Golden Gate University: Underrated or TTTToilet? Forum

[Taffybear2]

Yes I would definitely get out of the Bay. Riding on the same the bus line with many Hastings students and talking to other top bay area jobless 3ls gives me the idea that there is fairly little hope for students at usf/santa clara and especially GGU. I'm sure there are some bright GGU students but the ones that I have met seemed to have no clue what they have gotten themselves into especially paying sticker at this school in such an over-saturated legal market. It is very sad.

[Capitol hillbilly]

Yes I would definitely get out of the Bay. Riding on the same the bus line with many Hastings students and talking to other top bay area jobless 3ls gives me the idea that there is fairly little hope for students at usf/santa clara and especially GGU. I'm sure there are some bright GGU students but the ones that I have met seemed to have no clue what they have gotten themselves into especially paying sticker at this school in such an over-saturated legal market. It is very sad.

Agreed.

[Borhas]

Holy crap. How can anyone attend USF/SCU after seeing those employment statistics.

if it's close to home and u don't have better alternatives, i'd though USF/SCU would at least be on par with or beat out mcgeorge though, weird

USF's location in SF is a huge problem for them

The CA legal market in general sucks... (and yet those stupid fucking UC Regents created UCI Law... but I digress)
As for McGeorge - USF:

First, everyone and their gay brother wants to work in SF... so you get the T-14 crowd and the UCLA/USC students who didn't get into Berkeley in the fray as well.

Second, there are so many god damn law schools near the bay area... Hastings is a couple miles away, Boalt is only 12 miles away, Stanford is just down the peninsula, and UC Davis while in the Central Valley is certainly within range.. not to mention GGU and SF Law school (unaccredited).

McGeorge only has to deal w/ UC Davis, and even then it's for Sacramento, which is rarely anyone's first or second choice (in CA it's almost universally Bay Area or SoCal as #1 and then the other as #2)

====

At this point I'm setting my sights on SoCal, the Bay Area is fucking brutal, it's still sort of reeling from the 2007 crash but it will probably recover soon. However, there are still way too many law schools in the Bay Area compared to SoCal, so I think SoCal will still have the rosier employment outlook.
It's clear when you compare the two regions:

SoCal (LA, SD, Long Beach)
Population: 22 million
Total Entering Class Size of T14+T1+T2: 1500 full time students (1560 if you count UCI)
T14: N/A
T1: USC, UCLA
T2: USD, Loyola, Pepperdine



Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland, Fremont, Santa Rosa, Concord, Fairfield, Berkeley, Napa, San Rafael, Hayward)
Population: 7.5 million (I'm not including Central Valley/ Sacramento)
Total Entering Class Size of T14+T1+T2: 1560
T14: SLS, UCB
T1: UCH, UCD
T2: SCU, USF




note: SoCal does have a ton of T3 schools, but personally, I'd rather compete against 1500 students T1/T2 students + a multitude of T3 and unaccredited school graduates in a market w/ three times the population....

[bk1]

note: SoCal does have a ton of T3 schools, but personally, I'd rather compete against 1500 students T1/T2 students + a multitude of T3 and unaccredited school graduates in a market w/ three times the population....

This point is easily driven home by comparing the amount of kids who are working part time out of USF and SCU versus their SoCal counterpart, USD. The Bay Area is fucked and yet I love SF so much.

[Borhas]

note: SoCal does have a ton of T3 schools, but personally, I'd rather compete against 1500 students T1/T2 students + a multitude of T3 and unaccredited school graduates in a market w/ three times the population....

This point is easily driven home by comparing the amount of kids who are working part time out of USF and SCU versus their SoCal counterpart, USD. The Bay Area is fucked and yet I love SF so much.

Word, brother.

Fuck it, I'm gonna go for San Diego (or LA... ugh )... if by some chance I can get work in Alameda, or SF (or maybe even the Peninsula, Santa Clara, or Solano) then that would be awesome too. I just have to make sure to intern in the Bay Area for at least a semester, just so I can have one networking nexus up here.

The shit of it all is, that even if as individuals we are lucky/competitive enough to land the work we want in SFBA it would probably be the slightly less "prestigious" than what we could get in SoCal... cause I figure the top UCB and SLS students would get the most sought after jobs in SFBA regardless of how awesome I am as individual. I mean, I'm not much for prestige whoring and all that, but I'd rather compete against UCLA and USC students than SLS and UCB students for the best jobs in a region.

Course, I doubt many SLS students want to do indigent criminal defense...

