Hey Guys...

Just thought I would leave this here: I have a room for rent in Harrison(East Newark). Looking for someone clean, respectful, considerate and a minimalist. The price is $500/month, with everything, including cable and internet.

It is in a 2 bedroom apartment (my boyfriend and I live there...I will be a 2L next year) in a quiet neighborhood close to the school (around 1 mile), on street parking (you can buy a spot from the town of East Newark if you want to for $50 a month, which if you have out of state plates, you should consider). We have a good size kitchen and bathroom for use; and obviously share the cleaning responsibilities of those. We do not care if you are male or female.

If you are interested, drop me an e-mail @ r.larosee@gmail.com

So, has anyone heard anything new since turning in a seat deposit? I haven't gotten a financial aid package yet (except for the initial one you get when you're accepted) nor any information on enrollment. I've signed a lease in NJ and want to give my notice at work, but I'm not going to pull the trigger on that until I'm officially enrolled.

ETA: Oh. It looks like there's a health form due July 15 and transcripts have to be sent by the school - whoops, I have some paperwork and appointments to do tomorrow. The link for the immunizations form that was in the paperwork in my acceptance packet doesn't work, but I found one through here: http://health.rutgers.edu/who-are-you/i ... unizations . Anyone know if that's the same one that we need?

You know, I haven't heard anything yet either. I did have my school send in my transcripts. I also filled out information for living at University Square. However, I still need to send in the $200 security deposit.

When I called and talked with the financial office they told me my seat is secure for the incoming class. They also informed me that they are waiting for the state to finalize the tuition amount. Until its finalized, we can't apply for the graduate plus loan, which I'm annoyed about... Anyways, I put in my notice at work, so, here we go!

Shit, I don't remember anything about this immunization stuff. I thought I just needed to send my deposit and transcripts. The problem is I am out of the country and may not be back before that deadline. I also don't have a family doctor. Do you think I could get this done abroad or does the doctor have to be licensed in the States? Or better yet, does anyone know if this deadline can be extended to August and if there is a doc on-campus I could go to as soon as I get back? I seem to recall reading on another thread somewhere that some students get this done on campus.

What about orientation? Has anyone heard about that? Isn't it the week before classes start?

One other thing - it might be a bit off-topic for this but would any of you be interested in a Rutgers law fantasy football league? I was hoping to be in a league with other law students. I figured it might be a perfect mental smoke break during group study sessions to start talking about our players from time to time. Plus, all the heavy lifting commissioner and draft stuff can be done before school starts so it doesn't have to be all that time consuming during the season if we're too busy. I know this is assuming that 1. there are people who aren't freaked out we might have no time for such things and 2. that there will even be an NFL season this year. But I figured I'd just put it out there. Feel free to email me if you're interested - [url]davesisk@gmail.com[/url] .

Orientation is Aug. 17-19. As for the vaccinations, I suggest e-mailing Anita Walton, fixer of all incoming-1L problems big and small, to figure out the best way to handle it. She's been very helpful to me.
Does anyone know where we have the transcripts sent? I thought it was the law school's admissions office, but it occurs to me that it might have to go to some office in New Brunswick.

Hey guys - I will be starting Rutgers Newark this fall - excited

Has anyone applied for loans yet? I called and spoke with Nikki in financial aid and she said not to bother until Rutgers puts out their official COL for 2011-2012, which they have yet to do. Also - is there a specific thing I need to do to apply for the loans that were "offered" to me as part of my project Financial Aid Package (Stafford Loans). I am doing this all on my own this time around and never realized all of the little things my parents took care of during undergrad that I took for granted!

Thanks for all the help guys!

Also - I will be living in Hoboken w/ my girlfriend, anyone have any experience with the ease of getting to the school from there?

This should help regarding how to handle the loans. http://www.staffordloan.com/stafford-loan-info/faq/

I'll be commuting from Jersey City Heights, right above Hoboken, so I'll be interested to find out as well. I'm planning to do Hudson-Bergen light rail from 9th St. to Hoboken PATH to Newark Penn, and from there I'll either walk or take Newark Light Rail. I may also take a bus sometimes from Journal Square - a two-zone monthly bus pass allows you to ride both light rails for free. (Supposedly!) The PATH is its own thing, so I'll have to buy a monthly pass for that as well. I'm coming from New York, where a Metrocard covers everything and it's all one fare, so figuring out NJ Transit has been uh, interesting. Yes, I'll go with interesting.
There is NJ transit rail service from Hoboken to Newark-Broad Street in under 20 minutes, but it's expensive and it only runs directly there somewhat infrequently. Otherwise you have to transfer at Secaucus, which adds a lot of time.
I have a feeling I'm going to be figuring out my commute with a lot of trial and error. Good luck!

