NYU for CA BigLaw? Forum

[06102016]

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[kaiser]

Somewhat of a myth that its super regional. I know a large number of people working out in CA for the summer, and they said that the school is very well regarded out there. Obviously Stanford or Berkeley are better choices for CA, but NYU certainly places students nationally. The national/regional discussion is all very relative. Its more regional than other similarly-ranked schools, but its still national in reputation compared to almost anything else aside from those peers.

[dissonance1848]

Look. If you have serious ties to CA, then coming back from NYU isn't that bad, contingent on grades. However, HYSCCB would be better, all else being equal.

[bk1]

I'm assuming you have CA ties.

Most T14 schools place mostly extraordinarily well in NYC and not much elsewhere, but that is a function primarily of how much larger the NYC legal market is compared to everywhere else. There just aren't a ton of SA spots in California. Is NYU a good bet? Well I guess it's all relative. If you absolutely must have CA then I'd take Berkeley over NYU in a heartbeat. Other than that I assume you're not in at HYS. I'd say NYU is decent for California (but as noted there are only really 4 schools that would definitely be better) and if you would be okay with NYC as a fallback then it's not a terrible choice.

[06102016]

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[06102016]

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[Doorkeeper]

Are you financially stable enough for NYU at sticker? If you ED you cross off the possibility of scholarships and scholarship negotiation.

In addition, you might be wasting an ED because they can just roll you over to the RD pile if they're not convinced.

Also, with your numbers it looks like your a solid admit according to LSN if the 11-12 cycle repeats itself. Might as well get in RD, no?

[06102016]

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[indigomachine]

Are you financially stable enough for NYU at sticker? If you ED you cross off the possibility of scholarships and scholarship negotiation.

In addition, you might be wasting an ED because they can just roll you over to the RD pile if they're not convinced.

Also, with your numbers it looks like your a solid admit according to LSN if the 11-12 cycle repeats itself. Might as well get in RD, no?

Thanks for the reply. All things worth considering.

The scholarship/ED thing is something I'm weighing. It's why I'm not committed to ED at this point.

Last time I checked LSN I didn't come away with that impression... probably looked at all years instead of last year or something.

*anecdotal TLS evidence disclaimer*

I don't usually harp on this (I'm internet lazy...), but the whole schtick about ED locking you out of scholarship (at least at NYU), isn't entirely true. I, as well as one of my friends and another TLSer admitted ED last cycle all got non-insignificant amounts of aid. I don't go hunting down the aid profiles of a lot of NYU EDers (I know, weird, right?), so maybe I just managed to peg the 3 random outliers; your call on that.

I'm not encouraging or discouraging you to apply ED. It certainly will shut out the possibility of reconsidering the decision in the event that you end up paying sticker. Just want to throw in that ED does not spell doom for any chances of aid. It may rule out the big named scholarships, but even that's hard to say as those seem to go to people with significantly higher #'s than the ED applicant batch, which tends to be borderline candidates, anyways.

Last note on negotiation: If you're like the typical borderline or even target candidate at NYU (which in terms of stats, it seems like you probably fall in one of those two, depending on how conservative your opinion is), it doesn't seem likely that you will be in a strong negotiating position for NYU anyways. Someone else who did this last cycle can feel free to jump in if I'm totally off on this, but CCN (or at least NYU/CLS, since I didn't really follow the Chicago cycle all that much) did not seem terribly eager to negotiate amongst themselves or with lower ranked T14. Again, I'm not arguing you should or shouldn't ED, but negotiation does not seem likely to be in the cards as things stand right now anyways.

tl;dr: NYU gives out aid to at least some ED applicants. Borderline candidates probably won't get anything out of negotiation with CCN anyways.

[thelawyler]

I did not ED to NYU but ended up there anyways at sticker despite scholarships at other T14s. It was just added wait list stress. However, NYC is my absolute top choice destination, so for your scenario, perhaps $$ at a lower T14 might be a better option.

[indigomachine]

I did not ED to NYU but ended up there anyways at sticker despite scholarships at other T14s. It was just added wait list stress. However, NYC is my absolute top choice destination, so for your scenario, perhaps $$ at a lower T14 might be a better option.

Yeah, I want to echo this. If you're not absolutely set on CLS/NYU NYC placement bump or being in law school in NYC, then taking $$ at a lower T14 could definitely be worth it. If that's your situation, I wouldn't ED since getting in would basically lock you out of that possibility if you were admitted. NYC was my top choice destination as well, and I was (only slightly un)comfortable with the idea of sticker if it came to it.

[06102016]

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[flem]

Is the whole ED = no scholarship thing a big flame because a lot of applicants ED with marginal numbers that wouldn't have gotten aid anyway?

