Best secondary journals at HLS? Forum

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

And the year I graduated at my T6, there were about 3 Ivy grads with honors (including Cornell).

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

And the year I graduated at my T6, there were about 3 Ivy grads with honors (including Cornell).

What about T20 schools. No one is laser focused on the athletic conference it’s a shorthand

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

This also does not match my experience. But even on its own terms, given that six of the seven Ivies are among the most grade-inflated schools in the country, admissions offices’ focus on numbers is exceptionally unlikely to hurt them. It maybe hurts Chicago, but Chicago undergrads with YLS stats tend to go to Chicago Law anyway due to the big financial incentives it gives to doubles.

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

My dude really just said that a numbers oriented process put applicants from schools notorious for grade inflation, where admissions correlates aggressively with the best predictor of LSAT success (wealth), at a disadvantage.

UG prestige, especially at the high end, are more reflective of class/wealth than intelligence

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

My dude really just said that a numbers oriented process put applicants from schools notorious for grade inflation, where admissions correlates aggressively with the best predictor of LSAT success (wealth), at a disadvantage.

UG prestige, especially at the high end, are more reflective of class/wealth than intelligence

Yeah Ivy League schools are grade inflated overall, but that doesn’t mean it’s not easier to get great grades at a worse school. Plenty of kids at say FSU are tanking their grades by not even showing up to class. It’s still easier to get an A there even if there’s fewer proportionally. Numbers oriented process favors the kid that actually shows up to class and puts in a respectable amount of effort at an FSU or ASU.

Of course there are exceptions, and some high school students go to a school like ASU mainly because of cost, but it’s not the majority of them

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

My dude really just said that a numbers oriented process put applicants from schools notorious for grade inflation, where admissions correlates aggressively with the best predictor of LSAT success (wealth), at a disadvantage.

UG prestige, especially at the high end, are more reflective of class/wealth than intelligence

Yeah Ivy League schools are grade inflated overall, but that doesn’t mean it’s not easier to get great grades at a worse school. Plenty of kids at say FSU are tanking their grades by not even showing up to class. It’s still easier to get an A there even if there’s fewer proportionally. Numbers oriented process favors the kid that actually shows up to class and puts in a respectable amount of effort at an FSU or ASU.

Of course there are exceptions, and some high school students go to a school like ASU mainly because of cost, but it’s not the majority of them

Weighing grade inflation against blanket claims about less competitive student bodies is absurd lol. Also, undergrad classes aren't curved, so not really evident that people failing to show up for class would necessarily help out someone who does show up.

I think you are right - the vast majority of high school students that go to ASU are not going solely because of cost. However, that group isn't really relevant when you are comparing the aptitude of state vs T20 students at a top law school.

The better question is whether students who did well enough at ASU and on the LSAT to get into a top law school went to ASU for cost related reasons. I think that is much more likely.

Idk, maybe I'm just an annoying person, but relying so heavily on whether someone went to an elite undergrad as a barometer for intelligence/aptitude ignores realities about class and wealth in UG admissions and is unnecessary given clear points of comparison (LSAT, law school GPA).

[Anonymous User]

Does any school other than Penn have a writing competition with a “creative” essay based on memes and tiktoks among other sources?

Is there actually no legal writing at all at Penn?

[Anonymous User]

Does any school other than Penn have a writing competition with a “creative” essay based on memes and tiktoks among other sources?

Is there actually no legal writing at all at Penn?

There’s no legal writing at all. Creative essay (no legal sources/content or citations), personal/diversity statement, and bluebook test (correcting citations).

[Anonymous User]

Does any school other than Penn have a writing competition with a “creative” essay based on memes and tiktoks among other sources?

Is there actually no legal writing at all at Penn?

There’s no legal writing at all. Creative essay (no legal sources/content or citations), personal/diversity statement, and bluebook test (correcting citations).

To give you a sense of what the creative essay entails, last year the uncut gems TikTok with Julia Fox was one of the sources. We were encouraged to be funny. Not sure how that translates to skill as a Law Review member.

