USNEWS Employment Ranking Data = Bullshit Forum

[Samara]

In the absence of evidence, HYS are given the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that will change in years to come.

But this is evidence. They are getting paid by their school to do unpaid internships. That's TTT as fuck.

Treating all school-funded positions interchangeably without bothering to look at outcomes is about as stupid as taking a TTT 96% employment claim at face value. Numbers are just a tool, not the whole picture.

That said, if you think HYS are TTT toilets, I suggest that you not attend.

lol, you and ghost keep claiming that the fellowships are different for HYS based on nothing but DAT PREFTIGE. Apparently, HYS kids never have difficulty getting biglaw jobs but CCN kids were hugely affected by the crash and their fellowships are all crap.

[09042014]

In the absence of evidence, HYS are given the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that will change in years to come.

But this is evidence. They are getting paid by their school to do unpaid internships. That's TTT as fuck.

Treating all school-funded positions interchangeably without bothering to look at outcomes is about as stupid as taking a TTT 96% employment claim at face value. Numbers are just a tool, not the whole picture.

That said, if you think HYS are TTT toilets, I suggest that you not attend.

Treating them as trash at uva but gold at Yale is silly.

It also throws a wrench in the stupid 0Ls saying hys its equal to an auto job.

[LRGhost]

In the absence of evidence, HYS are given the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that will change in years to come.

But this is evidence. They are getting paid by their school to do unpaid internships. That's TTT as fuck.

Treating all school-funded positions interchangeably without bothering to look at outcomes is about as stupid as taking a TTT 96% employment claim at face value. Numbers are just a tool, not the whole picture.

That said, if you think HYS are TTT toilets, I suggest that you not attend.

Treating them as trash at uva but gold at Yale is silly.

It also throws a wrench in the stupid 0Ls saying hys its equal to an auto job.

Think for a minute if there is a substantial difference in the jobs from YHS and other schools.

PS: There is.

[star fox]

Need data on what happens to grads after their yearlong school-funded job ends. If the Yalies are getting big law jobs while the UVA ones are doing doc review we can say the Yale "prestigious fellowships" aren't too bad. Probably not the case though.

[LRGhost]

Need data on what happens to grads after their yearlong school-funded job ends. If the Yalies are getting big law jobs while the UVA ones are doing doc review we can say the Yale "prestigious fellowships" aren't too bad. Probably not the case though.

They want something besides BigLaw. If they wanted BigLaw, they'd have taken it instead.

[Samara]

Need data on what happens to grads after their yearlong school-funded job ends. If the Yalies are getting big law jobs while the UVA ones are doing doc review we can say the Yale "prestigious fellowships" aren't too bad. Probably not the case though.

Even if that is the case, the point remains that the fellowships were created to game employment numbers after the crash. It might have the great secondary effect of providing experience that can lead to a job, but clearly some people were not getting paid employment after law school or the increased fellowships wouldn't be there.

[star fox]

Need data on what happens to grads after their yearlong school-funded job ends. If the Yalies are getting big law jobs while the UVA ones are doing doc review we can say the Yale "prestigious fellowships" aren't too bad. Probably not the case though.

They want something besides BigLaw. If they wanted BigLaw, they'd have taken it instead.

Yeah, biglaw wasn't the best word choice. I guess what I meant by it is "desirable post-grad employment outcome".

[Samara]

Need data on what happens to grads after their yearlong school-funded job ends. If the Yalies are getting big law jobs while the UVA ones are doing doc review we can say the Yale "prestigious fellowships" aren't too bad. Probably not the case though.

They want something besides BigLaw. If they wanted BigLaw, they'd have taken it instead.

Is that why only four of the ten recipients that Elston looked up are still at their PI jobs and three are at biglaw?

[pedestrian]

In the absence of evidence, HYS are given the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that will change in years to come.

But this is evidence. They are getting paid by their school to do unpaid internships. That's TTT as fuck.

Treating all school-funded positions interchangeably without bothering to look at outcomes is about as stupid as taking a TTT 96% employment claim at face value. Numbers are just a tool, not the whole picture.

That said, if you think HYS are TTT toilets, I suggest that you not attend.

lol, you and ghost keep claiming that the fellowships are different for HYS based on nothing but DAT PREFTIGE. Apparently, HYS kids never have difficulty getting biglaw jobs but CCN kids were hugely affected by the crash and their fellowships are all crap.

I never said anything about CCN fellowship. For all I know, they are equally good opportunities for students who want to go into PI from those schools. I don't even know for a fact that any students at any school are being paid minimum wage to do temp admin work in order to game the rankings. As far as I know, that is just a TLS urban legend (although I have no reason to doubt it).

