UVA 90k or Chi Sticker- Want Boies Forum

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UVA 90k chi stick

Poll ended at Sun Apr 10, 2011 10:01 pm

VA
83
73%
Chi
31
27%
 
Total votes: 114

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BeastCoastHype

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Re: UVA 90k or Chi Sticker- Want Boies

Post by BeastCoastHype » Fri Jan 07, 2011 5:05 pm

TaipeiMort wrote:I'll bite and reply. To give some context to my comments, I've started and ran a successful international consulting firm and have some pretty good other international work experience. I have friends who are at managing partner/ VP levels at Mckinsey and Goldman and was mentored by a former president of Verizon.

My responses are in bold.
BeastCoastHype wrote:
Let's start with the notion that Chicago is going to lead to a "dream job" if the poster makes the decision to go there. In case you aren't aware, there are unemployed students coming out of Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, and the University of Chicago. This number is not low, either. MANY students at these schools can't find jobs. Dispense with the idea that the school you pick will lead to the job you really want, because employment is a crapshoot and will be until the end of time because the biglaw model has fundamentally changed. The days of waltzing into Skadden just because they need warm bodies are over, so get this idea out of your head.

These firms are in desperate need of people who can bring in business. Having work experience and unique, marketable skills that will translate into increased client inflow and retention are more valuable now than ever. Firms have plenty of great lawyers, but they do not have enough moneymakers. Those with the aforementioned qualities have the pick of employers. Those without meaningful points of differentiation from the crowd will have more difficulty than the past in fidnign jobs.
You miss the point. No shit, people with excellent work experience, good grades, and the ability to bring in clients are valuable. Someone like that at Chicago doesn't have a meaningful advantage over someone like that at UVA though. There are tons of unemployed Chicago grads right now.
BeastCoastHype wrote:
Now let's move onto this claim that you will be competitive with MBA students from top schools for management consulting or banking jobs. This is also crazy. Yeah, if you walk into law school from BCG you can walk out and head to Bain pretty easily. However, if you are like most law students and haven't done consulting or banking, law school isn't going to get you a business job very easily. You will be competing with students with 5-10 years of work experience and a relevant business education. Sorry, your year as a paralegal at Paul Weiss ain't gonna help when you're fighting these people for a job.

This isn't true. T6 law students are activley recruited by top ibanking and consulting firms. You do not need significant work experience to get these positions and you are not competing directly with MBA students (law students are recruited differently and are not held to the same work-experience criteria). Top firms have MBA-esque training programs for these students. They have found that many times their best, most analytically skilled employees are found in top law schools.
Talk to me about this once you've actually been to law school. Yes, McKinsey and like one or two other consulting firms come but they typically take 0-2 law students. Banks don't actively recruit, you have to go to them and they won't take you unless you have previous consulting or banking experience. Yes, you can move into consulting or banking straight from law school but it's really hard without relevant experience. A few years down the line in corporate practice it becomes somewhat easier.
BeastCoastHype wrote:
The "angel investment" comment is truly hilarious. Yes, Chicago has many wealthy graduates, but no more than NYU, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or UVA. Also, these people aren't organized into some kind of angel investing network that focuses on Chicago grads. Even if they were, it's not like they would give you money on better terms just because you went to Chicago. These people are investors like anyone else, and unless they happen to be your grandma or grandpa they are going to try to fuck you just as hard as any other investor would. Also, I doubt someone who is looking at hardcore litigation firms cares about this at all.

Angel-investing alumni and friends organizations do give cheaper and more available capital to students. These organizations are set up for the purpose of giving money to student-run ventures. They aren't chairty organizations, but they do give many times debt instead of equity funding and give pretty fair equity terms. The biggest difference is that they loosen the owner-investment and work experience criteria because the owners of the ventures are students. They want to see organizations from their alma-mater suceed while still making cash on the side, but they are not as shark-like as a lot of VCs out there.
These organizations are few and far between and it's still extraordinarily difficult to get them to give you capital. People don't play with money just because they went to the same school, and it's certainly not a good reason to choose Chicago over a scholarship at UVA as both schools have plenty of wealthy alumni if you truly believe that they will give you better terms on financing. The market forces angel investors to be competitive, and that doesn't meaningfully change when it comes to alumni.
BeastCoastHype wrote:
Now let's move onto the most hilarious and desperate claim in the whole post - that Chicago is considered a peer to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. Chicago students realize that their lack of ivy status, midwestern location, generally mediocre GPA and LSAT medians, and tiny alumni base deliver an enormous prestige hit, so from time to time they make this dumb fucking claim that somehow Chicago is magically on the same plane as the top three. Squinting doesn't make a transvestite become a woman. Chicago is not of the same quality, and Columbia is ahead of it by a good margin as well. For more on this subject, please review this:

"How did it happen that making the tired claim that this ghetto shithole is UNDERrated became the signature conversation piece for people who desperately want to be thought smart; really, really smart. smart people love “rigor” and Chicago is full of it; it must be, what with its hair-splitting number grades, punishingly low enforced mean, and oppressive course load. Chicago boosterism usually comes in the form of a comparison with the appallingly UNrigorous Stanford or Yale — gradeless, abundantly pass-fail, unserious; students who do nothing and know nothing. Chicago: graded, competitive, serious… That it’s really just a ruptured ego rehab clinic for Harvard rejects is a fact not emphasized...."

Read on at http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?threa ... 2#10140761.

Your comment is drenched with insecurity and immaturity. The world is much different than your narrow TLS-centered world-view has led you to believe. Most business and law contacts I know find Chicago, Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale to be peers. The minimal distinctions between them are not important enough to tarnish or change their view of your pedigree. YHS do have lay prestige advantage of course. However, professionals care much more about your demonstrated abilities at a T6 level than if you graduated from NYU instead of Harvard.

I chose to attend Chicago because I wanted the best legal education possible and felt the professor-set at the school was pretty awesome. The focus on ideological diversity and economics also meant a better education to me. I feared if I attended Harvard that the diluted faculty meant a strong possibility of a lessor educational quality, which would not be worth the boost in lay prestige I would get. I will get a good job with my background, and I am married so I don't need to impress girls at bars with a name brand.

I really believe that Chicago provides the best legal education possbile (with the exception of maybe Yale)

I do not understand all of the hate for Chicago on TLS and other 0L sites, but it is stark contrast from what you get in both the professional and academic world-- which is really all that matters. I can't stand the collective insecurity and upsmanship on this site. It is an honor to attend any top school, and insulting the education of others does little except for some momentary and pathetic self-gratification.
No, it's your comment that is drenched in insecurity. Secure people don't need to run around saying that they go to a peer to Harvard. Secure people know their school is acceptably top notch and that anything is possible upon graduation but that it is not quite as selective as Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. I don't deny that Chicago is a good school (though I turned it down almost instantly upon admission), but it simply doesn't require the same level of achievement to be admitted. People get disgusted with the Chicago crowd because they are so obviously insecure about their place in the pecking order and constantly troll around online trying to get other people to believe that it's actually full of people who decided to turn down Harvard, when numbers and experience tell us it clearly isn't. You can get into Chicago with a 3.5 and a 170.

A&O

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Re: UVA 90k or Chi Sticker- Want Boies

Post by A&O » Fri Jan 07, 2011 5:30 pm

I don't know what's the significance of your wanting Boies. If you're a girl, you should have no trouble finding Boies at either school. If you're a boy, I hear UChicago and the city of Chicago in general are more LGBT friendly than UVA.


*bows out*

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Ragged

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Re: UVA 90k or Chi Sticker- Want Boies

Post by Ragged » Fri Jan 07, 2011 9:36 pm

A&O wrote:I don't know what's the significance of your wanting Boies. If you're a girl, you should have no trouble finding Boies at either school. If you're a boy, I hear UChicago and the city of Chicago in general are more LGBT friendly than UVA.


*bows out*
Thanks. This thread needed this.

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Ragged

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Re: UVA 90k or Chi Sticker- Want Boies

Post by Ragged » Fri Jan 07, 2011 10:06 pm

I just read that xoxo link and I gotta say the guy who wrote it is a complete douche. I mean, trying to say that Chicago is on the same level as HYS is alittle rediculous too, but it's still a top school with relatively good employement prospects. Slagging it off like that he just sounds immature. It was entertaining to read though.

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