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

My dude really just said that a numbers oriented process put applicants from schools notorious for grade inflation, where admissions correlates aggressively with the best predictor of LSAT success (wealth), at a disadvantage.

UG prestige, especially at the high end, are more reflective of class/wealth than intelligence

Yeah Ivy League schools are grade inflated overall, but that doesn’t mean it’s not easier to get great grades at a worse school. Plenty of kids at say FSU are tanking their grades by not even showing up to class. It’s still easier to get an A there even if there’s fewer proportionally. Numbers oriented process favors the kid that actually shows up to class and puts in a respectable amount of effort at an FSU or ASU.

Of course there are exceptions, and some high school students go to a school like ASU mainly because of cost, but it’s not the majority of them

Weighing grade inflation against blanket claims about less competitive student bodies is absurd lol. Also, undergrad classes aren't curved, so not really evident that people failing to show up for class would necessarily help out someone who does show up.

I think you are right - the vast majority of high school students that go to ASU are not going solely because of cost. However, that group isn't really relevant when you are comparing the aptitude of state vs T20 students at a top law school.

The better question is whether students who did well enough at ASU and on the LSAT to get into a top law school went to ASU for cost related reasons. I think that is much more likely.

Idk, maybe I'm just an annoying person, but relying so heavily on whether someone went to an elite undergrad as a barometer for intelligence/aptitude ignores realities about class and wealth in UG admissions and is unnecessary given clear points of comparison (LSAT, law school GPA).

I went to a middle-tier Ivy (not Princeton or Cornell) for undergrad and plenty of my freshman year gen ed classes (calculus, chemistry, etc.) were curved. My chemistry class was curved to a B-. The bar is just lower at a school like ASU, and even if a class isn’t curved it goes to the point above about how many A grades given being a sign of grade inflation.

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

You mean Ivy grads are just qualitatively better but there are just too many of them to admit them all, compared to the 4.0-ers from state schools (all across the entire country) who are just admitted because law schools want to save face and look geographically diverse? Lol, okay, you tell yourself that.

(You get that when Ivy grads are overrepresented in the class as a whole, they will also be overrepresented in honors and awards, right? Especially when awards aren’t subject to blind judging?)

[Anonymous User]

Does any school other than Penn have a writing competition with a “creative” essay based on memes and tiktoks among other sources?

Is there actually no legal writing at all at Penn?

There’s no legal writing at all. Creative essay (no legal sources/content or citations), personal/diversity statement, and bluebook test (correcting citations).

To give you a sense of what the creative essay entails, last year the uncut gems TikTok with Julia Fox was one of the sources. We were encouraged to be funny. Not sure how that translates to skill as a Law Review member.

Wow, that’s such a joke. Starting to understand why many of the Penn people on this forum are so bitter and pissed off now.

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

My dude really just said that a numbers oriented process put applicants from schools notorious for grade inflation, where admissions correlates aggressively with the best predictor of LSAT success (wealth), at a disadvantage.

UG prestige, especially at the high end, are more reflective of class/wealth than intelligence

Yeah Ivy League schools are grade inflated overall, but that doesn’t mean it’s not easier to get great grades at a worse school. Plenty of kids at say FSU are tanking their grades by not even showing up to class. It’s still easier to get an A there even if there’s fewer proportionally. Numbers oriented process favors the kid that actually shows up to class and puts in a respectable amount of effort at an FSU or ASU.

Of course there are exceptions, and some high school students go to a school like ASU mainly because of cost, but it’s not the majority of them

Weighing grade inflation against blanket claims about less competitive student bodies is absurd lol. Also, undergrad classes aren't curved, so not really evident that people failing to show up for class would necessarily help out someone who does show up.

I think you are right - the vast majority of high school students that go to ASU are not going solely because of cost. However, that group isn't really relevant when you are comparing the aptitude of state vs T20 students at a top law school.

The better question is whether students who did well enough at ASU and on the LSAT to get into a top law school went to ASU for cost related reasons. I think that is much more likely.

Idk, maybe I'm just an annoying person, but relying so heavily on whether someone went to an elite undergrad as a barometer for intelligence/aptitude ignores realities about class and wealth in UG admissions and is unnecessary given clear points of comparison (LSAT, law school GPA).