I DO feel confidant that the PI fellowships at Yale are not the equivalent of a minimum wage temp admin job. I know this from conversations with current and former students, and from looking up the names and outcomes of students who got these fellowships. I know that they are useful given the state of the PI economy, which I have some familiarity with due to my work at a consulting firm that advises nonprofits, philanthropies, and government organizations.

To the extent that fellowships from other schools fulfill a similar role and provide similar outcomes, I'm sure that they are great opportunities. Some of them at some schools may not be, but I don't have any knowledge about that.

[LRGhost]

Need data on what happens to grads after their yearlong school-funded job ends. If the Yalies are getting big law jobs while the UVA ones are doing doc review we can say the Yale "prestigious fellowships" aren't too bad. Probably not the case though.

They want something besides BigLaw. If they wanted BigLaw, they'd have taken it instead.

Is that why only four of the ten recipients that Elston looked up are still at their PI jobs and three are at biglaw?

It's a plurality, but they could very well have decided to go to BigLaw after. IIRC, some were clerks or whatever? That tends to be something people do before BigLaw. Maybe the people weren't satisfied making whatever money they made at their fellowship. But almost everyone at YLS who wants BigLaw can get it. Less at HLS but still almost all of them.

[Skye]

I guess the stat that confounds me regards the previous 3-way tie for #7.

UVA has an under employment of 3.2% and a 17% SFJ (20.2% total).
Berkeley has an under employment score of 12.3% with a SFJ 4.5% (16.8% total). Yet Berkeley is bounced from #7.

Penn has an under employment of 8% and a 4% (12% total). Yet Penn shares #7 with UVA.

How does ANY of this make sense?

Some creditable publication needs to step up and challenge USNWR.

[09042014]

But this is evidence. They are getting paid by their school to do unpaid internships. That's TTT as fuck.

Shut the fuck up jesus christ

Would you stop being a huge cunt because I insulted your dream school?

No dude, you're just a fucking idiot. All you've done is scream "LOL UNPAID INTERNSHIPS HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT A SHITHOLE" even though on the same page, someone offers really good insight into the program at one of the schools. You're just a fucking tool and a shitty poster and you're not nearly as funny, edgy, or original as you think you are.

Listen you stupid 0L bitch, you don't know anything. I'm not trying to be edgy ITT.

The fellowships from '10 don't show great outcomes, and it's likely some of them were just differed associates who got the fellowship to cover a gap year. Firm's aren't doing that anymore but some* were doing it in '10. Didn't consider that? Because you are a know it all 0L cunt.

*especially the smallish big law firms those people ended up at.

You post stupid shit like this:

Think for a minute if there is a substantial difference in the jobs from YHS and other schools.

PS: There is.

No shit there is a placement difference, but that doesn't mean their jobs are substantially different. You'd know this if you had any real knowledge of legal employment.

The fact that these people couldn't get fulltime paying jobs says something. Why can't you figure that out?

Why don't you shut up, and you can stick the CLASS OF 2016 threads where you fucking belong.

[BalanceCare]

Need data on what happens to grads after their yearlong school-funded job ends. If the Yalies are getting big law jobs while the UVA ones are doing doc review we can say the Yale "prestigious fellowships" aren't too bad. Probably not the case though.

PI-focused students get excited about attending one of those schools because the fellowships exist. Programs like the Public Interest Venture Fund or the Stanford fellowships I've been hearing about are not "backup plans" for people who fail to get big-law. They're part of the plan.

I can't say whether there are BS stats-fluffing jobs at HYS in addition to the PI work that people actually want. But it seems like a mistake to conceptually equate the two situations.

[Stinson]

Echoing the last post:

First, the fellowships are part of the plan for a lot of people. I know many such people at HLS, whose plans range from very-well thought out to fantastical. Like an unpaid internship in fashion or politics, full-time living wage employment isn't necessarily the ground floor in legal PI, and many students know that.

Second, I don't have any firsthand knowledge of what 17% or 18% of UVA's grads are doing, so I'm not going to comment on the nature of the work in their school funded employment, nor make any comparison to it. People can think what they like of UVA, and I have no dog in the fight about whether what Yale and UVA are doing is similar.

Third, I don't think it correct to think of the fellowships offered at Harvard and Yale as numbers gaming tricks or "TTT as fuck." Some of them - take for example the Skirnick, Beagle, or Kaufman fellowships at HLS - predate the crash, so I would count those out immediately. Many of those coming since the crash, at least at HLS, are functionally similar to Skadden or EJW fellowships - in other words, you line up a position at a nonprofit and the fellowship pays for one or two years - which are highly sought after, although admittedly the school fellowships don't have the same name cache. (Though they do, of course, have the considerable institutional support of Harvard or Yale.)

