Stan. v. NYU ($$) v. Col. v. Penn ($$) v. Duke ($$) v. UChic Forum

[Emma.]

I think jselson has a perfectly valid point. depending on career goals stanford could easily be worth 90k more than any school other than hy. just for getting a biglaw job, I agree BigLawyer, OP can go to uchicago or better yet make columbia match it and go there and be just as well off. but there are other opportunities (arguably unpriceable IMO) offered by stanford esp on west coast and in DC that you would have to get top 10% of the class at chicago to attain

Exactly what are these "unpriceable" opportunities? They sound cool.

[005618502]

I think jselson has a perfectly valid point. depending on career goals stanford could easily be worth 90k more than any school other than hy. just for getting a biglaw job, I agree BigLawyer, OP can go to uchicago or better yet make columbia match it and go there and be just as well off. but there are other opportunities (arguably unpriceable IMO) offered by stanford esp on west coast and in DC that you would have to get top 10% of the class at chicago to attain

What are you talking about!?! What opportunities will Stanford provide over Chicago where you need top 10% at Chicago but could be, say, median at Stanford?? Please at least tell me you are in law school and not just making this up by the way you "feel" it should be. This is simply not true. Are you talking about getting a SC clerkship? Thats not a realistic goal for anyone... so that should not be taken into consideration. But just talking about biglaw/PI/academia, this is just not true.

[005618502]

Wow, I cant even read all these comments. OP, I think most the people saying Stanford with worth 90k over Chicago are a bunch of 0Ls. I would not take their advice, see how much you get from Stanford, but if 0, you would be crazy to not take the money from Chicago.

[Emma.]

Wow, I cant even read all these comments. OP, I think most the people saying Stanford with worth 90k over Chicago are a bunch of 0Ls. I would not take their advice, see how much you get from Stanford, but if 0, you would be crazy to not take the money from Chicago.

Seriously. Almost all 0Ls really have zero business giving advice on what school to choose.

[005618502]

Wow, I cant even read all these comments. OP, I think most the people saying Stanford with worth 90k over Chicago are a bunch of 0Ls. I would not take their advice, see how much you get from Stanford, but if 0, you would be crazy to not take the money from Chicago.

Seriously. Almost all 0Ls really have zero business giving advice on what school to choose.

Exactly, when I was an 0L I had no idea wtf I was talking about. You get a totally different view from the inside and once you have gone through hiring (even just 1L shit). People who are in the process of applying should really look to advice on the issue of picking a law school but not give it unless its obvious H>Penn with no scholly, and the like. Go give advice on taking the LSAT or how the school looked on your ASW... but not on the benefits Stanford will provide over Chicago even at 90k more... lmao

[abl]

I'd say SLS is probably worth 90k over Chicago for PI/government/academia/clerkships. Why? Because all four of those are feasible options at SLS coming out of the top half of the class (and PI and all but the most competitive government are options coming out of roughly the top 4/5s of the class, if not the whole class). Not so at Chicago. If you do really well at Chicago -- top 20% or so -- you're going to have very similar options as if you were top half at SLS, but that's a big difference. You probably can safely count on being top half at SLS. You can't safely count on being top ~20% at Chicago. So, if your heart is set on one of those things, going to SLS will LIKELY be the difference between you being able to do it, and you not being able to do it. Given your secure financial situation (with your parents), that sort of opportunity is easily worth 90k. (My recommendation would probably be different if you were not on such solid ground financially.)

*Not an 0L*

[loomstate]

You probably can safely count on being top half at SLS.

...going to SLS will LIKELY be the difference between you being able to do it, and you not being able to do it.

face palm

[Emma.]

You probably can safely count on being top half at SLS.

...going to SLS will LIKELY be the difference between you being able to do it, and you not being able to do it.

face palm

+1

[Stinson]

Also not a 0L, I think if OP really wants gov/pi Stanford is the winner - not having debt doesn't get you the job, it just makes it easier to accept, plus the money difference will matter less if OP actually goes that route, plus Stanford gives you a better shot at stuff like that - but the majority of people who are sort of between PI and Biglaw will go with biglaw, if not because of the money then because it is incredibly less effort to do, especially at Stanford or Chicago where you basically don't even have to try. Having your postgrad situation essentially figured out - barring a no-offer - at the end of 1L year is a very powerful inducement. Also, people develop certain interests in certain areas of law once they get to school and sometimes firms are the best place to develop interests in those areas.

[whereskyle]

0L here: according to LST, you have better than twice the chance to grab a fed clerkship coming out of stan than from chi. That would decide it for me, as clerkships are my most coveted goal (as a 0L). But, damn, dude: better than twice the placement into what is the single most law profession-advancing position you can get? Seems like an easy choice to me, so it must be personal concerns weighing on you. I know a duke grad doing a clerkship in jacksonville, fl, if you love the south that much.