I went to a middle-tier Ivy (not Princeton or Cornell) for undergrad and plenty of my freshman year gen ed classes (calculus, chemistry, etc.) were curved. My chemistry class was curved to a B-. The bar is just lower at a school like ASU, and even if a class isn’t curved it goes to the point above about how many A grades given being a sign of grade inflation.

Even if it is easier to get “great grades” at a state flagship, the people who get great grades at a state flagship AND end up at a T[fill in your preferred number here] could still be as qualified as those who went to Ivies.

Because consider this: take your naturally brilliant and dazzling Ivy League grad. Instead of sending them to their Ivy, plop them down at ASU or Ohio State or UT Austin. What gpa do they get? Maybe it’s a 4.0. Does that 4.0 somehow magically mean they’re stupider/less accomplished than they were for going to the Ivy?

The argument that you’re not really making (bc you’re making it about individual ability/merit somehow) that has maybe a little more logic is that because getting a 4.0 is easier at one of these schools, the ASU/OSU/UT grad necessarily got a worse education and therefore is somehow less well prepared for law school. But again, even if ASU hands out 4.0s like candy, that doesn’t tell you anything about the rigor or quality of the education received by *the specific ASU kid who ended up at Harvard,* because that kind of thing is incredibly individual, and depends as much on what that individual student seeks out and chooses to do as on what the school’s minimum requirements are (for instance, someone brought up the honors college at U of A. These kinds of programs are often intense). And it’s not like law school has any subject matter prerequisites like med school (one of my extremely smart law school classmates was a dance major in undergrad), so you can’t claim they’re somehow missing something you need for law school.

I used to teach at a state flagship and the top students were fucking brilliant, as good as any of the students that went to my fancy little Ivy undergrad. It’s not really particularly easy to get a 4.0 at a state flagship. It’s pretty hard to fail out and there are probably a lot of students in the mushy middle, and that’s where your people who tank their grades by not showing up to class fall. But people aren’t collecting 4.0s willy nilly *just* for showing up and putting in moderate effort, even though if you show up and put in moderate effort you certainly won’t fail. I went from there to teach an elite-ish liberal arts college with *much* stricter admissions standards, and the top students there (who went on to fancy grad schools all the time) weren’t any smarter than the top students at the state flagship; there were just far fewer of the completely hapless (whether due to ability, training, or life circumstances) that you saw at a school with more open admissions.

Also when I went to my PhD program out of my fancy UG, plenty of the students went to state schools for undergrad and wiped the floor with me on many levels. One of those students is now tenured at a R1 university and has won a Guggenheim.

So making assumptions about the people in your class at your elite law school based on where they went to school is dumb and just makes you look narrow-minded and provincial. I get it; before I went to my grad program I spent my entire life in a community where going to THE best school possible was paramount, and going to a state flagship was a sign of failure and mediocrity. My fancy undergrad only reinforced this assumption because the institution was so high on itself. So I get how someone grows up thinking this. But again, it just shows that you’ve never actually stepped outside of a very very narrow culture.

[Anonymous User]

Does any school other than Penn have a writing competition with a “creative” essay based on memes and tiktoks among other sources?

Is there actually no legal writing at all at Penn?

There’s no legal writing at all. Creative essay (no legal sources/content or citations), personal/diversity statement, and bluebook test (correcting citations).

To give you a sense of what the creative essay entails, last year the uncut gems TikTok with Julia Fox was one of the sources. We were encouraged to be funny. Not sure how that translates to skill as a Law Review member.

Wow, that’s such a joke. Starting to understand why many of the Penn people on this forum are so bitter and pissed off now.

Yeah, and last year the timed bluebook test banned online bluebook use but plenty of Law Review members would admit they used it regardless, and recommended we did the same, because the exam was remote. The exam tests things like citing the Federalist Papers that you’d never do during 1L, so you have to prepare for this test specifically. And this year, you could use online bluebook, but the test system malfunctioned so students got way more time than allotted and it threw the whole competition out of whack. The timed bluebook tests are immediately after finals too, as in finals end Friday and bluebook tests are following M/T/W. Just give us a comment/note assignment and ask us to bluebook it properly over a period of a week or so like so many other schools… would be so much simpler.