For transportation purposes to and from school, I cannot recommend the PATH enough. It's cheap (a monthly ticket will cost you anywhere between 40-54 bucks) and you can either walk to school or take the Light Rail to and from Penn Station for $.75 each way. If you're living in Hoboken you have the option of using NJTransit which does run a direct(?) train to Newark. Lots of classmates use NJTransit but it is significantly more expensive than the PATH but you don't have to switch. Really depends on your finances. PATH has worked well for me to get to school or NYC for my summer internship.

The website for PATH says it's $54 for a monthly pass - how can we get it for $40? There's no mention of student discounts on the site, but if there's a way to get one, I could really use that extra $14 to buy the fancy ramen with its own bowl instead of the little square packets. Luxury!

I got the email that my financial aid award letter was ready for review. I tried applying for the grad PLUS loans online, but I got an error saying that Rutgers wasn't participating. I spoke to Nikki about it and she said that we probably won't be able to apply for grad PLUS loans until July 1st for one reason or another.

Any idea when we actually enroll? I want to be enrolled before I officially give notice at my job. Good to know that financial aid letters are finally arriving, not that I've gotten mine yet.

Whoops, look like they jacked up the 40 trip pass to $52. It used to be approximately $45 I believe. There are no student discount fares on the PATH. You can obtain one for using NJTransit however. I do not know how much of a discount it is, but I believe a monthly rail pass includes using the Light Rail for free so you would not have to walk to school everyday. Really comes down to your finances and whether or not you would prefer to switch trains or not.

Yeah, smart and sneaky of them - they made the prices such that you might as well get the monthly unlimited pass unless you use the PATH like once or twice a week only. Ever since I discovered that a two-zone NJ monthly bus pass covers light rail, I've pretty much decided against the regular train, which is far more expensive, even with the discount. So, I'm going PATH pass and bus pass. I'll probably use the bus now and again from where I'm at for something or another. I'll probably use light rail all the time, since there's a HBLR station right by my new place. I don't have a car.

Hey all,

I tried both PATH and NJ Transit, and they're both easy, though the PATH is cheaper (it will be for me, anyway). I'm going to be in Jersey City though, along the line that goes directly to Newark. From Hoboken, you have to switch out at Journal Square or a station before that to catch the Newark line, but it's an easy transfer (cross the platform).

Does anyone know what we should expect for orientation (August 17-19) or gotten any info on what our time will look like on those days?

ETA: Also, anyone know who we send our copy of our Jersey lease to?

Orientation is fairly new at Rutgers. It was revamped last year to be a multi-day affair. From what I can recall from classmates who were involved last year, you'll brief a case, fill out some forms, get Lexis and Westlaw passwords, and sign up for clubs. It's just a general introduction to law school and what to expect. I think they took last year's class to the Essex County courthouse. It's also a good time to start meeting upperclassmen for the 411 on professors and what Moot Court and write-on are like.

Oh, right - my mistake. Hoboken PATH doesn't go directly to Newark. I was thinking of the Pavonia/Newport stop, which is also along the light rail and does connect to Newark Penn. I will still have to commute to NYC for a few weeks after my move to NJ and will be using Hoboken PATH for that commute, so I got confused.
As for the lease, I sent mine to Anita Walton. If you've had any e-mail exchanges with her, the fax number is in her e-mail signature. I sent mine to that fax number and she confirmed that she received it.

Registration is mid to late July. For 1Ls, they'll just register you and tell you your schedule so there's no thinking on your part.

Thanks! We can request early or late track when we enroll, right?

Yeah, you'll get a choice at some point. I don't remember exactly when.

I accepted Rutgers' offer today. New York kid, but very excited to get in to this school. Seems to do as well as any of the local regional law schools around here for a lot less money. (St. John's)

I start part time, but hear the transfer between divisions is relatively routine on the website. Anyone with thoughts on this?

I think its Anita Walton, the Dean of Admissions. She's a cool lady.

Excited? Why? To attend a mediocre TTT school located in a filthy, impoverished, dangerous ghetto? You guys know that the school is a NJ "public" building, right? This means that in the winter, the homeless crackheads use the library and common areas as places to get warm. Often they urinate & even defecate right in the library, as well as steal laptops and anything else that ain't nailed down.

