Got the admissions packet in the mail a few days ago. Scholarship was $20,000 per year granted I keep a minimum 2.5 GPA and stay in good academic standing. Very happy to have UCI giving this info out so soon after admittance.
Lebrarian_Booker wrote:I'm considering shooting an app at UCI, but am somewhat concerned about how new and not yet well established it is. Bar passage also dropped by 11 percentage points from 2012 to 2013. What are some of the reasons for why you guys are considering UCI, and that you'd recommend one to consider?
Though UCLA and USC have better biglaw numbers than UCI, UCI seems to do slightly better than those schools when it comes to straight up bar-passage-required jobs (
http://www.lstscorereports.com/?school= ... show=chars). Those are pretty good numbers for such a new school, as it is already dominating UC Davis, and most other California law schools. UCI's federal clerkship rate currently dwarfs UCLA's and USC's, though you never know how long that will last based off of UCI being such a new school.
As a regional school, UCI is currently doing far better than almost all state flagship schools. According to LST, UCI seems to be doing as well as UCLA and USC for jobs:
http://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=caCurrently, I'd call it a strong regional school for the Southern California market.
That said, UCI is still incredibly new and those who are seriously considering it (among other schools with similar GPA and LSAT medians) should note that things could change for the worse very quickly if they did. UCI could lose its steam from dropping medians, as it can quite possibly fall into the ranks of the T40 instead of the school's desired T20 status. UCI is a definite risk and my considering on attendance hinges on whether I think it can stabilize as a decent law school that trails slightly behind UCLA+USC, or if it begins its quick descent as another UC Davis, or worse.
All the while you should consider the money aspect as well, a student who would end up paying sticker for UCLA could go to UCI with a decent scholarship. With that in mind, UCI doesn't seem like a bad choice, its employment numbers are good and if you're a candidate for UCLA or USC you could probably go to UCI cheaper. Though UCI is still so new and there are many unknowns as to how it will stabilize. There's still a lot to consider for UCI, both good and bad, but this is my simple version of how I see UCI currently.