New US News Rankings 2023-2024 Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm a Columbia undergrad - CLS grad and lemme just say its a hard time being a Columbia alumni right now lol

[jamestaylorrecordsas]

I'm a Columbia undergrad - CLS grad and lemme just say its a hard time being a Columbia alumni right now lol

I feel your pain. I'm in Brooklyn. Tessa Majors. Sorry.

[Anonymous User]

Everyone I know at Georgetown who wanted biglaw got it. The top people get COAs and the bottom people miiight strike out. I defy anyone to tell me it's that different than Columbia. Don't tell me it's a cope

Bottom of the class at CLS doesn't strike out, they end up at like Cadwaladar or Fried Frank

Bottom of class at CLS and UChicago strike out too. I know them.

[Anonymous User]

Everyone I know at Georgetown who wanted biglaw got it. The top people get COAs and the bottom people miiight strike out. I defy anyone to tell me it's that different than Columbia. Don't tell me it's a cope

Bottom of the class at CLS doesn't strike out, they end up at like Cadwaladar or Fried Frank

Bottom of class at CLS and UChicago strike out too. I know them.

Can't speak to Chicago cause i don't have personal information, but bottom of the class at CLS absolutely strikes out. My understanding is pre-2008 bottom of the class strikeouts were rare, but even when I was there which was in the bull market, ~5% of people struck out. Have to imagine the percent increases on more down years.

[Anonymous User]

The “are Yale and Stanford (and Chicago?) a cut above HLS because of clerkship numbers” debate is only happening on TLS. No one else thinks of Harvard as lesser (or, frankly, of Columbia as lesser than Chicago) outside these forums on that basis. Harvard just has more students.

obviously not among laypeople or probably corporate practitioners but clerkship numbers are widely known and arguably the key metric in the elite litigation world. The Chicago/Columbia gap in lit outcomes is a good example of that; they’re pretty similar except that Chicago has a much better clerkship program and thus better representation in government, appellate groups, and lit boutiques even though it’s much smaller.

For those curious, the appellate groups at Kirkland, Latham, Jones Day, and Sidley (just to take four major ones with easily navigable filters) have 12 lawyers from Columbia, 45 from Chicago, and 56 from HLS

This is a huge W for Chicago, considering the class size difference.

You kids can continue coping about your debt from fancy Harvard. Meanwhile lowly Chicago has better elite results. I'm sorry we're starting to notice it.

[Anonymous User]

The “are Yale and Stanford (and Chicago?) a cut above HLS because of clerkship numbers” debate is only happening on TLS. No one else thinks of Harvard as lesser (or, frankly, of Columbia as lesser than Chicago) outside these forums on that basis. Harvard just has more students.

obviously not among laypeople or probably corporate practitioners but clerkship numbers are widely known and arguably the key metric in the elite litigation world. The Chicago/Columbia gap in lit outcomes is a good example of that; they’re pretty similar except that Chicago has a much better clerkship program and thus better representation in government, appellate groups, and lit boutiques even though it’s much smaller.

For those curious, the appellate groups at Kirkland, Latham, Jones Day, and Sidley (just to take four major ones with easily navigable filters) have 12 lawyers from Columbia, 45 from Chicago, and 56 from HLS

This is a huge W for Chicago, considering the class size difference.

You kids can continue coping about your debt from fancy Harvard. Meanwhile lowly Chicago has better elite results. I'm sorry we're starting to notice it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen appellate hype on this board. Is that still attractive to litigators a few years out of law school? Seems more like a special taste (like being a prof).

[Anonymous User]

The “are Yale and Stanford (and Chicago?) a cut above HLS because of clerkship numbers” debate is only happening on TLS. No one else thinks of Harvard as lesser (or, frankly, of Columbia as lesser than Chicago) outside these forums on that basis. Harvard just has more students.

obviously not among laypeople or probably corporate practitioners but clerkship numbers are widely known and arguably the key metric in the elite litigation world. The Chicago/Columbia gap in lit outcomes is a good example of that; they’re pretty similar except that Chicago has a much better clerkship program and thus better representation in government, appellate groups, and lit boutiques even though it’s much smaller.

For those curious, the appellate groups at Kirkland, Latham, Jones Day, and Sidley (just to take four major ones with easily navigable filters) have 12 lawyers from Columbia, 45 from Chicago, and 56 from HLS

This is a huge W for Chicago, considering the class size difference.