The job market in NJ is, in a word, abysmal. McCarter has cancelled it's summer program 2 years in a row, Lowenstein is still laying off associates, and NJ Legal Aid just went thru massive cuts (1/4 of lawyers laid off). NJ AG's office offers a salary of 0 dollars. Here are the links:

http://blogs.findlaw.com/strategist/200 ... teers.html

and

http://articles.philly.com/2010-08-14/n ... ewer-cases

I feel such a depressing sense of bemusement watching you guys on the PATH train with your lame casebooks and study guides all marked up with highlighter. The legal market is dead, kids. Doc review jobs that require experience are paying $27 an hour:

http://www.hirecounsel.com/jobs_search_ ... php?id=972

Sadly, by the time you guys get admitted to the Bar these crappy temp jobs (what's left of them) will have been outsourced to India and other 3rd world countries. Maybe you can grab a gig here:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/lgl/2437360405.html

One thing you can def. forget is any kind of "midlaw." Those places are looking for laterals with 5+ years of niche experience or ex-Biglaw/Ivy league types, or those with large books of portable business. Best you guys could hope for is a gig at Wilson Elser, a notorious insurance defense boiler room that requires NYC Biglaw hours for about one third a Biglaw salary. This work is mindless cut n' paste, mostly Allstate insurance cases trying to screw injured people out of cashing in their pissant 25 K insurance policy for a herniated disc. Turnover is high, most kids don't even last 6 months at that dump.

Understand that law was "career" of yesterday. For all but a tiny, chosen few in Biglaw, the industry as a whole pays very, very poorly. The supply/demand metrics are so out of whack it's downright comical. Why would any rational person aspire to join the ranks of the indebted and unemployed? As a small firm partner, let me tell you that we know better than anyone the desperation and struggling out there, and lowball the living piss out of the recently admitted grads we hire to cut & paste our motions and such together. We just got a recent R-N grad to do 5 hours of research and write a pretty nice 14 page brief for a whopping $150. When we run craiglists ads looking for newbies, we never get less than 75-100 resumes within a few hours. Many of them even offer to work for free to get some much needed "experience." I always tell them that the rates we offer are totally non-negotiable. You have zero leverage coming out of a TTT school, since an endless supply of you guys get churned out by the truckload each and every year.
Hell, I barely make a living myself and am in the process of getting out of law for good ASAP. You have to make really, really top dollar to make putting up with this festering gutter of an industry even close to being worth it.


Just open up your local Yellow Pages and count the teeming hordes of lawyers under-bidding each other to get your DWI or dog bite or draft your will. Take a look a what pathetic, bottom-feeding losers they are, and ask yourself if that's really how you want to end up? Your admission to R-N (and bragging about same) really shows how unsuited you are for the legal industry. Most of you would be better off just taking a service sector job now (truck driving, bartending, etc) or possibly learn a useful trade like plumbing or HVAC/electrical work. Why in the name of God would you aspire to enter a rapidly declining industry which is widely acknowledged to be almost impossible to find paying work in, an industry virtually guaranteed to be in exponentially worse shape by the time you gradaute. Think about it.

areyouinsane,

Get over yourself. We've seen the trolling elsewhere on the board, and it hasn't stopped us yet. Another rant and rave isn't going to change much. If you really care about this, find a more productive way to effect change.

So, from a quick look at your profile, it seems your only reason for being on TLS is to troll about Rutgers and maybe Seton Hall. Rutgers is Tier 2, but a TTT? Really? It's a state school with relatively reasonable tuition, not a $40K per year for profit diploma mill. Also, it makes a point of trying to draw in a diverse student body - of the 13 schools to which I applied, it's the only one that asked if I wanted to be considered based on my LSAT/GPA or soft factors. Those people being admitted with lower numbers I'm guessing bring down the medians, which hurts RU's place in the rankings, a least a little.

And yes, the job market sucks - everywhere. If one wants to be a lawyer, not just pick some random career to get rich, well, there are far worse choices people can make at this level. Frankly, we're not going to RU because we like it better than Yale - we can't get into a T14 school. For a Tier 2, I think it's one of the best regional choices. I couldn't get into Tier 1 because I was unwilling to leave the Northeast and my undergrad GPA blows, for a bunch of reasons that don't have to do with my intelligence or aptitude. Not everyone can do Tier 1, and not everyone in Tier 2 is a moron.

Oh, hey, Newark is a big gritty city? Nooooo way! I mean, anyone with a touch of street smarts doesn't leave a laptop unattended. I don't know that I believe the bit about the pooping homeless. I've had to show ID every time I've entered the building, so I'm wondering how long ago this supposedly occurred. I've heard that security used to be more lax than it is now.

You sound really bitter, and I'm sorry that you apparently have had a bad career. So, uh, where did you go? Where did you rank in your class? That says a lot too about how much your experience reflects reality for most of us. I don't expect everything to be just perfect and to be making a ton of money and I realize that I will work my ass off and not be guaranteed a job right out of school. I know it's a risk and I know it's a tough economy. But there are so many other schools that make for better targets - New York Law School, Seton Hall, St. John's. Why not warn those kids about falling into $200K debt for a subpar school?