[Mick Haller]

Borhas, I like the way you think. I've had similar ideas as well. But how certain are we that Loyola, Southwestern, etc. alums will hire a Hastings grad? In a perfect world, we'd like to think that the "best" candidate gets the job. But my experience in dealing with attorneys from lower ranked schools is that sometimes they like to stick it to students at higher ranked schools. "Revenge", or something.

[Borhas]

Borhas, I like the way you think. I've had similar ideas as well. But how certain are we that Loyola, Southwestern, etc. alums will hire a Hastings grad? In a perfect world, we'd like to think that the "best" candidate gets the job. But my experience in dealing with attorneys from lower ranked schools is that sometimes they like to stick it to students at higher ranked schools. "Revenge", or something.

The plus side is that there are already a lot of Hastings grads in SoCal (same w/ other Bay Area schools)... but instead of trying to think about what people would do, I'd just figure out what they have already done. One method I've had in figuring out which places are actually likely to hire UCH students was to ask the career office for a list of alumni in CA who work as public defenders (replace PD w/ appropriate goal for yourself). For example, last year 2 UCH grads got jobs at San Diego PD, and one to each Solano, Contra Costa, and Alameda. The sample size is probably too small to consider likelihood, but at least it shows where people get hired... And looking back over time you can see where people end up... The problem w/ that is that the longer you look back it's hard to tell how the person ended up working there. For example, several UCH students end up working as Fed Defenders, but they all graduated in the 90's... using the data I have, I can't tell if they were hired at graduation or if they switched jobs after several years into their careers. But for recent graduating classes that's not much of a problem.

[Mick Haller]

I think Fed Defenders only hire people who have held federal clerkships for a couple of years. At least that is the current hiring practice.

[Capitol hillbilly]

Got my Golden Gate acceptance letter, wow! What a rush. And a $48k scholarship spread out over three years, must maintain 3.00 to stay eligible. MEH.

[Mick Haller]

Got my Golden Gate acceptance letter, wow! What a rush. And a $48k scholarship spread out over three years, must maintain 3.00 to stay eligible. MEH.

GPA req. is pretty reasonable, but not nearly enough $$ to make GGU worthwhile. I would not attend there on less than 80k scholarship.

[Capitol hillbilly]

Got my Golden Gate acceptance letter, wow! What a rush. And a $48k scholarship spread out over three years, must maintain 3.00 to stay eligible. MEH.

GPA req. is pretty reasonable, but not nearly enough $$ to make GGU worthwhile. I would not attend there on less than 80k scholarship.

Totes. It's unbelievable to me that GGU costs thousands more per year than Lewis and Clark. Even though I am not getting any money from L&C, it's not a hard decision.
Golden Gate's cheesy stapled-together "information" packet is entitled "GATEWAY TO SUCCESS". Lol.

Portlandia here I come.

[bahari2010]

As a GGU alum, the 3.00 req is not super easy to maintain especially for first year due to the mandatory curve. 3.00 translates to the top 1/3 of the class, and you've got 200-odd other people trying to get to the same spot. Admittedly, it's a little easier since the re-introduction of "+" grades in 2009.

[bahari2010]

[/quote]

Read the link lol. Why do you think people are not reporting salary information? I may be an asshole, but you're an ignorant buffoon.[/quote]

Um..Actually at least part of the reason many students don't report salary, is that writing your law school's career office months after graduation to tell them about your new job is the last thing on your mind. I'm an alum, and none of my friends reported their jobs to career services...

[bk1]

Um..Actually at least part of the reason many students don't report salary, is that writing your law school's career office months after graduation to tell them about your new job is the last thing on your mind. I'm an alum, and none of my friends reported their jobs to career services...

If this were the reason then you would see similar rates of nonreporting across all law schools. But that isn't the case.

[red_alertz]

Um..Actually at least part of the reason many students don't report salary, is that writing your law school's career office months after graduation to tell them about your new job is the last thing on your mind. I'm an alum, and none of my friends reported their jobs to career services...

If this were the reason then you would see similar rates of nonreporting across all law schools. But that isn't the case.

he said part of the reason, and i think it's plausible that even by chance, grads from some schools would write more than grads from some other schools

[bk1]

he said part of the reason, and i think it's plausible that even by chance, grads from some schools would write more than grads from some other schools

Fair enough that it is part of the reason, but that reason exists at all schools. There needs to be another reason that accounts for disparity that exists between GGU and better schools.

Chance could be that reason, however GGU consistently underreport year after year and it is highly unlikely that chance is a factor every single year. The more likely scenario, as has been mentioned, is that they are unemployed or underemployed.