You kids can continue coping about your debt from fancy Harvard. Meanwhile lowly Chicago has better elite results. I'm sorry we're starting to notice it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen appellate hype on this board. Is that still attractive to litigators a few years out of law school? Seems more like a special taste (like being a prof).

Are we now pretending that academia is not a prestigious outcome?

[SGTslaughter]

Alright but how much of this is due to CLS students gravitating towards being deal crushing Gucci loafered corp chads and Chicagoans being balding spectacled Republican nerds screeching at their wives' boyfriends about how their V6 appellate group is appellaty-er than his V17's

[Anonymous User]

[*]

The “are Yale and Stanford (and Chicago?) a cut above HLS because of clerkship numbers” debate is only happening on TLS. No one else thinks of Harvard as lesser (or, frankly, of Columbia as lesser than Chicago) outside these forums on that basis. Harvard just has more students.

obviously not among laypeople or probably corporate practitioners but clerkship numbers are widely known and arguably the key metric in the elite litigation world. The Chicago/Columbia gap in lit outcomes is a good example of that; they’re pretty similar except that Chicago has a much better clerkship program and thus better representation in government, appellate groups, and lit boutiques even though it’s much smaller.

For those curious, the appellate groups at Kirkland, Latham, Jones Day, and Sidley (just to take four major ones with easily navigable filters) have 12 lawyers from Columbia, 45 from Chicago, and 56 from HLS

This is a huge W for Chicago, considering the class size difference.

You kids can continue coping about your debt from fancy Harvard. Meanwhile lowly Chicago has better elite results. I'm sorry we're starting to notice it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen appellate hype on this board. Is that still attractive to litigators a few years out of law school? Seems more like a special taste (like being a prof).

Chicago places a lot of appellate clerks, so this makes sense, but I am curious about how many of those appellate litigators are at Sidley and Kirkland. Those are two Chicago headquarter firms, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it. Jones Day appellate is also right-leaning, so it might not be that surprising that it would get more Chicago alums (which might be an unfair stereotype!). I think Chicago does place better in Big Law appellate lit than other schools, but these numbers don’t show me that much.

But more HLS than Chicago, so I’m probably talking out of my ass

[Anonymous User]

Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity.

They're not less ambitious, it's a totally different career path. Going straight from HLS to the tax department at DPW isn't an objectively worse outcome than someone who goes to clerk for a judge on the first circuit

It's worse in terms of your own definition of "prestige", which is largely about selectivity

I think we're learning something about the quality of HLS students in real time folks

[Barry grandpapy]

This thread is top-tier content - maybe Chicago-tier, but definitely not Yale-tier, imo.

[Anonymous User]

They're not less ambitious, it's a totally different career path. Going straight from HLS to the tax department at DPW isn't an objectively worse outcome than someone who goes to clerk for a judge on the first circuit

It's worse in terms of your own definition of "prestige", which is largely about selectivity

I think we're learning something about the quality of HLS students in real time folks

You're putting words in mouth. It's no worse because it's the goal of that particular student. What would be worse is if that student couldn't get a clerkship, but that's not true (because it's Harvard).

[Anonymous User]

Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity.

They're not less ambitious, it's a totally different career path. Going straight from HLS to the tax department at DPW isn't an objectively worse outcome than someone who goes to clerk for a judge on the first circuit

It's worse in terms of your own definition of "prestige", which is largely about selectivity

I think we're learning something about the quality of HLS students in real time folks

I guess I should clarify that I'm not the first anon

[Anonymous User]

They're not less ambitious, it's a totally different career path. Going straight from HLS to the tax department at DPW isn't an objectively worse outcome than someone who goes to clerk for a judge on the first circuit

It's worse in terms of your own definition of "prestige", which is largely about selectivity

I think we're learning something about the quality of HLS students in real time folks

You're putting words in mouth. It's no worse because it's the goal of that particular student. What would be worse is if that student couldn't get a clerkship, but that's not true (because it's Harvard).

I have no doubt harvard students can mostly get some state clerkship. But we can differentiate between clerkships. Obviously it is not the case that anyone who goes into tax from HLS can get a circuit clerkship

[Anonymous User]

Thread hasn't fully delivered on copypasta content. We need something like a fanfic narrative of a HLS grad lovingly caressing his diploma telling it he could have clerked if he wanted

[Anonymous User]

They're not less ambitious, it's a totally different career path. Going straight from HLS to the tax department at DPW isn't an objectively worse outcome than someone who goes to clerk for a judge on the first circuit

It's worse in terms of your own definition of "prestige", which is largely about selectivity

I think we're learning something about the quality of HLS students in real time folks

You're putting words in mouth. It's no worse because it's the goal of that particular student. What would be worse is if that student couldn't get a clerkship, but that's not true (because it's Harvard).

