9 billionth NYU v Columbia thread Forum

[chris0805]

Colombia has clinics (though they call them externships, they're the same thing) at two US Attys. office, the queen's county DA, Neighborhood Defender Service, and the Center for Appellate Litigation (Indigent Defense appeals). CLS also has a strong relationship with Bronx Defenders and I know more than few students who have interned there.

That's odd. Why isn't that under Colombia Law's clinics page?

TBH, I don't know. Essentially, any clinic (legal practice with a seminar component) that involves an outside institution, such as a PDs or DAs office, gets called an "externship." The problem is that 0Ls (myself included three years ago) try to judge schools by clinical opportunities and look up "clinics." Then, when none of these show up, they think, hmmm... that's not impressive. I don't understand why we can't just call them clinics, or at least have a clinical/externship page in one place.

[gossipgirl]

3. Don't overstate the differences. Something like 78 % of NYU students will go to a big law firm this year and about 82 % of CLS students will do the same. Don't think that CLS is actually doing a significantly better job at getting those gigs and, likewise, don't believe the hype that NYU is a 'public interest' school whereas CLS is a corporate heavy school.

While others may overstate differences between NYU and CLS, to say that CLS does not do a significantly better job at getting big law gigs is just wrong.

Go to the V5 websites and look for how many NYU vs CLS grads they have. NYU has a few more students than CLS but the comparison should be similar otherwise. Now some of this could be self-selection but if the total number is 78% vs 82% like you say, what reason other than CLS being better for elite big law is there for this much larger number of alumni at top firms?

[chris0805]

3. Don't overstate the differences. Something like 78 % of NYU students will go to a big law firm this year and about 82 % of CLS students will do the same. Don't think that CLS is actually doing a significantly better job at getting those gigs and, likewise, don't believe the hype that NYU is a 'public interest' school whereas CLS is a corporate heavy school.

While others may overstate differences between NYU and CLS, to say that CLS does not do a significantly better job at getting big law gigs is just wrong.

Go to the V5 websites and look for how many NYU vs CLS grads they have. NYU has a few more students than CLS but the comparison should be similar otherwise. Now some of this could be self-selection but if the total number is 78% vs 82% like you say, what reason other than CLS being better for elite big law is there for this much larger number of alumni at top firms?

I dunno, I admittedly don't know that much about biglaw since that's not the path I took in law school, but the NYUers I know from my year seem to be in about the same position as my CLS classmates going the firm route. Is it possible CLS could help get V5, but NYU is just as good at getting market. I really don't know. I could just have anecdotal information that's not representative on this topic.

[toaster2]

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[chris0805]

Colombia has clinics (though they call them externships, they're the same thing) at two US Attys. office, the queen's county DA, Neighborhood Defender Service, and the Center for Appellate Litigation (Indigent Defense appeals). CLS also has a strong relationship with Bronx Defenders and I know more than few students who have interned there.

That's odd. Why isn't that under Colombia Law's clinics page?

TBH, I don't know. Essentially, any clinic (legal practice with a seminar component) that involves an outside institution, such as a PDs or DAs office, gets called an "externship." The problem is that 0Ls (myself included three years ago) try to judge schools by clinical opportunities and look up "clinics." Then, when none of these show up, they think, hmmm... that's not impressive. I don't understand why we can't just call them clinics, or at least have a clinical/externship page in one place.

clinics: http://www.law.Colombia.edu/focusareas/clinics

externships: http://www.law.Colombia.edu/programs/so ... xternships

externships involve work at outside organizations while clinics are organized and run by CLS and their clinical faculty.

No, I understand this. I was saying that over the last three years, I have often run into admitted students that know NOTHING about the externships and are concerned that CLS has only 8 clinics whereas NYU has around 23 +/- 3 depending on the year. When you look at NYU's clinics, many of them involve work in an outside organization.

I don't care what we call them, but we should do better job about advertising them.

[nice&slow]

Wow, I got back from visiting CLS to see that this thread doubled, thanks everyone! It looks like I'm going to have to decide by tomorrow and I'm still pretty torn, but I'll be sure to update when I do.

Edited - I know that I sounded elitest in the OP re: my reasons for wanting to go to Columbia. It's really more along the lines of not wanting to prematurely shut any remaining doors that a Columbia degree would / might open for me down the road, no matter how committed I am to PI now. Sorry that it read that way (and thanks to everyone who didn't call me an idiot )

[clintonius]

NYU. Scholarship + PI/gov't reputation = win. The Columbia study abroad program (the LLM you mentioned) sounds great, and I bet it would be great for an undergrad program, but that's a year in London that you could spend interning with a DA's office.

That said, you're going to have fanfuckingtastic opportunities either way. Visit both schools and figure out where you feel comfortable.