[Anonymous User]

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

My dude really just said that a numbers oriented process put applicants from schools notorious for grade inflation, where admissions correlates aggressively with the best predictor of LSAT success (wealth), at a disadvantage.

UG prestige, especially at the high end, are more reflective of class/wealth than intelligence

Yeah Ivy League schools are grade inflated overall, but that doesn’t mean it’s not easier to get great grades at a worse school. Plenty of kids at say FSU are tanking their grades by not even showing up to class. It’s still easier to get an A there even if there’s fewer proportionally. Numbers oriented process favors the kid that actually shows up to class and puts in a respectable amount of effort at an FSU or ASU.

Of course there are exceptions, and some high school students go to a school like ASU mainly because of cost, but it’s not the majority of them

Weighing grade inflation against blanket claims about less competitive student bodies is absurd lol. Also, undergrad classes aren't curved, so not really evident that people failing to show up for class would necessarily help out someone who does show up.

I think you are right - the vast majority of high school students that go to ASU are not going solely because of cost. However, that group isn't really relevant when you are comparing the aptitude of state vs T20 students at a top law school.

The better question is whether students who did well enough at ASU and on the LSAT to get into a top law school went to ASU for cost related reasons. I think that is much more likely.

Idk, maybe I'm just an annoying person, but relying so heavily on whether someone went to an elite undergrad as a barometer for intelligence/aptitude ignores realities about class and wealth in UG admissions and is unnecessary given clear points of comparison (LSAT, law school GPA).

I went to a middle-tier Ivy (not Princeton or Cornell) for undergrad and plenty of my freshman year gen ed classes (calculus, chemistry, etc.) were curved. My chemistry class was curved to a B-. The bar is just lower at a school like ASU, and even if a class isn’t curved it goes to the point above about how many A grades given being a sign of grade inflation.

Even if it is easier to get “great grades” at a state flagship, the people who get great grades at a state flagship AND end up at a T[fill in your preferred number here] could still be as qualified as those who went to Ivies.

Because consider this: take your naturally brilliant and dazzling Ivy League grad. Instead of sending them to their Ivy, plop them down at ASU or Ohio State or UT Austin. What gpa do they get? Maybe it’s a 4.0. Does that 4.0 somehow magically mean they’re stupider/less accomplished than they were for going to the Ivy?

The argument that you’re not really making (bc you’re making it about individual ability/merit somehow) that has maybe a little more logic is that because getting a 4.0 is easier at one of these schools, the ASU/OSU/UT grad necessarily got a worse education and therefore is somehow less well prepared for law school. But again, even if ASU hands out 4.0s like candy, that doesn’t tell you anything about the rigor or quality of the education received by *the specific ASU kid who ended up at Harvard,* because that kind of thing is incredibly individual, and depends as much on what that individual student seeks out and chooses to do as on what the school’s minimum requirements are (for instance, someone brought up the honors college at U of A. These kinds of programs are often intense). And it’s not like law school has any subject matter prerequisites like med school (one of my extremely smart law school classmates was a dance major in undergrad), so you can’t claim they’re somehow missing something you need for law school.

I used to teach at a state flagship and the top students were fucking brilliant, as good as any of the students that went to my fancy little Ivy undergrad. It’s not really particularly easy to get a 4.0 at a state flagship. It’s pretty hard to fail out and there are probably a lot of students in the mushy middle, and that’s where your people who tank their grades by not showing up to class fall. But people aren’t collecting 4.0s willy nilly *just* for showing up and putting in moderate effort, even though if you show up and put in moderate effort you certainly won’t fail. I went from there to teach an elite-ish liberal arts college with *much* stricter admissions standards, and the top students there (who went on to fancy grad schools all the time) weren’t any smarter than the top students at the state flagship; there were just far fewer of the completely hapless (whether due to ability, training, or life circumstances) that you saw at a school with more open admissions.

