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[timbs4339]

I just wanted to post some numbers - % at 101+ attorney firms + federal clerkships (2013)

Fordham - 37%
BC - 34%
GW - 33%
WUSTL - 32%
Cardozo - 15%

Is it really that difficult to make it in the top 1/3? I'm coming from a top 10 university, so that probably gives me some advantage coming in (maybe not). I know all 101+ attorney firm jobs are not BIGLAW, but those odds don't seem that bad especially considering not everyone is looking for BIGLAW in the first place - a significant portion self-select out of it. On top of that there are others doing PI, Gov, and some are joint JD/MBA's looking for business jobs, etc.

Now you are (1) looking for anything in your background that will convince you that somehow you have an advantage over other students, (2) acting like a significant number of people who "self-select" out of the jobs you want. This is "bargaining," one of the five phases of law school grief. Lots of people who come here go through it. They all think they have some special something, work experience, high LSAT, high GPA, good UG, rags to riches upbringing, that's going to set them apart from the others. They all assume that a substantial portion of the class isn't going to care or put in the effort. Let me tell you now it doesn't work like that. Everyone's smart, everyone's driven, everyone's accomplished, everyone's got a shitload of debt and needs to make 160K to pay it off.

Look, Fordham for 90K in debt is probably a good deal. Fordham for 233K is insane- that's like a 3K/month payment. You will probably be making around 50-60K per year. If you do not get biglaw you will not be making payments on the debt and it will hound you for 25 years.

[timbs4339]

everal people I have talked to about grades have said that it's not like grading is random. When you get your exams back there is a reason you didn't get an A on exam while another student did. You can influence your grades and what position you have in your class. Not everyone does everything that is necessary to prepare their best for law school exams or even know how to.

Grading is not totally random but it has a strong element of randomness in it. If you take a bunch of exams in the middle three quintiles and have a law professor grade them, then wipe the professor's memory and have her regrade them a couple of times, I seriously doubt the class ranks will be the same. You willing to bet your future on that?

[WheninLaw]

People live in this world as if T-14 equals guarantee and everything else is a huge gamble. My sister is in law school now at what most would consider to be a TTT and she went to a conference with Stanford 3Ls (plural) with no job and were looking for anything and I doubt they got $$ to go there. There are tons of T2 and lower (even T3/T4) students paying sticker. Law school is a gamble no matter where you go. There are lots of T-14 graduates who are unemployed or who strike out at OCI too with significant debt loads. It's more about what you individually make of it. Several people I have talked to about grades have said that it's not like grading is random. When you get your exams back there is a reason you didn't get an A on exam while another student did. You can influence your grades and what position you have in your class. Not everyone does everything that is necessary to prepare their best for law school exams or even know how to.

Absolutely true, and we call that group the bottom 10%, not the bottom 75%.

[BigZuck]

I can confirm that law school grading can be frustratingly random (to the point where a prof can't explain why you got a B+ and what the A students did differently)

I can also confirm that your classmates will be frustratingly smart and motivated. I go to a good school, but its also supposed to be one of the fun party law schools and at least from what I can see most everyone tries and you can't just waltz into top 3rd grades.

Also, lulz at people opting out of big law if they can get it. I mean, some small minority will but you better believe that most people who can snatch it up will.

[Cellar-door]

People live in this world as if T-14 equals guarantee and everything else is a huge gamble. My sister is in law school now at what most would consider to be a TTT and she went to a conference with Stanford 3Ls (plural) with no job and were looking for anything and I doubt they got $$ to go there. There are tons of T2 and lower (even T3/T4) students paying sticker. Law school is a gamble no matter where you go. There are lots of T-14 graduates who are unemployed or who strike out at OCI too with significant debt loads. It's more about what you individually make of it. Several people I have talked to about grades have said that it's not like grading is random. When you get your exams back there is a reason you didn't get an A on exam while another student did. You can influence your grades and what position you have in your class. Not everyone does everything that is necessary to prepare their best for law school exams or even know how to.