[Ohiobumpkin]

I think it all depends on what value the OP attaches to job placement, debt load, and geographic location of the school. If OP is mainly concerned with federal clerkship PI stuff, Stanford or NYU wins. If more concerned with debt, go Chicago or Duke. If geographic considerations are your biggest concern, NYU, Penn, or Columbia win.

[whereskyle]

I think it all depends on what value the OP attaches to job placement, debt load, and geographic location of the school. If OP is mainly concerned with federal clerkship PI stuff, Stanford or NYU wins. If more concerned with debt, go Chicago or Duke. If geographic considerations are your biggest concern, NYU, Penn, or Columbia win.

Yeah, i wanted to question Stanford's value to someone really trying to make it in NC...

[Emma.]

0L here: according to LST, you have better than twice the chance to grab a fed clerkship coming out of stan than from chi. That would decide it for me, as clerkships are my most coveted goal (as a 0L). But, damn, dude: better than twice the placement into what is the single most law profession-advancing position you can get? Seems like an easy choice to me, so it must be personal concerns weighing on you. I know a duke grad doing a clerkship in jacksonville, fl, if you love the south that much.

It might be "double", but the differential is only around 14% (~14% at UChi, ~28% at Stanford). It is certainly easier to get fed clerkships out of SLS than UChi, but unclear whether some of this difference is self-selection. It isn't like half the class at SLS is landing fed clerkships

It also seems kind of weird to me that a one year temporary position is your "most coveted goal," (and this is coming from someone who is clerking after graduation).

"The single most law profession-advancing position you can get"?

This is why 0Ls shouldn't be trusted to give this advice.

Edit: Misread the LST data. Fixed now.

[sinfiery]

If you prefer to stay in the NE (to the extent where you made this thread even before the UChi offer), it is easily defensible to pick UChi here with 90k over SLS given your personal preferences.

[dixiecupdrinking]

If you prefer to stay in the NE (to the extent where you made this thread even before the UChi offer), it is easily defensible to pick UChi here with 90k over SLS given your personal preferences.

I don't see how that has anything to do with it.... It's not like Chicago is on the east coast. It's a 2 hour flight instead of a 4 hour flight, what's the difference?

[sinfiery]

Seriously? Thought it was all a big cluster f*ck that falls under the NE category.

[005618502]

nvm

[005618502]

I think people are forgetting that OP is an 0L looking at this decision. I would say more than 50% of students going to a top school say they want to do PI, then more than half take biglaw if given the opportunity. I am not saying OP wont stay true to this want, but in my opinion Chicago is the best of both worlds. If you want PI you are likely to get a solid job from Chicago (the difference between Chicago and Stanford is not as great as people are making it out to be). BUT if OP decides, like most do, that he/she wants to go make some big bucks for a while then transition into PI, Chicago is the no briner here.

OP, if you think there is a chance you will decide to go biglaw before moving to PI then go to Chicago. If money means absolutely nothing to you, go to Stanford....

[abl]

I'm not sure why there'd be more self-selection with clerkships at SLS than at Chicago. If anything, I'd guess the opposite is true -- Chicago is known, relative to its peers (NYU and Columbia) as being more clerkship-oriented, whereas Yale is probably the most clerkship-oriented of SLS's peers. Therefore, you'd expect to see the most clerkship self-selection at Chicago and YLS -- those schools most "known" for clerking among their peers. Regardless, the difference between 14% and 28% is huge.

[Emma.]

I'm not sure why there'd be more self-selection with clerkships at SLS than at Chicago. If anything, I'd guess the opposite is true -- Chicago is known, relative to its peers (NYU and Columbia) as being more clerkship-oriented, whereas Yale is probably the most clerkship-oriented of SLS's peers. Therefore, you'd expect to see the most clerkship self-selection at Chicago and YLS -- those schools most "known" for clerking among their peers. Regardless, the difference between 14% and 28% is huge.

The above makes no sense, but to humor you: There are plenty of people in my class with qualifications that would have made them very competitive for fed clerkships and didn't bother applying. I'm sure this is true at SLS too, but it is entirely possible that SLS has an institutional culture that encourages more of its qualified students to apply. In the last few years, most UChi students have been pretty focused on biglaw, whereas SLS students seem to generally have a broader range of goals.

The whole reason anyone should be cautious about listening to 0L advice in this forum is that how a school is "known" from an 0L perspective doesn't give you the best insight into the reality of attending.

[Emma.]

