thesealocust wrote:armedwithamind wrote:5ky wrote:armedwithamind wrote:2Ls and 3Ls how has UVA placed in NYC comparatively to its peers (M/P)
Worse than Penn and better than Mich? That's my guess, but nobody is going to have a clear answer for you on that. I'm 100% sure it has to be worse than Penn, though.
Do you have any anecdotes of people getting NYC median or below?
Lots, especially right around median. But some struck out, and below median probably more struck out in NYC than landed something.
It's hard to look at 'placement' in a vacuum, because of self selection - NYC is probably the primary goal for many at Penn, while it's more frequently DC for people at UVA. The data I've seen suggests Penn still has a slight advantage (i.e. with marginally worse grades you can get the same level of firms) but it's a very narrow gap. UVA places students at the best firms in NYC, and large numbers of them (I think most years something like 1/3 of our graduating class takes the NY bar exam).
I wouldn't choose Penn over UVA if the only reason was a perceived placement advantage in NYC, though I'd have to think long and hard about Columbia/NYU vs. UVA if I knew I wanted to gun for biglaw in NYC.
I somewhat disagree with this. I went through OGI this year, and I found (not personally, but from talking with friends) that NYC was much more difficult to land than is perceived in this thread. I know very few people who landed NYC at median (but lots of people with non-NYC biglaw jobs at median). Maybe it's because of people self-selecting DC, but I found firms like Fried Frank/Milbank/Schultze to be really difficult to land at or around median whereas, it's my understanding that at NYC, Columbia and Penn those firms will extend callbacks to students at or even slightly below median. If you're above median (even slightly), you should have basically no problem landing
some NYC big firm from UVA though.
I really don't understand why people don't get this because it was all too blatant to me, but where UVA really excels is placing in secondary markets. You can seriously land the best/biggest firm SA even at below median if you are from a city like Charlotte/St. Louis/Tampa/Dallas/Cleveland etc. This is largely because UVA law grads are 1) spread throughout the country (probably more so than any other T14) and 2) have a tremendous amount of loyalty to UVA and desperately want to recruit more UVA ppl to their city. I really don't know any other school where the alums love the school so much. I've talked with people from Harvard and Yale and it seems to be the norm to just trash talk the school/experience. I've even had UVA professors that went to those schools trash the school in class. I have never even once personally heard a UVA alum talk badly about the school. In fact, it's almost always the opposite, where they can't quit talking/reminiscing about their time here.
To make a long story short: I think it's pretty clear that, statistically, you have an overall better chance of landing biglaw from Penn out of the MVP schools. In the top 1/3 though, your chances are probably the same from all of them. I have to imagine that where Penn really beats us is placing their median students in NYC biglaw. I think UVA is better at placing students in secondary markets though, and if you're from a secondary market, your chances of getting biglaw are VERY good if you're in the median range (3.35 - 3.25). There are also a few firms that tend to really like people from UVA: Hogan Lovells, Jones Day, Alston and Bird, just to name a few off the top of my head.