I have no doubt harvard students can mostly get some state clerkship. But we can differentiate between clerkships. Obviously it is not the case that anyone who goes into tax from HLS can get a circuit clerkship

Look I mean clerkships are tough to get, but I don't doubt that hypothetical HLS DPW tax guy has as good a chance as similarly situated SLS DPW tax guy. Many people from HLS get appellate clerkships at median.

[Anonymous User]

The “are Yale and Stanford (and Chicago?) a cut above HLS because of clerkship numbers” debate is only happening on TLS. No one else thinks of Harvard as lesser (or, frankly, of Columbia as lesser than Chicago) outside these forums on that basis. Harvard just has more students.

obviously not among laypeople or probably corporate practitioners but clerkship numbers are widely known and arguably the key metric in the elite litigation world. The Chicago/Columbia gap in lit outcomes is a good example of that; they’re pretty similar except that Chicago has a much better clerkship program and thus better representation in government, appellate groups, and lit boutiques even though it’s much smaller.

For those curious, the appellate groups at Kirkland, Latham, Jones Day, and Sidley (just to take four major ones with easily navigable filters) have 12 lawyers from Columbia, 45 from Chicago, and 56 from HLS

This is a huge W for Chicago, considering the class size difference.

You kids can continue coping about your debt from fancy Harvard. Meanwhile lowly Chicago has better elite results. I'm sorry we're starting to notice it.

What percent of HLS students who applied got the job, compared with those from Chicago? If you can't answer that, your post doesn't really tell us much.

[Anonymous User]

The “are Yale and Stanford (and Chicago?) a cut above HLS because of clerkship numbers” debate is only happening on TLS. No one else thinks of Harvard as lesser (or, frankly, of Columbia as lesser than Chicago) outside these forums on that basis. Harvard just has more students.

obviously not among laypeople or probably corporate practitioners but clerkship numbers are widely known and arguably the key metric in the elite litigation world. The Chicago/Columbia gap in lit outcomes is a good example of that; they’re pretty similar except that Chicago has a much better clerkship program and thus better representation in government, appellate groups, and lit boutiques even though it’s much smaller.

For those curious, the appellate groups at Kirkland, Latham, Jones Day, and Sidley (just to take four major ones with easily navigable filters) have 12 lawyers from Columbia, 45 from Chicago, and 56 from HLS

This is a huge W for Chicago, considering the class size difference.

You kids can continue coping about your debt from fancy Harvard. Meanwhile lowly Chicago has better elite results. I'm sorry we're starting to notice it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen appellate hype on this board. Is that still attractive to litigators a few years out of law school? Seems more like a special taste (like being a prof).

Are we now pretending that academia is not a prestigious outcome?

Depends on what you are doing (and where) in academia. Not all academia is the same. Would you want to be an assistant prof teaching contracts and property at Stetson U for 125K per year while cranking away at student-reviewed articles that get seven independent non-student internet clicks over the course of several years? Probably not. There are some sweet jobs at universities, but these are few. The number of talented people who self-select from academia is a few orders of magnitude larger than those interested in academia. Perhaps appellate is the same - high barriers to entry due to low numbers of jobs, but with a corresponding low interest in the general talent population. What field would be more prestigious to you, one where 10,000 people are interested in it, and there are only 1,000 slots, or a field where 1,000 people are interested in it and only 50 slots?

[Anonymous User]

Look I mean clerkships are tough to get, but I don't doubt that hypothetical HLS DPW tax guy has as good a chance as similarly situated SLS DPW tax guy.

But what is there to support that other than vibes? What is there to support the idea that the massive gulf in clerkship outcomes is entirely because of self selection. I'm willing to buy self-selection as a partial, but not entire, explanation. This reminds me of the GULC biglaw self selection cope. In fact you can apply it to basically any school - "school x has lower biglaw/clerkship numbers because they just don't want biglaw/clerkship". What you're saying is basically "harvard students dont want bristow or appellate clerkships, they're much more passionate about corporate law". I mean we know HLS students probably are taking on more debt than if those same students went to a lower ranked school in the t-14. Yet they chose H over scholarships despite being able to get corporate law from any other T-14. Why did they do that? Maybe because they wanted something they couldn't get from other T-14s

and I know we're talking about similarly situated i.e. same percentile grades, but just wanted to point out the avg tax guy from SLS is gonna be significantly lower percentile than tax guy from HLS