I'm not sure why there'd be more self-selection with clerkships at SLS than at Chicago. If anything, I'd guess the opposite is true -- Chicago is known, relative to its peers (NYU and Columbia) as being more clerkship-oriented, whereas Yale is probably the most clerkship-oriented of SLS's peers. Therefore, you'd expect to see the most clerkship self-selection at Chicago and YLS -- those schools most "known" for clerking among their peers. Regardless, the difference between 14% and 28% is huge.

If we could measure & quantify clerkship self-selection bias for clerkships at these schools, it would be entirely possible that it would go something like:

Y = 10
S = 8
H = 6
C = 5
C = 4
N = 3

So consistent with your supposition about Yale being the most clerkship oriented of YHS and Chicago being the most clerkship oriented of CCN, Stanford could still have a significantly greater self selection bias than Chicago.

[abl]

The above makes no sense

Sure it does.

Clerkship self-selection can come from multiple sources. One is the culture at the school -- if, as you speculate, something about SLS (school culture, professors, the clerkship office, etc) encourages relatively more people to want clerkships, then we would expect a greater percentage of the student body to have clerkships (because a higher percentage of "clerkship eligible" students will actually try to get clerkships rather than biglaw or something else). I'm not sure why it would be that the SLS school culture is more pro-clerkship than the Chicago school culture, and you haven't really pointed to any evidence that indicates that it would be. I think you're right that more people at SLS look for careers outside of the generic biglaw box (almost certainly in part because more of those semi-nontraditional careers are available coming from SLS), but that cuts the opposite way: students who pursue other post-graduate degrees, politics, thinktanks, etc are probably less likely to want clerkships than students who pursue biglaw (given that the further one strays from the traditional legal tracks, the less practical/resume-enhancing value the clerkship has).

A second source of clerkship self-selection comes from 0Ls choosing between schools. Different law schools have different reputations with regards to clerkships. Yale and Chicago have long had reputations for being clerkship overachievers: schools that send relatively more of their students to clerkships than their peers. Therefore, a student choosing between Harvard and Yale who has her heart set on clerking is probably more likely to choose Yale than a student with the same choice who has little interest in clerking. Although almost certainly many 0Ls change their minds about clerking -- some will decide that clerking sounds great while others will find a different passion -- it's also almost certain that many of these 0L interests are borne out in students' 2L and 3L career choices. Therefore, schools known for being good for clerking will attract more prospective clerks, and will thus have more 2Ls and 3Ls looking to clerk--e.g., the average clerk-eligible student will be more likely to actually want to clerk. My point was that we would expect Chicago, which has a reputation (probably deserved) for being a relatively good option for aspiring clerks, to have more 2Ls and 3Ls who want to clerk than a school (like Stanford) with no such reputation. Put another way, aspiring clerks choosing from the CCN bucket will disproportionately choose Chicago, while aspiring clerks choosing from the HYS bucket will disproportionately NOT choose Stanford -- leading to some clerkship selection bias at Chicago relative to Stanford. (That is, unless we think that there's something about admitted HYS students that make them more likely to clerk than admitted CCN students.)

[abl]

Emma,

Few enough cross-admits between Stanford and Chicago choose Chicago that your numbers would only reflect reality if there was something about HYS admits that made them more likely to want to clerk than CCN admits. You could only otherwise end up with an effect like the one you described if there were significant numbers of students choosing Chicago over Stanford in large part because they weren't that interested in clerking (and liked other things about Chicago more). But, significant numbers of students don't choose Chicago over Stanford for any reason, so we know that this isn't the case.

[Emma.]

The above makes no sense

Sure it does.

Clerkship self-selection can come from multiple sources. One is the culture at the school -- if, as you speculate, something about SLS (school culture, professors, the clerkship office, etc) encourages relatively more people to want clerkships, then we would expect a greater percentage of the student body to have clerkships (because a higher percentage of "clerkship eligible" students will actually try to get clerkships rather than biglaw or something else). I'm not sure why it would be that the SLS school culture is more pro-clerkship than the Chicago school culture, and you haven't really pointed to any evidence that indicates that it would be. I think you're right that more people at SLS look for careers outside of the generic biglaw box (almost certainly in part because more of those semi-nontraditional careers are available coming from SLS), but that cuts the opposite way: students who pursue other post-graduate degrees, politics, thinktanks, etc are probably less likely to want clerkships than students who pursue biglaw (given that the further one strays from the traditional legal tracks, the less practical/resume-enhancing value the clerkship has).

