Folks who chose HLS over SLS - do you regret it? Forum

[jbagelboy]

Look, if getting 1% chance of getting hired as SCOTUS clerk as a top 20% student at HLS vs. 2% chance at YLS is the type of "calculated risk" that you think people should take or the type of probability assessment that makes you proud of attending YLS, then good for you. For all we know, these probabilities could be reversed. I reiterate what I wrote before, as a top student at HLS, you will not be disadvantaged compared to top students at YLS or SLS.

Again, this is all wrong. How do you explain YLS's superior clerkship placement on SCOTUS? On a per capita basis, YLS places three times as many clerks on SCOTUS as HLS. Is this a statistical anomaly that just happens to recur year after year?

Its really only twice as many or a little less than twice, since 25% of HLS students ultimately clerk (only 15-17% at 9mo, but thats a dumb stat), versus 45-50% of YLS. But yea Yale has a measurable advantage (as does Stanford).

[rpupkin]

Look, if getting 1% chance of getting hired as SCOTUS clerk as a top 20% student at HLS vs. 2% chance at YLS is the type of "calculated risk" that you think people should take or the type of probability assessment that makes you proud of attending YLS, then good for you. For all we know, these probabilities could be reversed. I reiterate what I wrote before, as a top student at HLS, you will not be disadvantaged compared to top students at YLS or SLS.

Again, this is all wrong. How do you explain YLS's superior clerkship placement on SCOTUS? On a per capita basis, YLS places three times as many clerks on SCOTUS as HLS. Is this a statistical anomaly that just happens to recur year after year?

Its really only twice as many or a little less than twice, since 25% of HLS students ultimately clerk (only 15-17% at 9mo, but thats a dumb stat), versus 45-50% of YLS. But yea Yale has a measurable advantage (as does Stanford).

I don't understand why the starting point should be the pool of students who actually clerk. Are you suggesting that there are a meaningful number of possible SCOTUS clerkship candidates among the pool of students who choose not to clerk at all? That seems quite wrong to me.

Anyway, here are some SCOTUS placement stats for 2003-13:

http://www.leiterrankings.com/new/2013_ ... ment.shtml

[jbagelboy]

Look, if getting 1% chance of getting hired as SCOTUS clerk as a top 20% student at HLS vs. 2% chance at YLS is the type of "calculated risk" that you think people should take or the type of probability assessment that makes you proud of attending YLS, then good for you. For all we know, these probabilities could be reversed. I reiterate what I wrote before, as a top student at HLS, you will not be disadvantaged compared to top students at YLS or SLS.

Again, this is all wrong. How do you explain YLS's superior clerkship placement on SCOTUS? On a per capita basis, YLS places three times as many clerks on SCOTUS as HLS. Is this a statistical anomaly that just happens to recur year after year?

Its really only twice as many or a little less than twice, since 25% of HLS students ultimately clerk (only 15-17% at 9mo, but thats a dumb stat), versus 45-50% of YLS. But yea Yale has a measurable advantage (as does Stanford).

I don't understand why the starting point should be the pool of students who actually clerk. Are you suggesting that there are a meaningful number of possible SCOTUS clerkship candidates among the pool of students who choose not to clerk at all? That seems quite wrong to me.

Anyway, here are some SCOTUS placement stats for 2003-13:

http://www.leiterrankings.com/new/2013_ ... ment.shtml

Oh yea you're right of course, poor reading on my phone I thought we were talking about clerkships generally.

[redleader6]

Fwiw I have no ambitions of clerking for scotus. I definitely want to do PI but clerking sounds like a cool way to experience a different side of the justice system for a few years without dedicating my life to becoming a judge

[lawlorbust]

Fwiw I have no ambitions of clerking for scotus. I definitely want to do PI but clerking sounds like a cool way to experience a different side of the justice system for a few years without dedicating my life to becoming a judge

I for one don't regret HLS (I came off the SLS waitlist). That said, I also have the benefit of having done quite well here, which helps with staying on the standard prestige track that I'm interested in. With my admittedly juvenile goals, I'll probably be a lot more unhappy if I turned out to finish around median, which after all is the . . . median outcome.

I think with PI, my understanding is that HLS's advantage is simply the critical mass of that community (in students, but also the infrastructure supporting that students), which aligns you with other people with similar interests, provides an incredible network that goes further the more niche your targeted field is, and so on.

In my mind, the person who least benefits from HLS -- and comes off worst when she could have taken a boatload of money elsewhere -- is the person who's aiming / would slide towards biglaw. There are some advantages here vis-a-vis elsewhere in the T-14, i.e. median here gets Cravath and more often than not lands up in the V10, but that probably doesn't offset the higher financial cost. Of course, the irony is that this is the majority of HLS students.

Outcomes aside, between HYS, it's easy to forget that all three simply are fantastic schools and that fit will often be the dispositive factor. I cringe at the, ahem, zealotry (and pure ignorance) of quite a few posters who'd defend a HLS education whatever the circumstances, but they're no worse than TLS's teeming reflexive anti-HLS mob (none of whom actually attended a peer school) that can simply screw off.

[landshoes]

Fwiw I have no ambitions of clerking for scotus. I definitely want to do PI but clerking sounds like a cool way to experience a different side of the justice system for a few years without dedicating my life to becoming a judge

I for one don't regret HLS (I came off the SLS waitlist). That said, I also have the benefit of having done quite well here, which helps with staying on the standard prestige track that I'm interested in. With my admittedly juvenile goals, I'll probably be a lot more unhappy if I turned out to finish around median, which after all is the . . . median outcome.