You are a 0L, so it makes sense that you don't understand this.
Grading isn't random, but it is extremely difficult to judge ahead of time. I go to WUSTL, I can tell you that I would not be here for anywhere near the amount you are looking at. 90% of the class are smart people who put in a ton of work. Planning where you have to be in the top 20% is not a great idea.
Even with your numbers about 1/3 of people getting desirable outcomes from WUSTL, Fordham, GW and BC that isn't every person in the top 1/3 of the class, some of those people strike out. The people telling you to get more money or into a top 14 are telling you to play the odds. If you have at best a 1 in 3 chance at biglaw it isn't worth a big debt load because you have a 66% chance of being in debt for a good portion of your adult life.
At a T-14 even with the same debt you have a much better chance of biglaw and being able to handle your debt.
If you get more money, there is less debt and therefore you can take that chance on 33% odds because the likely failure to get biglaw won't cripple you.

Here how about a baseball comparison.


Yale harvard, stanford are like Miguel Cabrera.
the rest of the T-14 are in the .290 to .315 range.
Think about it this way.... WUSTL, BC, Fordham, GW are .275 hitters

The rest of your list are fringe roster players.

Miguel Cabrera is worth a lot of money (YHS)
Robinson Cano is worth a lot of money but less than Cabrera. (T-14)
Nick Markakis is a good player but worth a lot less (WUST, Ford, GW, BC)
Brent Lillibridge isn't making much for good reason (Dozo, Howard, etc.)

[thebobs1987]

Here how about a baseball comparison.


Yale harvard, stanford are like Miguel Cabrera.
the rest of the T-14 are in the .290 to .315 range.
Think about it this way.... WUSTL, BC, Fordham, GW are .275 hitters

The rest of your list are fringe roster players.

Miguel Cabrera is worth a lot of money (YHS)
Robinson Cano is worth a lot of money but less than Cabrera. (T-14)
Nick Markakis is a good player but worth a lot less (WUST, Ford, GW, BC)
Brent Lillibridge isn't making much for good reason (Dozo, Howard, etc.)[/quote]

I like this.

[californiauser]

People live in this world as if T-14 equals guarantee and everything else is a huge gamble. My sister is in law school now at what most would consider to be a TTT and she went to a conference with Stanford 3Ls (plural) with no job and were looking for anything and I doubt they got $$ to go there. There are tons of T2 and lower (even T3/T4) students paying sticker. Law school is a gamble no matter where you go. There are lots of T-14 graduates who are unemployed or who strike out at OCI too with significant debt loads. It's more about what you individually make of it. Several people I have talked to about grades have said that it's not like grading is random. When you get your exams back there is a reason you didn't get an A on exam while another student did. You can influence your grades and what position you have in your class. Not everyone does everything that is necessary to prepare their best for law school exams or even know how to.

Stanford and most other t14s also have loan repayment programs far better than PAYE -- it definitely minimizes he risk to attend a t14, no one is saying t14 guarantees anything. You can reasonably expect to be average at whichever school you attend. Median at any of the schools you're considering is likely unemployment. And you want to rely on PAYE? Ever plan on getting married in the next 20 years?

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[gerrydawg]

From someone who is going through a similar situation now (top 10 undergrad, high gpa, underpreformance on LSAT), and is considering some of the same schools (Cardozo-full ride, BU w/$, BC w/$), its not an easy decision. I really think the decision should be based on where you want to be, and what school gives you the best option to get you where you want to go. If you don't know where you want to go, that's another thing entirely. But, if you do know, then it is a lot easier to narrow down your options. If you want your best shot at Biglaw in NY, Fordham is the obvious choice. If you want your best shot at Biglaw in DC, GW is your best bet. Same goes for BC in Boston.

Try to be a little introspective and decide where you want to be, and what you want to do, and the decision becomes a lot easier. The debt is scary, no doubt, but I'd rather go to a school that gives me the best chance of reaching my goals than one that would make it a lot harder to do so, regardless of cost. If you don't retake, then get the T14 out of your head. These are your options, and evaluate them accordingly.

[bk1]

People live in this world as if T-14 equals guarantee and everything else is a huge gamble. My sister is in law school now at what most would consider to be a TTT and she went to a conference with Stanford 3Ls (plural) with no job and were looking for anything and I doubt they got $$ to go there. There are tons of T2 and lower (even T3/T4) students paying sticker. Law school is a gamble no matter where you go. There are lots of T-14 graduates who are unemployed or who strike out at OCI too with significant debt loads. It's more about what you individually make of it. Several people I have talked to about grades have said that it's not like grading is random. When you get your exams back there is a reason you didn't get an A on exam while another student did. You can influence your grades and what position you have in your class. Not everyone does everything that is necessary to prepare their best for law school exams or even know how to.

