How to choose a school from 15-50? Forum

[joshbauer]

I have been accepted/applied to many schools within the top 50 but outside of the t14. I am new to the process and very new to TLS. I was wondering what I should be considering outside of scholarships and location in terms of picking a school.

Any help would be appreciated.

[rman1201]

It should entirely come down to cost of attendance, desired location, and how much competition there is in it's market.
If all those things are equal it's just a personal preference - visit the schools, see which student body you mesh with, look over their programs/specialties/clinics for anything that you're particularly interested in, etc.

[Law Sauce]

that 120,000 looks pretty nice huh?

[bk1]

3 deciding factors: cost/location/placement power.

[joshbauer]

I have been seeing quite a few posts on here about OCI, which is something that I am not familiar with. I know that firms come to campuses to interview students, but the process seems to be more complicated that I realized. For instance, Emory is a school that I have been accepted to and am interested in, but I have seen many poor reviews of their most recent OCI's. What does having a poor OCI process as a school mean? How do I find out for other schools that I am interested in whether or not they had a successful OCI process the past few years?

[cowgirl_bebop]

It should entirely come down to cost of attendance, desired location, and how much competition there is in it's market.
If all those things are equal it's just a personal preference - visit the schools, see which student body you mesh with, look over their programs/specialties/clinics for anything that you're particularly interested in, etc.

This.

Weigh those 3 factors however you see fit. If cost is most important, follow the money and sacrifice on location or placement. If location is important, you may pass on some money to end up where you want to be. Its all up to you.

I will most likely be moving on cost and placement and headed to IUB and taking the L on location. I dont know the midwest and dont really want to get stuck there, but the scholarship is nice and they are a better school than my other choice with a similar scholarship, so Im going to fight like hell to get back out to the East Coast. That is what makes sense for me, but you may be different.

[rman1201]

I have been seeing quite a few posts on here about OCI, which is something that I am not familiar with. I know that firms come to campuses to interview students, but the process seems to be more complicated that I realized. For instance, Emory is a school that I have been accepted to and am interested in, but I have seen many poor reviews of their most recent OCI's. What does having a poor OCI process as a school mean? How do I find out for other schools that I am interested in whether or not they had a successful OCI process the past few years?

In regard to Emory:
I've read somewhere (don't remember the thread) that Emory having a 'poor OCI' in the eyes of TLSer's is primarily due to them historically having fewer firms come to interview, but those that do come typically make at least 10 or so offers, as opposed to the other similar schools with a high quantity of interviewing but the majority being courtesy interviews to remain in good standing with the school (but no intention of hiring anyone). This is poor second hand knowledge coming from me, but the moral of the story is take the rumors about Emory with a grain of salt, they do things a little differently.

[ndirish2010]

There are three tiers within 15-50. There are the strongest regional schools (UCLA, UT, Vandy, USC), the strong regional schools (generally 19-30ish...for the NE/East Coast- BC, BU, GW, Fordham, W&M, W&L...for the SE- Emory, UNC, UGA...for the Midwest- WUSTL, UIUC, ND, UMN, IU, Iowa, Wisconsin...for California- Davis, Hastings...), Then there is the rest of Tier 1, slightly weaker regional schools.

[Blindmelon]

In regard to Emory:
I've read somewhere (don't remember the thread) that Emory having a 'poor OCI' in the eyes of TLSer's is primarily due to them fewer firms come to interview, but those that do come typically make at least 10 or so offers, as opposed to the other similar schools with a high quantity of interviewing but the majority being courtesy interviews to remain in good standing with the school (but no intention of hiring anyone). This is poor second hand knowledge coming from me, but the moral of the story is take the rumors about Emory with a grain of salt, they do things a little differently.

Uh... what firms are giving 10 or so offers to Emory students? No way those are NY firms, and between UGA, GSU and Emory, along with Vand, etc. some Atlanta firms have 10 or so offer spots for Emory students? Atlanta class sizes can't be that big, and theres no way that 1 firm would take 10 or so Emory students.

[rman1201]

In regard to Emory:
I've read somewhere (don't remember the thread) that Emory having a 'poor OCI' in the eyes of TLSer's is primarily due to them fewer firms come to interview, but those that do come typically make at least 10 or so offers, as opposed to the other similar schools with a high quantity of interviewing but the majority being courtesy interviews to remain in good standing with the school (but no intention of hiring anyone). This is poor second hand knowledge coming from me, but the moral of the story is take the rumors about Emory with a grain of salt, they do things a little differently.

Uh... what firms are giving 10 or so offers to Emory students? No way those are NY firms, and between UGA, GSU and Emory, along with Vand, etc. some Atlanta firms have 10 or so offer spots for Emory students? Atlanta class sizes can't be that big, and theres no way that 1 firm would take 10 or so Emory students.

As stated this is poor second hand knowledge, the numbers might be off. But the gist is that the firms that do come are much more likely to make offers with fewer courtesy interviews.

[joshbauer]

There are three tiers within 15-50. There are the strongest regional schools (UCLA, UT, Vandy, USC), the strong regional schools (generally 19-30ish...for the NE/East Coast- BC, BU, GW, Fordham, W&M, W&L...for the SE- Emory, UNC, UGA...for the Midwest- WUSTL, UIUC, ND, UMN, IU, Iowa, Wisconsin...for California- Davis, Hastings...), Then there is the rest of Tier 1, slightly weaker regional schools.

As a hypothetical, if I wanted to stay in Texas, how does SMU rank?

[CanadianWolf]

SMU places well in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metro area.