[Anonymous User]

The “are Yale and Stanford (and Chicago?) a cut above HLS because of clerkship numbers” debate is only happening on TLS. No one else thinks of Harvard as lesser (or, frankly, of Columbia as lesser than Chicago) outside these forums on that basis. Harvard just has more students.

obviously not among laypeople or probably corporate practitioners but clerkship numbers are widely known and arguably the key metric in the elite litigation world. The Chicago/Columbia gap in lit outcomes is a good example of that; they’re pretty similar except that Chicago has a much better clerkship program and thus better representation in government, appellate groups, and lit boutiques even though it’s much smaller.

For those curious, the appellate groups at Kirkland, Latham, Jones Day, and Sidley (just to take four major ones with easily navigable filters) have 12 lawyers from Columbia, 45 from Chicago, and 56 from HLS

This is a huge W for Chicago, considering the class size difference.

You kids can continue coping about your debt from fancy Harvard. Meanwhile lowly Chicago has better elite results. I'm sorry we're starting to notice it.

Like I agree these are really damn good numbers for UChicago, but the point abt debt vis-a-vis Chciago and HLS is wrong. Non-Ruby aid at Chicago is horrible. The median aid amount is ~15k. The median aid amount at HLS is 35k. The median applicant goes into less debt for HLS than Chicago

[Anonymous User]

Look I mean clerkships are tough to get, but I don't doubt that hypothetical HLS DPW tax guy has as good a chance as similarly situated SLS DPW tax guy.

But what is there to support that other than vibes? What is there to support the idea that the massive gulf in clerkship outcomes is entirely because of self selection. I'm willing to buy self-selection as a partial, but not entire, explanation. This reminds me of the GULC biglaw self selection cope. In fact you can apply it to basically any school - "school x has lower biglaw/clerkship numbers because they just don't want biglaw/clerkship". What you're saying is basically "harvard students dont want bristow or appellate clerkships, they're much more passionate about corporate law"

and I know we're talking about similarly situated i.e. same percentile grades, but just wanted to point out the avg tax guy from SLS is gonna be significantly lower percentile than tax guy from HLS

The prestige peer scores from judges and employers are the same. They're not viewed differently. And the rest comes from personal experience, talking to people, seeing outcomes in real life, etc. etc. The students are quite different.

[Anonymous User]

Don't Ruby's get a bunch of institutional support that normal Chicago students don't get? I remember seeing stats a few years back that showed a huge % of UChi SCOTUS clerks were former Ruby recipients.

Like of course the Rhodes scholar that Chicago poaches from Yale with a Ruby is going to have great outcomes out of law school. But that has zero connection to Chicago, they would do well at any other T6.

Almost as if UChicago has a mini Yale class within the school that is distinct from the rest.

[Anonymous User]

Don't Ruby's get a bunch of institutional support that normal Chicago students don't get? I remember seeing stats a few years back that showed a huge % of UChi SCOTUS clerks were former Ruby recipients.

Like of course the Rhodes scholar that Chicago poaches from Yale with a Ruby is going to have great outcomes out of law school. But that has zero connection to Chicago, they would do well at any other T6.

Almost as if UChicago has a mini Yale class within the school that is distinct from the rest.

Chicago has outperformed Yale in clerkship percentages for multiple years now, so maybe it's more accurate that Yale has a mini Chicago within.

[Anonymous User]

Look I mean clerkships are tough to get, but I don't doubt that hypothetical HLS DPW tax guy has as good a chance as similarly situated SLS DPW tax guy.

But what is there to support that other than vibes? What is there to support the idea that the massive gulf in clerkship outcomes is entirely because of self selection. I'm willing to buy self-selection as a partial, but not entire, explanation. This reminds me of the GULC biglaw self selection cope. In fact you can apply it to basically any school - "school x has lower biglaw/clerkship numbers because they just don't want biglaw/clerkship". What you're saying is basically "harvard students dont want bristow or appellate clerkships, they're much more passionate about corporate law"

and I know we're talking about similarly situated i.e. same percentile grades, but just wanted to point out the avg tax guy from SLS is gonna be significantly lower percentile than tax guy from HLS

The only legit coulda woulda is the higher PI from eg SLS, YLS, NYU maaaybe Mich too. And only that to say that biglaw numbers need a 10% or so boost.

[CondescendingLiberal]

y'all need to get laid, pronto