Like, if a 170/3.0 candidate was accepted into UVA via RD they wouldn't be getting any sort of scholarship.

[top30man]

Is the whole ED = no scholarship thing a big flame because a lot of applicants ED with marginal numbers that wouldn't have gotten aid anyway?

Like, if a 170/3.0 candidate was accepted into UVA via RD they wouldn't be getting any sort of scholarship.

I know what you mean. But if the same candidate got into GUlC with 60k or Vandy with 75k etc you'd be unable to accept those offers (or even get them in te first place if it's early in the cycle).

[bk1]

Is the whole ED = no scholarship thing a big flame because a lot of applicants ED with marginal numbers that wouldn't have gotten aid anyway?

Like, if a 170/3.0 candidate was accepted into UVA via RD they wouldn't be getting any sort of scholarship.

It's hard to tell. I'm inclined to believe for the most part that it's not (NU with their previous ED system sometimes gave money to borderline RD candidates but didn't seem to do the same for ED), though I'm told Michigan does not factor in ED into their scholarship decisions.

That being said, ED does take away your ability to negotiate.

[Doorkeeper]

Are you financially stable enough for NYU at sticker? If you ED you cross off the possibility of scholarships and scholarship negotiation.

In addition, you might be wasting an ED because they can just roll you over to the RD pile if they're not convinced.

Also, with your numbers it looks like your a solid admit according to LSN if the 11-12 cycle repeats itself. Might as well get in RD, no?

Thanks for the reply. All things worth considering.

The scholarship/ED thing is something I'm weighing. It's why I'm not committed to ED at this point.

Last time I checked LSN I didn't come away with that impression... probably looked at all years instead of last year or something.

You should probably focus your attention to the 11-12 cycle rather than the previous ones, which can be found here:
http://nyu.lawschoolnumbers.com/stats/1112/

As you can see, a 172/3.5 seems to be all green. If I remember correctly, LSAC reported LSAT takers to be down somewhere around 11% for this past year, so the trend of decreasing applications is likely to maintain from the evidence we have. This being said, NYU could always alter their strategy for next year to attract better numbers (like throwing more aid to higher stat people), but based on the 11-12 cycle you have a good shot of getting in.

Although I agree with indigomachine's point that you can get scholarship after being accepted ED, you should not ED if you are not ok with sticker because after your acceptance financial aid can do whatever the fuck they want. Sticker is your baseline for ED, you can't count on anything else coming your way.

[flem]

That being said, ED does take away your ability to negotiate.

This is the biggest thing.

I mean, common sense dictates that they have no incentive to give you money if you ED because you're locked in. I wouldn't ED to a school if you haven't stomached the fact that you'll be paying sticker, though.

As a splitter, I just find it funny when other splitters bitch about getting locked out of scholarship money from high ranked schools. Your 2.8 GPA having ass wasn't getting a scholarship at a T14, most likely.

[06102016]

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[06102016]

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[thelawyler]

I did not ED to NYU but ended up there anyways at sticker despite scholarships at other T14s. It was just added wait list stress. However, NYC is my absolute top choice destination, so for your scenario, perhaps $$ at a lower T14 might be a better option.

Yeah, I want to echo this. If you're not absolutely set on CLS/NYU NYC placement bump or being in law school in NYC, then taking $$ at a lower T14 could definitely be worth it. If that's your situation, I wouldn't ED since getting in would basically lock you out of that possibility if you were admitted. NYC was my top choice destination as well, and I was (only slightly un)comfortable with the idea of sticker if it came to it.

Thanks for the replies. I will probably just ride things out RD. I'm attracted to the idea of spending three years in NYC and would be happy ending up there, but $$$ somewhere else might be a better fit for me. As to the ED/$$$ thing again, even if I was an admit by RD, it's probably true I wouldn't get a substantial scholarship given my numbers. Still, people have been hyping up the "weird cycle" we're supposed to have this year, so we'll see.

You never know. I got 100k at Gtown and 60k at Michigan.

[JWalker]

I had the same LSAT and a better GPA than OP and I got 72k from Duke, 67.5k from Michigan, and 0 from NYU.

FWIW, I chose NYU and I'm starting next week but then again I'm definitely aiming for NYC Big Law.

[booboo]

Been looking at this thread off and on. NYU rising 2L. Though I didn't bid on CA, the people that I know who did (and many did exclusively) had between 22-26 screening interviews with CA firms. Not sure what this means at the end of the day (translation: I don't know how this works out regarding callback interviews, firm diversity, and offers) but the fact that bidding exclusively CA is getting some students a similar amount of interviews NY-centric students get is pretty amazing to me.