[bahari2010]

Most people that went there felt that the school gave them a solid and practical education. It is less theoretical than a school like Hastings and GGU does have a lot of good clinics. One word of advice that I heard was to make sure you get into their Honors Lawyering program if you do attend.

Just understand that the rankings do matter in that the better ranked schools give you a little more flexibility in the market.

That being said avoid anything that is not ABA approved (JFK, Thomas Jefferson, Empire Law).

I am going to take one close to 100k worth of debt for law school(fortunately no undergrad loans). If you have to take on the debt attend a school that you are proud of.

I'm proud to say that I went to GGU and I loved everything about it; and yes, I do have a legal job (and I was not even remotely close to being a top student.) The rankings are totally meaningless after you get your first job. I only have about 25k in debt, but I would not hesitate to try to get students to come to GGU.

As for CA-accredited schools, there are, at least in Sonoma County tons of employed Empire grads. You can also find in SF many SFLS and (the former) New College grads working in family law and bankruptcy who graduated back when those school's had higher bar passage rates. The portability of an ABA-accredited degree is an asset to me, but honestly if you don't intend to leave California and don't have big law dreams then 6k per year compared to nearly 40k (for UC Davis or GGU) could seem attractive. BTW TJSL is an ABA school.

[SchopenhauerFTW]

TTTT

I received my acceptance letter/package not too long ago. I've been rejected from ad waitlisted at every other school I applied to. I was considering attending for a year and then transferring, but I think I would rather repeat undergrad than ever go to GGU.

Goddammit. Now Golden Gate University and the documentary The Bridge are hopelessly entangled in my mind.

[Borhas]

TTTT

I received my acceptance letter/package not too long ago. I've been rejected from ad waitlisted at every other school I applied to. I was considering attending for a year and then transferring, but I think I would rather repeat undergrad than ever go to GGU.

Goddammit. Now Golden Gate University and the documentary The Bridge are hopelessly entangled in my mind.

Disappointed to hear that, but good call on not going to GGU to transfer.

Retake blah blah blah

[SchopenhauerFTW]

TTTT

I received my acceptance letter/package not too long ago. I've been rejected from ad waitlisted at every other school I applied to. I was considering attending for a year and then transferring, but I think I would rather repeat undergrad than ever go to GGU.

Goddammit. Now Golden Gate University and the documentary The Bridge are hopelessly entangled in my mind.

Disappointed to hear that, but good call on not going to GGU to transfer.

Retake blah blah blah

[ilovesf]

hottest mayor ever

[SchopenhauerFTW]

Hey Borhas - just wondering if there are any transfers from GGU at UCH, and if so, did they M̵͡A̶Ķ̴̀E͘ ͝A D͡͏EA̕L͢ ͠W͠I̴̕͟T͢͡H ̧ŢH́E͟ ̡D̕͟͠E͟͟V̴I͠L?

[Borhas]

Hey Borhas - just wondering if there are any transfers from GGU at UCH, and if so, did they M̵͡A̶Ķ̴̀E͘ ͝A D͡͏EA̕L͢ ͠W͠I̴̕͟T͢͡H ̧ŢH́E͟ ̡D̕͟͠E͟͟V̴I͠L?

hey that's neat....


anyway, I don't personally know any from GGU, but knew one from USF. It does seem like Hastings takes a lot of transfers though... just my general impression

[SchopenhauerFTW]

Hey Borhas - just wondering if there are any transfers from GGU at UCH, and if so, did they M̵͡A̶Ķ̴̀E͘ ͝A D͡͏EA̕L͢ ͠W͠I̴̕͟T͢͡H ̧ŢH́E͟ ̡D̕͟͠E͟͟V̴I͠L?

hey that's neat....


anyway, I don't personally know any from GGU, but knew one from USF. It does seem like Hastings takes a lot of transfers though... just my general impression

Interesting...

... though getting straight-A's at GGU may be difficult, since the place might be bad for my soul.

[JusticeHarlan]

Hey Borhas - just wondering if there are any transfers from GGU at UCH, and if so, did they M̵͡A̶Ķ̴̀E͘ ͝A D͡͏EA̕L͢ ͠W͠I̴̕͟T͢͡H ̧ŢH́E͟ ̡D̕͟͠E͟͟V̴I͠L?

hey that's neat....


anyway, I don't personally know any from GGU, but knew one from USF. It does seem like Hastings takes a lot of transfers though... just my general impression

Interesting...

... though getting straight-A's at GGU may be difficult, since the place might be bad for my soul.

Took 24, whatever year this report (LinkRemoved) is from.