It is true that the newness of much of the fellowship support leaves us without a clear picture of what happens when these fellowships end. It is no surprise that some of the recipients are now at firms, given the state of public hiring, though it is also true that there are worse things than being at a firm with a few years PI experience. While I agree with Desert Fox that automatic deference to HYS and automatic suspicion of UVA is unwarranted in any economy and certainly in this one, I think it's possible to draw a valid inference about the perceived value of the HLS or YLS fellowships based on the fact that, unlike at UVA, all of the people getting them probably either turned down or decided not to pursue big law to take them. (In my personal experience, these are people who elected not to participate in EIP, though some line up a 2L SA and split the summer with a PI org.) Anyone at Yale and the vast majority of people at Harvard can have big law if they want it and are willing to make a modicum of effort to bid intelligently. (Not to say there are no shutouts at HLS; with 600 students there are going to be a few.) The people in school funded positions are not (or mostly not) OCI strikeouts seeking a school bailout. They are, however, trying to break into a segment of the profession that may not be practical for many of them right now.

Now I'll grant that's just the "perceived value." Maybe the people taking the fellowships are wrong in their perceptions, and they would almost certainly prefer to have a full time, real offer from a PI organization. Even sitting from the extremely privileged vantage of a T3 school, such offers are very rare. That is not a reality of HLS or YLS being unable to obtain them; it is a reality of public hiring in the age of austerity and that there are vanishingly few to obtain by anyone.

Lastly, the overall thrust of the thread - that USNews employment data is bullshit - is completely right. We know far too little about actual outcomes and even the nature of the employment itself to lump everything into some single number at the end of a column. But that's USNews for you.

[Elston Gunn]

If you guys wanna Linkedin stalk the 27 school-funded people from Harvard's 2010 class, feel free.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2010/05 ... ships.html

Okay, because I'm lame I looked at the first ten.
1. Still at the job she got the fellowship for, but presumably no longer school funded.
2. Off the map (can't be a good sign).
3. USDC clerkship->Seyfarth Shaw
4. Still at the same job, slightly unclear who's paying her.
5. COA clerkship->White and Case
6. Same job she got the fellowship for.
7. Ditto.
8. Faegre Baker Daniels.
9. COA clerkship.
10. COA staff attorney. (Not ideal for an Harvard kid but still a job.)

Doesn't look too bad to me. Certainly most of these folks wouldn't have needed these jobs before the recession, but it also doesn't look like they were screwed (except maybe #2).

More lameness:
11. Working at what looks like a 2 person Denver firm.
12. At Burch & Craccolio, which is apparently a legit plaintiff's firm in Phoenix (Benchmark Litigation highly recommended).
13. Assistant professor at an Indian law school.
14. At Mintz, Levin in NYC.
15. At very small "internet law" firm in SF.
16. At Robinson Curley Clayton, a Chi lit boutique. No idea if they're legit.
17. At very small commercial lit firm in Cupertino, CA.
18. Fellowship job.
19. Adjunct professor at Babson College.
20. Fellowship job.
21. Apparently works for the UN in human rights law.
22. Founded this climate change start up: http://www.betterfutureproject.org/
23. Quinn.
24. Seems to be a visiting researcher at Harvard.
25. ???
26. State Policy Director at Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition.

(It says there are 27, but I swear it's just 26.)

So, not horrible altogether, but certainly not rosy. Also really looks more like a hideout for those who missed BigLaw than for real PI people. If I get bored maybe I'll check out Yale in a few days.

[Lasers]

wait, so ucla has 64.80% employment with about 18% of those jobs being school funded jobs?

[pedestrian]

2. Off the map (can't be a good sign).

It looks like she is at the NYC Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainable Development

[Tiago Splitter]

wait, so ucla has 64.80% employment with about 18% of those jobs being school funded jobs?

No. 61% were in long term full time bar passage required jobs, and only one of those was school funded.

[RoyBatty]

This is very informative. Thank God for/God save us from the Internets. This information might well answer the question: what happens to those "left behind" at Harvard in a terrible market. I wouldn't instead say those at the "bottom of the class" or the "unemployably socially awkward" or the "f'ups," or some combination of those, because you never really know what happened. Maybe someone overshot, or had something go terribly wrong during OCI, or had a major family issue, of thought they wanted to do PI but eventually decided on Quinn , or puked at a firm event during 1L summer (or the first 2 things I mentioned) - in a big class any of these things can and will happen. But it's not likely they happen that much more today than a few years ago. Fewer jobs mean fewer "stretches" by employers, even at Harvard.

However, my takeaway, as an old guy who recruits at Harvard is, basically, positive. So, almost everyone can get a "real" job, eventually, with help from the school safety net that has always quietly existed at all of the top schools. It's being noticed now, which is easier given the new transparency coinciding with a bad economy and more school-created and funded gigs. One thing is clear: looking at a sample that is large enough from which to draw reasonable conclusions, this group of jobs is not "Harvard material," generally speaking. While some are quite good, top-to-bottom it is far from representative of what you'd expect to see for the run-of-the-mill HL grads and not probably in the game plan for most of these people. I would suggest that there is a correlation between not doing well as an applicant and getting one of these school-funded jobs, which surprisingly to me seems to be open to debate even after the leg work from Mr. Gunn to pull actual results.

