BDawk20 wrote:
So it looks like everyone is up in arms about this place...thanks ATL. Let me explain Rutgers Camden to you briefly, and pain free. at some length, and poorly.
In the interest of full disclosure I have gone to RC and feel like its gotten a bad name lately. I demonstrate the level of acumen at advocacy writing you would expect from a Rutgers-Camden grad.
1) Neighborhood - Don't go anywhere your you're not supposed to go. Camden is dangerous! and It trades places with any number of other cities for highest per capita murder rate each year (take that East St.Louis). There's no campus life to speak of, but fortunately you can Ttake the train and its a 3 minute ride to Philly and be somewhere worth being in under three minutes. There is really no campus life to speak of, but The campus itself is clean, and nice enough.
2)School - The Nnew building, across the street from the federal courthouse, its pretty. Having said that, the expense of big, uselessly "pretty" new buildings is part of the fundamental problem of spiralling costs at law schools.
3)Rankings - If you love to obsess with rankings (and who doesn't) then yes, RC has not had a great last 5 years. However there is a reason to be chipper. The small class size this year (mixed with the fact that RC didn't just admit everyone with subpar credentials) means that the ranking should go up. Student to faculty ratio will be better, as will as money spent per student The school now also offers more scholarships from the sound of it. To those concerned about the rankings I'd offer this piece of advice - the school took a big hit this year, there was alot going on. Now the merger is settled. So beyond Rutgers simply returning to the status quo they now have a MUCH bigger bank account and the law school doesn't need to ship money back to New Brunswick. The end result will be more money for clinics, scholarships, profs, etc. worried. While, on the one hand, a smaller class size means a better $/student ratio, the precipitous drop in enrollment could hurt their LSAT/GPA numbers a bit, and more importantly could hurt their "peer" rankings quite a lot. We don't know what the exact effect on RU-C's ranking will be, but it's not likely to be good.
4)Profs - RC has an unremarkable and fundamentally competent, if not stellar really good faculty - they are overpaid well and now that the merger talk is done have bigger bank accounts, all is well not as catastrophically bad as it could have been.
5)Other Concerns - Camden is wicked dangerous...did I mention that?; Also, at some point, Pat Burrell will probably hit on you if your you're a girl at some point, when (most likely when you're your in Philly) it will happen.
My point is that instead of throwing away or talking down on a pretty good school, you probably should take that more seriously. In Philadelphia there are a number of law schools - and as Penn kids run for greener pastures in DC or NY, Rutgers students/alumn mainly compete with Temple. Which until a couple of years ago was an equal or less established school, things have changed but its still a battle Rutgers Students often win.
There are alot of spots in the city, and Rutgers Camden alumni rolls pretty deep. In state tuition/scholarship and access to big firms in the city with alumn.... You could do much worse by going to some unranked shitpile like Cooley.
FTFY
Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2012 1:05 pm 
