this is not correct.

It should be noted that Northwestern actually has fairly low peer rankings. Chicago destroys it, and it is lower than any of the T14 (the closest is Georgetown) and Northwestern is tied with UCLA (although the bar rep for NU is significantly higher). NU is only up in the rankings because of their expenditures which are higher than anyone's outside the Top-5.

In other words, Chicago is a much better school than Northwestern in my opinion. I wouldn't consider it with a 172 / 3.6--definitely would go to MVP or Cornell or Duke instead.

This is incorrect.

That's actually absolutely correct.

Blatant Ron Paul trolling

False

Not to get into a long pointless 30 page argument---but Booth is known for having the best finance program after Wharton. That's so widely known that it isn't really debateable. It's akin to how everyone knows that Stanford law is the best IP school or that Yale law is the best for academia. And Kellogg is defintely more focused on marketing and "team building" than some of the other top B-schools are---especially Booth. Consulting firms love Kellogg because they tend to produce students with better team and soft skills than the other schools. Booth is a very rigourous and quantitative school, it's also more academic for a business school. LOL I just realized that I quoted the wrong post in my original! I think we both had a slight misunderstanding I meant to quote the following post originally!

Chicago is up there with Yale. Even with everything equal, don't automatically go for Yale.

this is not correct.[/quote]

That's actually absolutely correct.[/quote]

Not to get into a long pointless 30 page argument---but Booth is known for having the best finance program after Wharton. That's so widely known that it isn't really debateable. It's akin to how everyone knows that Stanford law is the best IP school or that Yale law is the best for academia. And Kellogg is defintely more focused on marketing and "team building" than some of the other top B-schools are---especially Booth. Consulting firms love Kellogg because they tend to produce students with better team and soft skills than the other schools. Booth is a very rigourous and quantitative school, it's also more academic for a business school. LOL I just realized that I quoted the wrong post in my original! I think we both had a slight misunderstanding I meant to quote the following post originally![/quote]

Kellogg is excellent for marketing. Better than HBS, IMO. Wait, isn't this a LAW school forum?

I visited both for ASW last year and job placement-wise, found UChicago to be aggressively career-focused while Northwestern was more laid back. NU stressed what a good experience attending the school would be, the nice area, study abroad, etc. There was also a very strong corporate bent. UChicago was a lot more academic, and reiterated over and over the success of its graduates and the eagerness of firms to hire UChicago grads. Their career services office absolutely had their shit together; NU's seemed to be wandering around in the forest a bit. It wasn't a difficult decision, regardless of the campuses.

Michigan still has the best rep of MVPB today, doesn't it? That would mean it has to fall below 4 other schools to drop out of the T10. Northwestern would also have to hold off Duke, which currently has the best rep/placement among DNCG.

This actually fascinates me. You say UoC's peer rating is amazingly low considering its ranking. Do you think this has to do with the current unpopularity for freshwater economist ideals that typify UoC's academic flavor? Maybe the peer ranking has an undue backlash at the moment that doesn't really signify its actual prestige?

Well, I was referring to Northwestern's peer rating being very low for it's ranking. Chicago's is actually slightly high for it's ranking (higher than NYU and Berkeley, for example).

However, you'd be amazed at how similarly ranked the schools are in every category except expenditures. The z-scores for Yale's expenditures, for instance, more than double every school except Harvard and Stanford. Aside from expenditures and financial aid per student, Yale really isn't any better than Harvard in any regard (that includes peer and bar reps) and Harvard actually has a higher bar passage rate, I believe. Stanford also outpaces Yale in bar passage rates, as well as in employment rates at graduation.

Here is a link to the source: http://money-law.blogspot.com/2009/07/z ... n-law.html.

Ahhh, I had forgotten about that whole finance thing. Good point!

That actually makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for clearing that up. UoC is one of my absolute top choices and pending my own research, I was horrified to learn that they had a bad peer rep.

Who cares about peer rep? It's all about the ability to get a job upon graduation. Oh, and also (I guess) the ability to actually do that job (well).

Great insight, thanks. If one really wants to go into corporate law, then, would NU be the better choice?

Michigan's peer rep doesn't have to fall behind MVPB, it just has to drop enough so that it can no longer compensate for their medians (lower than VPDN this year), etc. And that peer rep score has been decreasing every year since the inception of the rankings. Not saying it's gonna happen soon, but Michigan has the weakest position of MVPB.

As for Duke, it's certainly possible that they'll move back into the T10 like they were in the 1990s, but the trend doesn't seem to be going that way. They have a couple of disadvantages --- a relatively smaller endowment making it harder to throw money around at top students/attract top professors, and a less marketable location.

It's not out of the realm of possibility that Michigan could be 12th in the next rankings. If they're ranked any better than 10th, I will be very surprised.

On the contrary, I think UChicago would be better despite their academic focus because there is so much competition for biglaw jobs and UChicago places better. Honestly though, I'm no authority on this at all. I think if you wanted to go corporate law there are classes you could take at UChicago in that field.

If I was interested in a JD for a non-legal career or something like social posterity, I would probably have picked NU. I chose my undergrad based on where I thought I'd have the best time outside of school and that worked out well for me (NYC over Ithaca), but I didn't think that was the best decision to make when choosing a law school.

The other big factor between these two is cost of attendance... in general NU costs a lot more than UChicago. It's in a much more expensive area and tuition is higher.

As far as corporate law is concerned, the distinctions between the T14 are significantly less important than for clerkships, academia, and PI. You can land BigLaw gigs from every T14, but the same can't be said about some other jobs.

That said, there are still small differences, and UChicago has the slight edge against NU. But if you are positive you want to do corporate law, I would encourage you to make a decision that takes your own personal factors into consideration.

The early reports on OCI this year would seem to indicate that there may be a much wider gap among the different T14s ITE than there was in the past. However, it is all more or less speculation at this point. Also, I'm not sure specifically about NU or Chicago this year.

So Chicago is better than NYU too? I'd have no trouble whatsoever choosing NYU over Chicago, but that preference is informed largely by the rankings and the assumption that higher rank --> better opportunities.

Chicago is pretty much better than any schools except HYS. Historically, Yale and Chicago dominated everything throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Chicago has been ranked as high as second, places better into academia and clerkships than NYU and Columbia, has a stronger faculty than almost anywhere, etc.

In the TLS interview with Brian Leiter, he basically says Chicago has only slipped in the rankings because they were miscalculating their expenditures, and that problem should be solved this year. Who knows if that will actually happen.

But Blazers--I would say Chicago is definitely a little better than NYU, and at least on par with Columbia if not better. Still, I would rather attend Columbia or NYU than Chicago personally.

I'm with you there. I visited Chicago, and I actually fell in love with it (believe it or not).

The LRAP at Columbia is so much better than Chicago that, all things equal, Columbia is a less risky option.