[ndirish2010]

There are three tiers within 15-50. There are the strongest regional schools (UCLA, UT, Vandy, USC), the strong regional schools (generally 19-30ish...for the NE/East Coast- BC, BU, GW, Fordham, W&M, W&L...for the SE- Emory, UNC, UGA...for the Midwest- WUSTL, UIUC, ND, UMN, IU, Iowa, Wisconsin...for California- Davis, Hastings...), Then there is the rest of Tier 1, slightly weaker regional schools.

As a hypothetical, if I wanted to stay in Texas, how does SMU rank?

For Dallas it would probably be...T6>UT>T14>SMU>T30s

[showNprove]

I've read somewhere (don't remember the thread) that Emory having a 'poor OCI' in the eyes of TLSer's is primarily due to them historically having fewer firms come to interview, but those that do come typically make at least 10 or so offers, as opposed to the other similar schools with a high quantity of interviewing but the majority being courtesy interviews to remain in good standing with the school (but no intention of hiring anyone).

This may be the funniest thing I have read on TLS.

[rman1201]

I found the post I was referring to:

"The idea that Emory's OCI slide was disproportionate to its peers is entirely a myth, largely due to the sensationalism of TLS, drawing unfounded conclusions from misleading statistics. There are a couple of reason for why it's not true.

1. Nobody bothered to look at Emory's OCI from 2009 or 2008. Most of the schools in the top 25 will have over 100 firms come to their OCI, and every firm is looking for the exact same thing: kids in the top 1/3.
So theoretically Notre Dame could have the entire NLJ 250 show up to OCI, but if all of them are only looking for kids in the top 1/3, then 2/3 of class will still go without jobs. The fundamental problem with using OCI numbers as a proxy for employment is inherently flawed unless you can find the number of offers given out on average per firm.
When the economy tanked a while back, Emory already had only 61 firms at 2008 OCI, a paltry number compared to every other school in the rest of the T25. The firms however, where taking about 1.5 kids on average from OCI, resulting in a much much higher ratio of interviews/offers than peer schools. So 2009 OCI, the first doom-and-gloom hiring period, Emory intentionally cut down on their "courtesy" interview firms. I don't exactly know the motivation for this, but I think it was a result more of firms not feeling the need to interview. At a lot of schools, firms knew they weren't hiring, but if they didn't at least come to OCI then they would be afraid of severing the ties they had with that school. So a bazillion employers around the nation these past two cycles interviewed at schools and didn't hire a single person. This was not the case at Emory.
Now, a lot of people like to peg this fear up to "recent" OCI struggles. But I don't know if you noticed in that last paragraph. Emory has had 29 firms come to OCI two years in a row now, and only 61 in the boom times, so there is no "recent woe" so to speak, nothing has changed. The entire premise of "OCI woes" is mainly based out of ignorance of the fact that Emory has always had a low number of firms attending OCI. Part of that was explained in the aforementioned paragraph, but the other part was because
2. Emory's OCI is decentralized, and that number only takes into account the southeastern region for hiring. Mainly firms from Florida, various other midsized towns in the southeast, and of course Atlanta. Now, i'm not going to lie to you, getting biglaw from Atlanta is tough right now. As a proportion of its population, Atlanta led the nation in layoffs in the legal sector. I think the number was right around 7%. So naturally a 50+% drop (61 to 29) in firms from 2008 to 2009/10 was huge, but it doesn't actually reflect the state of hiring from Emory.
One of the great things about Emory is that, outside of the top 20, it has some of the best mobility to big cities. Emory is a brand name that carries (best to New York,) but also at other firms throughout the southeast, especially if you have connections.
I don't know what the logic is. But Emory has an OCI New York, in New York. As well as an OCI Los Angeles, in Los Angeles. They have one for DC and Chicago too, but none of them are as big as New Yorks. I think the total number of firms coming to OCI outside of the "On Campus" was around 40+, so if you want to do an all inclusive OCI count (aka what other schools actually published) it'd be over 70 firms. Now I know at these OCIs the firms are not quite as inclined to hiring as the main one back in Atlanta, but people absolutely do get jobs there. I have a very good 3L friend who got a job at a Dechert off of Emory's NYOCI. Two other kids in that same class got jobs and Kirkland & Ellis from that same OCI.

So final question: is Emory actually doing worse than it's peers as of late. Well, we don't know. Nobody knows, and nobody will know until 2013 when the c/o 2011 statistics are published along with the % of the class landing NLJ250 jobs. The only thing anybody definitely knows is that we don't know anything. Now, from all other circumstantial metrics for judging how well a school's hiring is doing, there is absolutely no indication that Emory is doing any worse than its peers. Sure they're struggling a little bit, but frankly so is every other school in this range. "

[CanadianWolf]

The complaints regarding Emory's OCI came from Emory Law students & resulted in the resignation or dismissal of Emory Law's placement director.

[rman1201]

The complaints regarding Emory's OCI came from Emory Law students & resulted in the resignation or dismissal of Emory Law's placement director.

Don't shoot the messenger, I personally have no stake. I'm just sayin what I heard from a guy I know.

[showNprove]

I hope you realize that even if employers continued to hire at the purported boom-time rates (i.e., 1.5 offers per firm)--which is highly unlikely, even if that figure were true--then the 29 employers would hire 44 students total. That's 17% of students hired through OCI. Not even 17% biglaw--17% hired, period.

When the number of employers coming to OCI drops more than half, I don't know how you don't consider that "woeful."

The complaints regarding Emory's OCI came from Emory Law students & resulted in the resignation or dismissal of Emory Law's placement director.

[joshbauer]

Where can I find these OCI numbers that everyone is referencing and how important of a factor should these numbers be in a decision?