degree, but UVA is like barbie on steroids in terms of playing games - cheap, used, and abused. It's by far the worst in the t-14 for gaming the system and by far the worst in terms of yield protection. Some of its gaming tools can only be used once to game the system though (i.e. the ED option). I just hope the other schools don't start resorting to the same tactics, or else the application process will just be a major shit fest.

Are you referring to the extended ED option in order to get higher matriculation rates?

Personally I think the extended ED is awesome (note: I didn't do it at UVA because I don't want to go there) because it gives everyone the chance to tell a school "if accepted, I will come". I didn't begin looking into law school till round sept/oct, and didnt take the LSAT till december. If every school did the extended ED I would have done it. I doubt I am alone in that sentiment.

[fortissimo]

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[superserial]

Yping is worse. Yping prevents qualified ppl from getting in. Fee waivers allow unqualified ppl to have a small - albeit almost entirely subsidized - chance at striking it big.[/quote

YPing after sending me a letter encouraging me to apply, with a hand-written note about how Michigan loves grads from my school was not cool.

Dean Z tell you that she LOVED your school's grads too!!???

I thought I was UNIQUE

hahahaha... I wasn't even going to apply there until they convinced me that I was a special snowflake, with their dirty lies.

[fortissimo]

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[sandy10]

Sure, every school does games the system to some degree, but UVA is like barbie on steroids in terms of playing games - cheap, used, and abused. It's by far the worst in the t-14 for gaming the system and by far the worst in terms of yield protection. Some of its gaming tools can only be used once to game the system though (i.e. the ED option). I just hope the other schools don't start resorting to the same tactics, or else the application process will just be a major shit fest.

I guess you aren't familiar with New York University law school and The University of California Berkeley law schools. Both of these schools have been gaming the rankings--hard--for years. They just use different tactics than UVA. Honestly, if people would just start realizing that the US News rankings were not nearly as exact and correct as people think they are (ie school number 5 is not necessarily in another league from school number 9) then people would realize that gaming the rankings is not something to be concerned about.

[fortissimo]

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