DC Market - T20 vs. GW Forum

[Flanker1067]

GW needs to get more love on TLS. I'd say T14 > GW, but that's it for DC. GW being ranked 28th this year is (hopefully) an anomaly.

The thing is that many of us are applying this year, as that is a major draw of this site. As someone who only began caring about the rankings about two months ago I have this relatively bad impression of GW. I see the numbers, but I also understand why the change occurred, which is because GW was a PT degree mill profiting off the fact that PT programs were ignored in the rankings. I am not saying it cannot recover its old reputation easily, or that lawyer rep/job prospects suffered, I am just explaining my opinion on why there is no love here right now.

[holydonkey]

That and I can't understand how they decide on their scholarships. Right now if I went to GW I would be paying sticker, but there are people with around the same numbers (not ED) getting crazy amounts of money. I thought if I got in Michigan and Cornell, I would at least get 10-15k at GW, but it seems like they give 1 billion dollars or nada with nothing in between.

[minuit]

GW needs to get more love on TLS. I'd say T14 > GW, but that's it for DC. GW being ranked 28th this year is (hopefully) an anomaly.

And if your heart is really set on the DC market, there's a decent argument for taking GW with $$$ over Northwestern, Duke, and Cornell at sticker.

I thought Duke did ok in DC. (Obviously you would have to have the grades because its a selective market but it seems to be a somewhat popular destination according to what's on the page linked below. Is your argument more about the money in Duke's case?)

Definitely. I would take Duke at sticker over GW at sticker, even if I wanted to eventually work in DC. But I would probably take GW w/90K over Duke. This choice is not some wild hypothetical; many applicants are facing this decision right now.

And Rayiner is right about the "safety net" factor. If you find out after three years that you actually don't want to work in DC, then you're probably going to wish that you chose Duke or NU or Cornell over GW. But I suppose you've got to take some risks in one direction or another.

+1

[galahad85]

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[democrattotheend]

I live in DC, and I am just a 0L, but I do have friends who work at law firms here, and the sense I get is that T14 is probably better than GW, but GW might be better for the DC market than a T15-27 school in another region. When I initially asked my friend who worked at a V5 firm at the time whether I would be better off with Georgetown at sticker or GW with a scholarship, she initially said Georgetown w/o hesitation. But then when she thought about it, she realized there were probably as many lawyers at her office who went to GW as Georgetown. And looking at the attorney profiles for several DC firms, it looks like most of the associates went to either a T14 or GW (or occasionally American, GMU or Howard). For example, in the DC office of WilmerHale, GW seemed to be the most represented school besides Harvard among associates. On the Skadden website, you can search attorneys by office and school, and there are a lot more from GW (and American, for that matter), than from WUSTL, Vanderbilt, UT, UCLA, Notre Dame, BU, BC, etc.

GW has a very good reputation around here from what I can tell, though like I said, I am certainly no expert. But my gut says GW would place better in the DC market than any other school outside the top 14.