UVA vs UT Forum

(Rankings, Profiles, Tuition, Student Life, . . . )

Which one?

UVA (20k/yr) [total tuition cost: ~66k]
46
64%
UT (15k/yr + in state tuition discount) [total tuition cost: ~29]
26
36%
 
Total votes: 72

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vanwinkle

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by vanwinkle » Fri Apr 02, 2010 7:31 pm

RVP11 wrote:Showing UT's placement is underestimated by NLJ250 wouldn't be sufficient. We'd have to see why UVA's placement isn't similarly understimated. I don't think UT has some deathgrip on firms that pay $160k but aren't in the NLJ250.
Because UVA has a lot less placement into non-NLJ 250 firms, so there's a lot less people to underestimate the placement of?

All I'm trying to demonstrate is that the gap is even smaller than the NLJ 250 focus indicates. I'm trying to find solid numbers re: UT grad numbers and salaries, but unfortunately nothing I'd call conclusive is easily findable. Either way I don't think it matters, because you sound like you're abandoning support of your ridiculous hypo anyway.
Last edited by vanwinkle on Fri Apr 02, 2010 7:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by 270910 » Fri Apr 02, 2010 7:33 pm

RVP11 wrote:Showing UT's placement is underestimated by NLJ250 wouldn't be sufficient. We'd have to see why UVA's placement isn't similarly understimated. I don't think UT has some deathgrip on firms that pay $160k but aren't in the NLJ250.
Also credited. Both schools place heavily into markets that will be under-represented by the infamous NLJ 250.

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Richie Tenenbaum

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by Richie Tenenbaum » Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:46 pm

Thanks so much for the info so far guys!

What are some of ya'lls thoughts on clerkships? COA in particular. I know COA would require near the top of the class for both, but does someone have an idea of class placement to be competitive at each school?

Thoughts on academia? While I recognize this is a long-shot at both and shouldn't be a career aspiration where I put all my eggs in this particular basket since I'm not going to HY, anyone have any further insight at chances at either? I did notice the attitude differed from my brief exposure at ASD. UVA had a pretty recent hired prof talk about the market, how things have changed from the usual route of very top grades + LR + COA to one of publishing is key, though the other components still can play a major role. His attitude seemed to be if you came to UVA with that career path in mind, it would be something that could be accomplished (though I'm assuming he was assuming that such a person would be getting very good grades). A panel at UT's ASD was a little more disconcerting. The person answering the question laughed and said, well if you are at the very top of your class and editor of LR then you MIGHT have a shot. Anyone students at either school know how supportive each school is for people interested in this path?

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by vanwinkle » Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:52 pm

Richie Tenenbaum wrote:Anyone students at either school know how supportive each school is for people interested in this path?
I can tell you that UVA faculty and staff are very supportive here. UVA is working on getting more alums into academia, and helping prepare current law students into academia. There are many professors here who would gladly supervise you during an independent research study for a semester or year, which earns you academic credit (up to 3 hours, I think) for researching and writing an academic paper. When you're done, that paper can be submitted for publication at one of UVA's journals, UVA Law Review, or an outside legal publication. I've already spoken to a couple professors about doing this, myself. If you find a professor who shares your interest and who you get along with, they're very likely to be supportive of this here from what I've seen.

UVA is also pretty big on pushing clerkships and recently created a dedicated clerkship director position. Her job is to do nothing but help people get clerkships that want one. They also love to promote how many SCOTUS clerks they've produced recently, which isn't that many, but shows that it's possible, and indicates part of a larger picture about UVA's accessibility to federal clerkship positions.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by 270910 » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:10 pm

UT was more accurate but less kind. The fact of the matter is that if you don't graduate in the top 5% with absurd connections or very close to the top 5% with absurd connections and substantial other factors (more-than-usually substantial scholarship) you have 0 chance at legal academia.

UVA being 'supportive' of its students getting academic careers is somewhere between disingenuous and adorably naive. Sure they will support you - and if you get perfect grades and publish that support might even mean something! They know that, and they also know that 0Ls aren't going to have any conception of just how difficult that career path would actually be.

Using 3 years worth of data and averaging it out:

Every year, VERY roughly 9% of the class from Yale gets hired as law professors. (Note that this is after clerking/working/publishing, not out of school, so they won't all be from the same class year or anything).