Also when I went to my PhD program out of my fancy UG, plenty of the students went to state schools for undergrad and wiped the floor with me on many levels. One of those students is now tenured at a R1 university and has won a Guggenheim.

So making assumptions about the people in your class at your elite law school based on where they went to school is dumb and just makes you look narrow-minded and provincial. I get it; before I went to my grad program I spent my entire life in a community where going to THE best school possible was paramount, and going to a state flagship was a sign of failure and mediocrity. My fancy undergrad only reinforced this assumption because the institution was so high on itself. So I get how someone grows up thinking this. But again, it just shows that you’ve never actually stepped outside of a very very narrow culture.

One of the previous posters. I actually didn’t grow up in a community like you did. No one is saying that any individual student is less stellar, just that on average it might make sense for it to work out such that more T20 grads make Law Review, honors, et cetera. Willy nilly 4.0 is a straw man argument; it can be achieved with less effort than it’d take at Cornell and still be an impressive accomplishment!

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

You mean Ivy grads are just qualitatively better but there are just too many of them to admit them all, compared to the 4.0-ers from state schools (all across the entire country) who are just admitted because law schools want to save face and look geographically diverse? Lol, okay, you tell yourself that.

(You get that when Ivy grads are overrepresented in the class as a whole, they will also be overrepresented in honors and awards, right? Especially when awards aren’t subject to blind judging?)

Another argument no one made. They’re admitted because it’s a numbers game for US News rankings.

[Anonymous User]

One of the previous posters. I actually didn’t grow up in a community like you did. No one is saying that any individual student is less stellar, just that on average it might make sense for it to work out such that more T20 grads make Law Review, honors, et cetera. Willy nilly 4.0 is a straw man argument; it can be achieved with less effort than it’d take at Cornell and still be an impressive accomplishment!

That’s fair enough, didn’t mean to generalize about all posters (hard to tell who goes with what comment). But some people are in fact saying that “Ivy grads just are better,” which sounds a lot like saying any individual student is less stellar, and is the kind of attitude that makes me crazy and inspires me to rant at length as above (though I should have learned by now that there are better uses of time!).

Anyway, I think it’s hard to talk about overrepresentation etc without a lot more data about who’s admitted, who’s getting awards etc, and their goals (for instance it seems to me that someone interested in biglaw transactional work has very little incentive to take on the extra work required for awards etc. once they make it through OCI).

[Anonymous User]

Which secondary journal is best at Penn?

JCL is the highest ranked by a significant margin, but that only matters if you’re on a journal board and doing articles selection and the like. JBL is also pretty highly ranked. Those two are also generally well run. They’re also slightly more work. Do ALR, JIL, or JLPA if you want to be a journal EIC because they’re small. JLASC, JLI, and Reg Review offer non traditional experiences. Reg Review editor work seems quite tedious, and you can also just take the seminar to write for it and get published.

[Anonymous User]

Another argument no one made. They’re admitted because it’s a numbers game for US News rankings.

And you really think that there’s a significant number of people who have a 4.0 from ASU who are getting into T14 schools without having competitive LSAT scores? If it’s so easy to get a 4.0, why aren’t all the stupid people who undeservedly get them and benefit from ASU’s inability actually to evaluate student work eliminating themselves by being too stupid to succeed on the LSAT?

[Anonymous User]

Another argument no one made. They’re admitted because it’s a numbers game for US News rankings.

And you really think that there’s a significant number of people who have a 4.0 from ASU who are getting into T14 schools without having competitive LSAT scores? If it’s so easy to get a 4.0, why aren’t all the stupid people who undeservedly get them and benefit from ASU’s inability actually to evaluate student work eliminating themselves by being too stupid to succeed on the LSAT?

Yeah the kids that end up at tippy top law schools mostly do well on the LSAT but the LSAT is extremely learnable and there’s plenty of students at better colleges who will kill the LSAT with minimal effort but got 3.6s at Cornell and so won’t get into HLS

[Anonymous User]

Another argument no one made. They’re admitted because it’s a numbers game for US News rankings.