My impression is that, historically, the top-school safety net was borne of pride and obligation, not a perceived need to game the system or keep up with the other guy for US News purposes. But that might not be the case today. Don't know. But if you needed the insurance at Harvard or Yale, you probably would have really needed it at Fordham, and it wouldn't have been there. In that limited sense, the dubious "full employment" data for the top 10 or so schools is actually somewhat relevant for the very risk-averse.

Edit: to clarify, I am only addressing the topic of the many new school-funded jobs. I am sure that plenty of these jobs, before and during the recession, were desirable and "legit" however that is defined. But there have always been some school-sponsored positions that were what I called a safety net. Common sense (plus the job review above) suggest jobs addressing that purpose have expanded. There have always been some people at the margin everywhere, and the margin has moved.

[Lasers]

wait, so ucla has 64.80% employment with about 18% of those jobs being school funded jobs?

No. 61% were in long term full time bar passage required jobs, and only one of those was school funded.

i'm so confused by these statistics. where do the school funded jobs fit in? are they being counted or no?

[LittleTree]

wait, so ucla has 64.80% employment with about 18% of those jobs being school funded jobs?

No. 61% were in long term full time bar passage required jobs, and only one of those was school funded.

i'm so confused by these statistics. where do the school funded jobs fit in? are they being counted or no?

It seems as though they were counted at some schools (UVA) and not at others (UCLA).

[Kurst]

.

[09042014]

wait, so ucla has 64.80% employment with about 18% of those jobs being school funded jobs?

No. 61% were in long term full time bar passage required jobs, and only one of those was school funded.

i'm so confused by these statistics. where do the school funded jobs fit in? are they being counted or no?

It seems as though they were counted at some schools (UVA) and not at others (UCLA).

If a school considers the jobs "longterm, fulltime, JDadvantage" it counts. If it's part time or short term, it doesn't. Many schools unemployment programs are only part time.

[$$$$$$]

So as Columbia grads couldn't get a biglaw job and are fighting for their lives against unemployment, HYS grads were forgoing their certain biglaw offers because of career uncertainty in the field?


Man, I'm a 0L and will believe a lot, but cmon..

Not so much that it's certain, but you're missing the actual argument which is that some people who could probably get BigLaw don't want the uncertainty of it, they would rather trade it in for PI/Gov. Their debt gets paid off, they get to see their SO/family/whatever, and they still have a prestigious degree with a lot of mobility. I'm sure there are CLS grads doing the same thing just like there are Chi grads doing the same thing just like there are UVA grads doing the same thing. But as you go down the list, especially at some schools, these fellowships aren't actual launchpads for a career.

And yeah, I'm sure some people at HYS doing these fellowships probably couldn't have gotten BigLaw (though this is incredibly rare, even ITE -- maybe they just didn't want to be in a certain region or work for a certain firm).

Are you actually in law school? PI/Gov jobs are much harder to get than Biglaw. I know people that are unbelievably accomplished and nationally recognized for the work they are doing and they still are unemployed looking for PI jobs. Also, Gov/PI jobs are much more uncertain than working at a firm. Your funding can get cut out from under you in the snap of a finger. While these fellowships being paid by the school do look odd considering the numbers pre and post 2009, it is much better than graduating with no money, huge debt, and no job except for an unpaid internship. While the motivations behind them may be solely self-indulgant, I applaud the schools for doing this and have several friends who have benefited from these "shady" gaming techniques. Also, if you think Harvard doesn't do this and that everyone in their class can get biglaw, you are highly delusional and outright wrong.

[Skye]

wait, so ucla has 64.80% employment with about 18% of those jobs being school funded jobs?

No. 61% were in long term full time bar passage required jobs, and only one of those was school funded.

i'm so confused by these statistics. where do the school funded jobs fit in? are they being counted or no?

Of UCLA’s 61% employment, 18.6% were school funded. Take away their SFJ and their employment stat slides to 43% and their 30.2% under-employed stat jumps to 48.8%.

UVA’s 94.7% employment is supported with 17% SFJ. Without the SFJ, their employment drops to 77% and their under employed increases to 20%.

Berkeley had an 80% employment stat with 4.5% from SFJ. Basically, Berkeley and UVA both have a 77% employment stat. It is the way UVA presented their numbers (as compared to Berkeley) is an example of where the [gaming] controversy rests.

Over the next year you will see employment stats with UVA on top with 94.7%, when in fact their employment percentage is 77%.