I disagree with a couple of things on this. First of all, comparing UofC to Northwestern and Michigan based strictly on hard numbers is silly. Chicago will always have lower numbers, mostly due to the fact they have much smaller class sizes. Secondly, some of Northwestern's job finding statistics are inflated due to the fact that most of their grads already had work experience.ToTransferOrNot wrote:It's really telling that the faculty at Wisconsin would say you're nuts to go to Wisconsin with a full ride over northwestern at sticker, but whatever floats your boat. I agree with you as far as GULC/Cornell/Duke etc go, because they don' have the cachet in the Midwest, but Northwestern should be a gimmie. Both Northwestern and Michigan do about as well as UoC in Chicago. (See, for example, Mayer Brown's summer class this year: 4 Northwestern, 3 UoC, 3 Michigan, 1 Harvard. How many Wisconsin? 0--and my first callback partner was a freaking Wisconsin grad. How many Wisconsin-market paying SA gigs this year total, all Wisconsin firms included? Probably under 40, and even 40 might be too generous.
No offense, but it's clear that you just are missing some information about the job market. The market is not going to get back to where it was in the mid-2000s any time soon--if it ever does. Wisconsin was ALWAYS a "top 25% even for Wisconsin 'biglaw'" school.
Chicago is the king of the Midwest. It's on a (slightly) different level than Northwestern.
And your last line about the job market assumes that I care/want big law. Part of the reason going to school FOR FREE would be so that I wouldn't have to slave at big law for a couple of years to work that debt off.
And no offense to you or Wisconsin's faculty, but you nor they know what I want out of law school. A degree from the best school of WI for free would enable me to shack up in WI and get a decent job with no debt. Sounds good to me.