And you really think that there’s a significant number of people who have a 4.0 from ASU who are getting into T14 schools without having competitive LSAT scores? If it’s so easy to get a 4.0, why aren’t all the stupid people who undeservedly get them and benefit from ASU’s inability actually to evaluate student work eliminating themselves by being too stupid to succeed on the LSAT?

Yeah the kids that end up at tippy top law schools mostly do well on the LSAT but the LSAT is extremely learnable and there’s plenty of students at better colleges who will kill the LSAT with minimal effort but got 3.6s at Cornell and so won’t get into HLS

[citation needed]

Seriously though, can you provide any statistics that back this up besides your sense of how the universe works?

[Anonymous User]

Another argument no one made. They’re admitted because it’s a numbers game for US News rankings.

And you really think that there’s a significant number of people who have a 4.0 from ASU who are getting into T14 schools without having competitive LSAT scores? If it’s so easy to get a 4.0, why aren’t all the stupid people who undeservedly get them and benefit from ASU’s inability actually to evaluate student work eliminating themselves by being too stupid to succeed on the LSAT?

Yeah the kids that end up at tippy top law schools mostly do well on the LSAT but the LSAT is extremely learnable and there’s plenty of students at better colleges who will kill the LSAT with minimal effort but got 3.6s at Cornell and so won’t get into HLS

[citation needed]

Seriously though, can you provide any statistics that back this up besides your sense of how the universe works?

No one has statistics on this. It’s my personal observation as someone who knew many people in the position of 173/3.6 Cornell to lower T14 and now knows T14 classmates who joke about how easy it was to get perfect grades at their state school (especially during covid!) because their competition didn’t take school seriously

[Anonymous User]

Which secondary journal is best at Penn?

JCL is the highest ranked by a significant margin, but that only matters if you’re on a journal board and doing articles selection and the like. JBL is also pretty highly ranked. Those two are also generally well run. They’re also slightly more work. Do ALR, JIL, or JLPA if you want to be a journal EIC because they’re small. JLASC, JLI, and Reg Review offer non traditional experiences. Reg Review editor work seems quite tedious, and you can also just take the seminar to write for it and get published.

Do not do reg review and do not take that seminar. Tons of work for no bump. JCL is basically law review amount of work so idk if it’s worth it either.

[Anonymous User]

Which secondary journal is best at Penn?

JCL is the highest ranked by a significant margin, but that only matters if you’re on a journal board and doing articles selection and the like. JBL is also pretty highly ranked. Those two are also generally well run. They’re also slightly more work. Do ALR, JIL, or JLPA if you want to be a journal EIC because they’re small. JLASC, JLI, and Reg Review offer non traditional experiences. Reg Review editor work seems quite tedious, and you can also just take the seminar to write for it and get published.

Do not do reg review and do not take that seminar. Tons of work for no bump. JCL is basically law review amount of work so idk if it’s worth it either.

JCL has almost the same number of issues as law review but the edits take way less time (partially because you’re mostly citing SCOTUS cases, partially because JCL board seems to pick up more of the editing work and you can slack a bit on the edits). And JCL doesn’t require a comment which is a huge step down in work from law review. I was on JCL as a 2L. Seemed way more annoying to be on JIL and searching for random international sources. Agree on reg review. Whatever you do, please don’t sign up for 2-3 journals. It’s bonkers to me that Penn’s culture normalizes this. Maybe if you’re dead set on reg review you want to do a bluebooking journal too. But why is anyone on multiple bluebooking journals?!

[Anonymous User]

Which secondary journal is best at Penn?

JCL is the highest ranked by a significant margin, but that only matters if you’re on a journal board and doing articles selection and the like. JBL is also pretty highly ranked. Those two are also generally well run. They’re also slightly more work. Do ALR, JIL, or JLPA if you want to be a journal EIC because they’re small. JLASC, JLI, and Reg Review offer non traditional experiences. Reg Review editor work seems quite tedious, and you can also just take the seminar to write for it and get published.

Do not do reg review and do not take that seminar. Tons of work for no bump. JCL is basically law review amount of work so idk if it’s worth it either.

JCL seems more organized than some other journals which helps… you know when the next edits are coming. Reg review was a huge huge mistake for me