~2.8% of the class from Harvard gets hired.

~1.2% of the class from Virginia gets hired.

~0.5% of the class from Texas gets hired.

Becoming a law professor is probably the single hardest conceivable thing you can do with a JD after a SCOTUS clerkship (note: many SCOTUS clerks become law professors).

And grades are HUUUUGGEE when it comes to academia. Profs take students with good grades seriously, making them more likely to 'back' then, help them write, etc. Hiring committees take grades very seriously. Grades qualify you for law review, and law review is close to a mandatory requirement.

Publishing is probably the most important factor, but the market is so competitive that you really can't afford to miss any 'checkbox' of top school - top grades - top professorial recommendations - top clerkship - serious publication(s).

The difference between UVA and UT at this point is basically moot. You will either go to law school and do better than every student at the school or you won't. Either will give you a shot, neither is likely :P

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vanwinkle

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by vanwinkle » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:13 pm

disco_barred wrote:They know that, and they also know that 0Ls aren't going to have any conception of just how difficult that career path would actually be.
I don't know, it seems like a lot of 0Ls on here have a good conception of how difficult the career path actually is.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by 270910 » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:19 pm

vanwinkle wrote:I don't know, it seems like a lot of 0Ls on here have a good conception of how difficult the career path actually is.
And very few 0Ls at admitted students day browse TLS :P

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by vanwinkle » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:21 pm

disco_barred wrote:
vanwinkle wrote:I don't know, it seems like a lot of 0Ls on here have a good conception of how difficult the career path actually is.
And very few 0Ls at admitted students day browse TLS :P
Yeah, but I'm not giving advice to them!

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by Esc » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:22 pm

I'm going to agree with disco_barred re: academia....it is so difficult to get into that nobody talks about it as a credible, primary career path. However, they do push the essential elements of academia very hard - COA clerkships, law review, RAing, publishing, etc. - so I wouldn't be surprised if they reserve the academia push for those students who have perfect credentials by graduation.

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vanwinkle

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by vanwinkle » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:30 pm

Esc wrote:I'm going to agree with disco_barred re: academia....it is so difficult to get into that nobody talks about it as a credible, primary career path. However, they do push the essential elements of academia very hard - COA clerkships, law review, RAing, publishing, etc. - so I wouldn't be surprised if they reserve the academia push for those students who have perfect credentials by graduation.
I don't disagree with him either about the difficulty, I just think that if someone wants to know that option is there they should know that it is. It's more possible out of UVA than UT, even though both are admittedly difficult paths.

Leiter does an analysis of how many current law professors come from which school, and you can see his rankings of that here:

http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2009 ... hing.shtml

The "per capita" rate is interesting, as it gives a proportion of produced professors to school class size. While UT has produced close to the same number of professors total as UVA, it also has a larger class size, which widens the gap in how likely you are to become a professor from each school.

Again, I don't dispute that it's very difficult to do from either school. However, I'll also throw SCOTUS clerkship numbers at people, with the understanding that it's also something difficult to get. These aren't the things you should base your entire decision on, but they're nice for evaluating the overall prestige of the degree you're getting and just how far you can go if you do end up being one of the few to truly excel in your school.
Last edited by vanwinkle on Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by DoubleChecks » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:37 pm

vanwinkle wrote:
Esc wrote:I'm going to agree with disco_barred re: academia....it is so difficult to get into that nobody talks about it as a credible, primary career path. However, they do push the essential elements of academia very hard - COA clerkships, law review, RAing, publishing, etc. - so I wouldn't be surprised if they reserve the academia push for those students who have perfect credentials by graduation.
I don't disagree with him either about the difficulty, I just think that if someone wants to know that option is there they should know that it is. It's more possible out of UVA than UT, even though both are admittedly difficult paths.

Also, I find academia immediately upon graduation numbers slightly misleading. Many professors work in the real world first for a few years.
he didnt do that did he? i thought he stated it was just how many professors were hired from x schools per yr (in parenthesis he said they were NOT all from the same graduating class -- i.e. they've been working, publishing, etc.)