This is all technically true. Things that have a statistically high chance of happening are not guarantees. It's also true that law school is always a gamble. But let me put it to this way: in roulette putting $1000 on red and putting $1000 on 0 are both gambles, but nobody would say they are even close to equivalent gambles. On top of that, just because a lot of people are making poor decisions (paying sticker for crappy schools) does not make those decisions good ones that other people should follow.

More pointedly, you're right that people vary in their ability to do well in law school and in how much they prepare for law school (other people are also right that at times grading can feel frustratingly random). But what makes you think that you will do better than your peers? What makes you so special that you think you will beat the odds that most of your classmates will not? Thinking that you're a special snowflake is one of the worst things you can do when choosing a law school.

Ok...do you have a school recommendation? I'm surprised that GW has done best in the poll considering I may lose my need-based aid for my 2L and 3L year because I was a very borderline candidate for need-based aid and then I would be paying sticker in DC which is no bueno. I assume WUSTL got fewer votes because my initial post did not have my current higher scholarship offer.

As Campos mentioned, the least terrible school choices you have are Rutgers/Temple/Dozo. But as has been mentioned before, retaking the LSAT makes the most sense since there is a high chance (40-50%) you won't even get a job as a permanent full time lawyer coming out of those schools.

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[bk1]

Do people ever consider that you could score lower on the LSAT and do worse the next cycle and also you will likely be paying three years of law school tuition increases by waiting and retaking (most likely 6K+) with little to no inflation?

Of course you might do worse on the LSAT, though it is unlikely you will have a worse cycle (law schools take the highest LSAT so scoring lower doesn't hurt you). You are right that tuition increases will likely happen. But those costs are minimal compared to the potential gain (tens of thousands of dollars in scholarship money and/or earning potential/happiness from going to a better school and getting a better job).

Even if the potential gains were minimal, that doesn't make choosing one of these options a good idea. For example, even if your LSAT were already a 180 and these were the offers you got, it would make more sense not to go to law school than to choose one of these offers.

[Paul Campos]

Effective law school tuition (sticker adjusted for inflation minus discounts) is actually declining overall, and quite sharply at a lot of schools. This cycle is featuring yet another big drop in applicants, and prices will be even cheaper next fall, as schools become increasingly desperate to fill seats without cutting standards even further.

As bk1 mentions, a lower LSAT score won't hurt you.

The people recommending GW in the poll are probably clueless 0Ls who think that the concept of a "top 20" school means something.

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[bk1]

Are you just assuming this? I don't know of any school that has reduced tuition costs recently except Brooklyn Law School, which announced a reduction publicly. Every school I'm considering has increased their tuition for the 2014-2015 year that I know of and that is the general trend I have seen from the LST numbers from other schools. Are you saying they are increasing their scholarship offers generally? If so, I don't know where you are getting that data. Although it would make sense due to the decline in apps that they may want to do something to lure in prospective students but I don't see actual evidence for that but maybe I am just unaware of the information you have found.

Effective cost is tuition minus scholarships so yes that's what he's saying.

[aboutmydaylight]

Effective law school tuition (sticker adjusted for inflation minus discounts) is actually declining overall, and quite sharply at a lot of schools. This cycle is featuring yet another big drop in applicants, and prices will be even cheaper next fall, as schools become increasingly desperate to fill seats without cutting standards even further.

As bk1 mentions, a lower LSAT score won't hurt you.

The people recommending GW in the poll are probably clueless 0Ls who think that the concept of a "top 20" school means something.

Are you just assuming this? I don't know of any school that has reduced tuition costs recently except Brooklyn Law School, which announced a reduction publicly. Every school I'm considering has increased their tuition for the 2014-2015 year that I know of and that is the general trend I have seen from the LST numbers from other schools. Are you saying they are increasing their scholarship offers generally? If so, I don't know where you are getting that data. Although it would make sense due to the decline in apps that they may want to do something to lure in prospective students but I don't see actual evidence for that but maybe I am just unaware of the information you have found.