A second source of clerkship self-selection comes from 0Ls choosing between schools. Different law schools have different reputations with regards to clerkships. Yale and Chicago have long had reputations for being clerkship overachievers: schools that send relatively more of their students to clerkships than their peers. Therefore, a student choosing between Harvard and Yale who has her heart set on clerking is probably more likely to choose Yale than a student with the same choice who has little interest in clerking. Although almost certainly many 0Ls change their minds about clerking -- some will decide that clerking sounds great while others will find a different passion -- it's also almost certain that many of these 0L interests are borne out in students' 2L and 3L career choices. Therefore, schools known for being good for clerking will attract more prospective clerks, and will thus have more 2Ls and 3Ls looking to clerk--e.g., the average clerk-eligible student will be more likely to actually want to clerk. My point was that we would expect Chicago, which has a reputation (probably deserved) for being a relatively good option for aspiring clerks, to have more 2Ls and 3Ls who want to clerk than a school (like Stanford) with no such reputation. Put another way, aspiring clerks choosing from the CCN bucket will disproportionately choose Chicago, while aspiring clerks choosing from the HYS bucket will disproportionately NOT choose Stanford -- leading to some clerkship selection bias at Chicago relative to Stanford. (That is, unless we think that there's something about admitted HYS students that make them more likely to clerk than admitted CCN students.)

No.

But I'm not going to argue this out in someone else's thread. If you are actually interested, I'm happy to explain why this is at least somewhat misguided via PM.

[005618502]

The above makes no sense

Sure it does.

Clerkship self-selection can come from multiple sources. One is the culture at the school -- if, as you speculate, something about SLS (school culture, professors, the clerkship office, etc) encourages relatively more people to want clerkships, then we would expect a greater percentage of the student body to have clerkships (because a higher percentage of "clerkship eligible" students will actually try to get clerkships rather than biglaw or something else). I'm not sure why it would be that the SLS school culture is more pro-clerkship than the Chicago school culture, and you haven't really pointed to any evidence that indicates that it would be. I think you're right that more people at SLS look for careers outside of the generic biglaw box (almost certainly in part because more of those semi-nontraditional careers are available coming from SLS), but that cuts the opposite way: students who pursue other post-graduate degrees, politics, thinktanks, etc are probably less likely to want clerkships than students who pursue biglaw (given that the further one strays from the traditional legal tracks, the less practical/resume-enhancing value the clerkship has).

A second source of clerkship self-selection comes from 0Ls choosing between schools. Different law schools have different reputations with regards to clerkships. Yale and Chicago have long had reputations for being clerkship overachievers: schools that send relatively more of their students to clerkships than their peers. Therefore, a student choosing between Harvard and Yale who has her heart set on clerking is probably more likely to choose Yale than a student with the same choice who has little interest in clerking. Although almost certainly many 0Ls change their minds about clerking -- some will decide that clerking sounds great while others will find a different passion -- it's also almost certain that many of these 0L interests are borne out in students' 2L and 3L career choices. Therefore, schools known for being good for clerking will attract more prospective clerks, and will thus have more 2Ls and 3Ls looking to clerk--e.g., the average clerk-eligible student will be more likely to actually want to clerk. My point was that we would expect Chicago, which has a reputation (probably deserved) for being a relatively good option for aspiring clerks, to have more 2Ls and 3Ls who want to clerk than a school (like Stanford) with no such reputation. Put another way, aspiring clerks choosing from the CCN bucket will disproportionately choose Chicago, while aspiring clerks choosing from the HYS bucket will disproportionately NOT choose Stanford -- leading to some clerkship selection bias at Chicago relative to Stanford. (That is, unless we think that there's something about admitted HYS students that make them more likely to clerk than admitted CCN students.)

Stanford pushes into Clerkships MUCH more than Chicago because of self selection. CA is not known for its corporate work...what is it known for? If you said IP and other litigation, you would be correct! good job. Next question, in which line of work does a clerkship benefit you? If you again answered litigation, you would be correct!

*If you dont believe me with CA litigation look at MTO, Gibson, OMM, all the big CA based shops are litigation focused. LW would be an exception, but they are not CA based.

The fact is that CA in general is very litigation based. I am from CA and not going back there for exactly this reason. Their corporate practices tend to take a back seat to litigation whereas in Chicago and NYC (and TX where I am going) corporate practice is more relevant and often times the litigation practices are backup. If you are looking into going into corporate, you are not going to want to clerk, it would not be worth the lost cash that it would cost you. So even though I am at the top of my class at a T10 which places well into clerkships (I think 3rd or 4th in number of SC clerks) I will not even consider it because it wouldnt benefit me. I have a friend who is at SLS and he says that they push clerking pretty hard, he is also looking into litigation, so he is gunning for an Art. III clerkship...

This is pretty generalized, but I think it is more or less at least part of the disparity between the two.