Bildungsroman wrote:whitman wrote:Bildungsroman wrote:whitman wrote:How do so many people have such a bias against the south? An undesirable location? The Research Triangle? Really? The place is gorgeous and full of beautiful women and phds. Seriously, it has the most phds per capita in America. And I honestly don't see any reason why Duke isn't considered part of the MVPB grouping. It was in the top 10 for all of the 1990s, it usually places just as well as MVPB, they have amazing clerkship placement, their class size is small, etc. They don't have as much of a private bias as, say, Penn, or a PI bias as much as Berkeley. They just do everything well. It's also weird that TLS has such a hardon for UVA and, to a lesser extent, Vanderbilt. That makes it seems like it's not really about the location. Chapel Hill > Charlottesville, and most law students live basically equidistant from campus and Chapel Hill (4-5 miles away from each).
Having said all that, I chose Duke over two of MVPB, so you can look at that either as bias or as someone who made a decision based on my thoughts above.
lol Dook's latest employment numbers make it pretty obvious why a biglaw-obsessed website discusses them less than most other T14s.
That's pretty sophisticated analysis for a UChicago student.
Well, your contention that "[t]hey just do everything well" is inaccurate. Sorry I'm not sorry.
Also, "most phds per capita in America" is a pretty meaningless statement without explaining the metrics or providing a source. Literally 2 minutes of googling has led to claims that the city with the most PhDs per capita is Boston, La Jolla, Los Alamos, or Boulder.
You're right, I got a little dreamy-eyed there. For someone that apparently demands irrefutable proof, though, you're lacking in it yourself. You've got the assertion that for one single year of the NLJ250, Duke's placement was not very good. How about the year before that? The year before that? Did you account for self-selection into southern markets that pay biglaw salaries without the NLJ250 calling card? Did you factor in clerkship placement? Did you factor in the higher no-offer rate in southern markets? But who can argue with such well-crafted statements like, "your contention that 'they just do everything well' is inaccurate"?
I didn't say Duke does everything as well as Chicago, or as well as Columbia or (I'll just list them for you) Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or NYU - I said they do everything well (might want to look up the meaning of "well"). Then, I compared them to MVPB. Historically, they do place people into the NLJ somewhere around MVB, with P usually a little higher. As I mentioned above, this doesn't account for self-selection into southern markets where large firms that pay big law salaries are not part of the NLJ250. This effect might be big or small - I haven't done a rigorous study - so I'll just leave it at that. I also added that they used to be consistently top 10. Sure that is irrelevant, but people often assert that groupings are connected to historic rankings. These historic rankings do not indicate that Duke is worse (in terms of US News rankings) than Virginia, Michigan, Penn, and Berkeley.
Also, why didn't you ask me to prove that the triangle was full of beautiful women? As for phds, that's probably because Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill is not one city, but a geographic and intellectual grouping of counties. You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Triangle
I'm sorry for taking this seriously but not for presenting an argument that is at least defensible.