If tuition/COL increases at a lower rate than inflation, then in REAL terms its effectively cheaper. Also, add in better schollys and/or declining medians and its possible that a person who applies the following cycle could be paying less in real terms (ignoring opportunity cost to forgoing law school for a year).

I don't have the data to say whether this is true or not (my hunch is it isn't) but its possible in theory.

[theotherone823]

Effective law school tuition (sticker adjusted for inflation minus discounts) is actually declining overall, and quite sharply at a lot of schools. This cycle is featuring yet another big drop in applicants, and prices will be even cheaper next fall, as schools become increasingly desperate to fill seats without cutting standards even further.

As bk1 mentions, a lower LSAT score won't hurt you.

The people recommending GW in the poll are probably clueless 0Ls who think that the concept of a "top 20" school means something.

Are you just assuming this? I don't know of any school that has reduced tuition costs recently except Brooklyn Law School, which announced a reduction publicly. Every school I'm considering has increased their tuition for the 2014-2015 year that I know of and that is the general trend I have seen from the LST numbers from other schools. Are you saying they are increasing their scholarship offers generally? If so, I don't know where you are getting that data. Although it would make sense due to the decline in apps that they may want to do something to lure in prospective students but I don't see actual evidence for that but maybe I am just unaware of the information you have found.

Campos is a law professor at UC Boulder. If anyone on this site has any insight into what is happening with law school tuition, it is him.

[Paul Campos]

You can look up how much tuition is being discounted on a school's 509 disclosure form, and then compare those stats to comparable stats on their disclosure forms from previous years, which are archived in the ABA's Guide to Law Schools.

Looking at the first school on your list (Boston College), we see that nominal tuition went up by 3% this year, but that the total number of students receiving discounts went from 53% to 64%. Since almost all of the increase in discounted tuition goes to enrolling 1Ls, we can be certain a much larger percentage of the 1L class received discounts than the 2012 1L class, even though sticker tuition barely rose in constant dollars.

Something similar is happening at most (not all) law schools.

[aboutmydaylight]

You can look up how much tuition is being discounted on a school's 509 disclosure form, and then compare those stats to comparable stats on their disclosure forms from previous years, which are archived in the ABA's Guide to Law Schools.

Looking at the first school on your list (Boston College), we see that nominal tuition went up by 3% this year, but that the total number of students receiving discounts went from 53% to 64%. Since almost all of the increase in discounted tuition goes to enrolling 1Ls, we can be certain a much larger percentage of the 1L class received discounts than the 2012 1L class, even though sticker tuition barely rose in constant dollars.

Something similar is happening at most (not all) law schools.

You can't really see how much tuition is being discounted without making some serious assumptions. The 509 only reports quartiles so you can't reverse engineer how much money the average student is actually getting from any of them.

A school could in theory raise 25th/50th/75th grant amounts AND increase % of students receiving grants, while at the same time extracting more money per student. Of course the median student will be better off, but the student body as a whole won't be. With inflation being as low as it is, but COA rising at about 2.5% everywhere, I doubt that even in real terms forgoing law school for a year will be cheaper most places.

[Paul Campos]

You can look up how much tuition is being discounted on a school's 509 disclosure form, and then compare those stats to comparable stats on their disclosure forms from previous years, which are archived in the ABA's Guide to Law Schools.

Looking at the first school on your list (Boston College), we see that nominal tuition went up by 3% this year, but that the total number of students receiving discounts went from 53% to 64%. Since almost all of the increase in discounted tuition goes to enrolling 1Ls, we can be certain a much larger percentage of the 1L class received discounts than the 2012 1L class, even though sticker tuition barely rose in constant dollars.

Something similar is happening at most (not all) law schools.

You can't really see how much tuition is being discounted without making some serious assumptions. The 509 only reports quartiles so you can't reverse engineer how much money the average student is actually getting from any of them.

A school could in theory raise 25th/50th/75th grant amounts AND increase % of students receiving grants, while at the same time extracting more money per student. Of course the median student will be better off, but the student body as a whole won't be. With inflation being as low as it is, but COA rising at about 2.5% everywhere, I doubt that even in real terms forgoing law school for a year will be cheaper most places.

(1) As a practical matter, the only way a school could do this is by raising sticker tuition fairly drastically (do the math).