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by vanwinkle » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:40 pm

DoubleChecks wrote:he didnt do that did he? i thought he stated it was just how many professors were hired from x schools per yr (in parenthesis he said they were NOT all from the same graduating class -- i.e. they've been working, publishing, etc.)
...you would be correct, I totally misread his post. Oops. My mistake. Corrected my above post to compensate.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by Esc » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:46 pm

vanwinkle wrote:
The "per capita" rate is interesting, as it gives a proportion of produced professors to school class size. While UT has produced close to the same number of professors total as UVA, it also has a larger class size, which widens the gap in how likely you are to become a professor from each school.

Again, I don't dispute that it's very difficult to do from either school. However, I'll also throw SCOTUS clerkship numbers at people, with the understanding that it's also something difficult to get. These aren't the things you should base your entire decision on, but they're nice for evaluating the overall prestige of the degree you're getting and just how far you can go if you do end up being one of the few to truly excel in your school.
Valid points.

Personally, I'm not sure I'd want to go anywhere near academia. One of my professors outright told me that faculty hiring has become so competitive that he would never have been hired today, and that even SCOTUS clerks are being turned down when they apply. Its crazy out there.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by vanwinkle » Sat Apr 03, 2010 3:48 pm

Esc wrote:One of my professors outright told me that faculty hiring has become so competitive that he would never have been hired today, and that even SCOTUS clerks are being turned down when they apply. Its crazy out there.
See, I find this fascinating because what I'd been told is that focus is moving away from things like clerkship experience and toward writing ability and publication history. I wonder if what if anything those SCOTUS clerks that were getting rejected published. This is all speculative, but my point is that those data points would help paint a clearer picture.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by Esc » Sat Apr 03, 2010 4:28 pm

vanwinkle wrote:
Esc wrote:One of my professors outright told me that faculty hiring has become so competitive that he would never have been hired today, and that even SCOTUS clerks are being turned down when they apply. Its crazy out there.
See, I find this fascinating because what I'd been told is that focus is moving away from things like clerkship experience and toward writing ability and publication history. I wonder if what if anything those SCOTUS clerks that were getting rejected published. This is all speculative, but my point is that those data points would help paint a clearer picture.
This could be the case, but I imagine that with the exception of those PhDs teaching specialized law classes (especially those involving law + politics, economics, and statistics), law faculty hiring isn't moving away from requiring clerkship experience. It is just adding publishing as an additional requirement.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by vanwinkle » Sat Apr 03, 2010 4:30 pm

Esc wrote:This could be the case, but I imagine that with the exception of those PhDs teaching specialized law classes (especially those involving law + politics, economics, and statistics), law faculty hiring isn't moving away from requiring clerkship experience. It is just adding publishing as an additional requirement.
But if that's true, then perhaps someone who clerks at a lower level but publishes will have a better shot at academia than someone who clerks for SCOTUS but doesn't?

This is all theoretical and starting to digress heavily from OP's questions, so I'll stop here, but this is something I'm going to keep an eye out for info on.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by Esc » Sat Apr 03, 2010 5:03 pm

vanwinkle wrote:
Esc wrote:This could be the case, but I imagine that with the exception of those PhDs teaching specialized law classes (especially those involving law + politics, economics, and statistics), law faculty hiring isn't moving away from requiring clerkship experience. It is just adding publishing as an additional requirement.
But if that's true, then perhaps someone who clerks at a lower level but publishes will have a better shot at academia than someone who clerks for SCOTUS but doesn't?

This is all theoretical and starting to digress heavily from OP's questions, so I'll stop here, but this is something I'm going to keep an eye out for info on.
I think that could be true in the case of a COA clerk, but not for a district court clerk.

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Re: UVA vs UT

Post by Richie Tenenbaum » Sat Apr 03, 2010 6:29 pm

vanwinkle wrote:
Esc wrote:This could be the case, but I imagine that with the exception of those PhDs teaching specialized law classes (especially those involving law + politics, economics, and statistics), law faculty hiring isn't moving away from requiring clerkship experience. It is just adding publishing as an additional requirement.
But if that's true, then perhaps someone who clerks at a lower level but publishes will have a better shot at academia than someone who clerks for SCOTUS but doesn't?

This is all theoretical and starting to digress heavily from OP's questions, so I'll stop here, but this is something I'm going to keep an eye out for info on.
Digress away! Anything related to academia is alright of a thread shift to me.

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