(2) I know exactly how much discounting is going on at several dozen schools because I have their budgets. I've compared how close the estimates one can make off these schools' 509s are to the actual discounts they're giving out, and it turns out to be a very close estimate, which makes sense, since the 509s disclose a lot of information, including not only the quartiles and the percentages of the total student body within those quartiles, but the number of students getting full tuition discounts.

[aboutmydaylight]

You can look up how much tuition is being discounted on a school's 509 disclosure form, and then compare those stats to comparable stats on their disclosure forms from previous years, which are archived in the ABA's Guide to Law Schools.

Looking at the first school on your list (Boston College), we see that nominal tuition went up by 3% this year, but that the total number of students receiving discounts went from 53% to 64%. Since almost all of the increase in discounted tuition goes to enrolling 1Ls, we can be certain a much larger percentage of the 1L class received discounts than the 2012 1L class, even though sticker tuition barely rose in constant dollars.

Something similar is happening at most (not all) law schools.

You can't really see how much tuition is being discounted without making some serious assumptions. The 509 only reports quartiles so you can't reverse engineer how much money the average student is actually getting from any of them.

A school could in theory raise 25th/50th/75th grant amounts AND increase % of students receiving grants, while at the same time extracting more money per student. Of course the median student will be better off, but the student body as a whole won't be. With inflation being as low as it is, but COA rising at about 2.5% everywhere, I doubt that even in real terms forgoing law school for a year will be cheaper most places.

(1) As a practical matter, the only way a school could do this is by raising sticker tuition fairly drastically (do the math).

(2) I know exactly how much discounting is going on at several dozen schools because I have their budgets. I've compared how close the estimates one can make off these schools' 509s are to the actual discounts they're giving out, and it turns out to be a very close estimate, which makes sense, since the 509s disclose a lot of information, including not only the quartiles and the percentages of the total student body within those quartiles, but the number of students getting full tuition discounts.

Lets say a school has a tuition of 10.

Year 1 students/grants: 0 0 1 2 2 3 10
% receiving grants = 5/7 = 71.43%
25th/50th/75th = 0 - 2 - 3
Average grant amount = 2.57
"Profit" extracted by the school = 10 + 10 + 9 + 8 + 8 + 7 + 0 = 52

Year 2 students/grants: 0 1 1 3 3 4 4
% receiving grants = 6/7 = 85.7%
25th/50th/75th = 1 - 3 - 4
Average grant amount = 2.29
"Profit" extracted by the school = 10 + 9 + 9 + 7 + 7 + 6 + 6 = 54


Yet all we would see is that % receiving grants increased from 71% to 86% and every quartile grant increased from 0-2-3 to 1-3-4. However, the school is financially better off and the student body as a whole is paying a higher percentage in tuition.

I don't know if this is true in practice, but with some school so openly willing to median game LSAT I don't see why I'd put it beyond schools to do the same with grant amounts.

Obviously I don't have access to the same info you do but with what's publicly available it becomes impossible to figure out whats really going on.

[Paul Campos]

I said as a practical matter. You came up with a hypo that would only exist in practice if a school was dedicating an enormous amount of effort to gaming the tuition discount disclosure info on 509 forms, at the expense of actually enrolling the applicants it most wanted to enroll.

No school would do such a thing, especially since there's almost no benefit to doing so. Potential matrics care about what they're getting, not what the average discount among people enrolling might be.

You're just wrong that it's difficult to estimate how much tuition is being discounted on the basis of the public data. Among other things the public data include all 20+ law schools that have to file IRS Form 990s, which contain precise discount totals, which can be compared to their 509s. That information by itself is enough to demonstrate that you can figure out to a tolerable degree of accuracy how much tuition is being discounted in general, and that effective tuition has on average dropped between this year and last.

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[objctnyrhnr]

IMO (not a 0L), people who picked GW are too naive to be giving anybody else advice

[Big Dog]

From someone who is going through a similar situation now (top 10 undergrad, high gpa, underpreformance on LSAT), and is considering some of the same schools (Cardozo-full ride, BU w/$, BC w/$), its not an easy decision.

Actually it is an "easy decision." If it is not "easy", then you wasted four years at a "top 10 undergrad" because you still have not learned critical thinking skills.