I think with PI, my understanding is that HLS's advantage is simply the critical mass of that community (in students, but also the infrastructure supporting that students), which aligns you with other people with similar interests, provides an incredible network that goes further the more niche your targeted field is, and so on.

In my mind, the person who least benefits from HLS -- and comes off worst when she could have taken a boatload of money elsewhere -- is the person who's aiming / would slide towards biglaw. There are some advantages here vis-a-vis elsewhere in the T-14, i.e. median here gets Cravath and more often than not lands up in the V10, but that probably doesn't offset the higher financial cost. Of course, the irony is that this is the majority of HLS students.

Outcomes aside, between HYS, it's easy to forget that all three simply are fantastic schools and that fit will often be the dispositive factor. I cringe at the, ahem, zealotry (and pure ignorance) of quite a few posters who'd defend a HLS education whatever the circumstances, but they're no worse than TLS's teeming reflexive anti-HLS mob (none of whom actually attended a peer school) that can simply screw off.

ha ha ha holy shit

you'd think that one of the major pluses of going to HLS would be that you don't feel the need to defend its honor against the teeming mass of T-6 plebes who would impugn it

and yet here we are

[landshoes]

like, I know a lot of douchey HLS people but even I am starting to feel kinda bad for how they are being represented here

look, OP, SLS has smaller 1L required classes (not just a smaller overall class). It also has the quarter system, which some people absolutely hate (and which I think makes a HUGE and underrated difference in your 1L experience).

they're both great schools, you'll be fine at either.

[hlsperson123]

Fwiw I have no ambitions of clerking for scotus. I definitely want to do PI but clerking sounds like a cool way to experience a different side of the justice system for a few years without dedicating my life to becoming a judge

I for one don't regret HLS (I came off the SLS waitlist). That said, I also have the benefit of having done quite well here, which helps with staying on the standard prestige track that I'm interested in. With my admittedly juvenile goals, I'll probably be a lot more unhappy if I turned out to finish around median, which after all is the . . . median outcome.

I think with PI, my understanding is that HLS's advantage is simply the critical mass of that community (in students, but also the infrastructure supporting that students), which aligns you with other people with similar interests, provides an incredible network that goes further the more niche your targeted field is, and so on.

In my mind, the person who least benefits from HLS -- and comes off worst when she could have taken a boatload of money elsewhere -- is the person who's aiming / would slide towards biglaw. There are some advantages here vis-a-vis elsewhere in the T-14, i.e. median here gets Cravath and more often than not lands up in the V10, but that probably doesn't offset the higher financial cost. Of course, the irony is that this is the majority of HLS students.

Outcomes aside, between HYS, it's easy to forget that all three simply are fantastic schools and that fit will often be the dispositive factor. I cringe at the, ahem, zealotry (and pure ignorance) of quite a few posters who'd defend a HLS education whatever the circumstances, but they're no worse than TLS's teeming reflexive anti-HLS mob (none of whom actually attended a peer school) that can simply screw off.

ha ha ha holy shit

you'd think that one of the major pluses of going to HLS would be that you don't feel the need to defend its honor against the teeming mass of T-6 plebes who would impugn it

and yet here we are

Well debating the merits of HLS and SLS is literally the subject of this thread, so it doesn't seem hard to believe that HLS students would "defend its honor" (whatever that means) here. There are a few things misconceptions in this thread:

1) The chance of "striking out" at HLS is higher than at SLS. Given that neither school releases stats on strike-outs and striking out is not necessarily the school's fault, it's important to recognize how speculative that claim is. The data we do have is LST (http://www.lstscorereports.com/compare/ ... /stanford/), in which HLS and SLS have virtually identical employment scores (89.1% and 88.2%, respectively). Even if the risk of striking out is higher at HLS (again, not established by any real evidence), the marginal difference in risk is so small that it really shouldn't be a consideration.

2) Harvard has worse clerkship numbers than Yale. Well actually this is true. But it's not relevant to OP's decision. It's a bit silly that half this thread is debating whether top 20% at HLS or YLS is competitive for SCOTUS when that has zero bearing on OP's choice.

HLS and SLS are peer schools. The outcomes from these schools are not drastically different. IMO the choice really comes down to the school experience itself: would you prefer a big school (more connections with other students, more people interested in the same thing you are), or a small school (more access to professors, perhaps a tighter-knit community)? Do you want to practice on the East Coast or the West Coast? Do you like Cambridge or Stanford? There are no right answers to these questions but they can have a big impact on your happiness and by extension how well you do at school.

[lawlorbust]

Fwiw I have no ambitions of clerking for scotus. I definitely want to do PI but clerking sounds like a cool way to experience a different side of the justice system for a few years without dedicating my life to becoming a judge

I for one don't regret HLS (I came off the SLS waitlist). That said, I also have the benefit of having done quite well here, which helps with staying on the standard prestige track that I'm interested in. With my admittedly juvenile goals, I'll probably be a lot more unhappy if I turned out to finish around median, which after all is the . . . median outcome.

I think with PI, my understanding is that HLS's advantage is simply the critical mass of that community (in students, but also the infrastructure supporting that students), which aligns you with other people with similar interests, provides an incredible network that goes further the more niche your targeted field is, and so on.

In my mind, the person who least benefits from HLS -- and comes off worst when she could have taken a boatload of money elsewhere -- is the person who's aiming / would slide towards biglaw. There are some advantages here vis-a-vis elsewhere in the T-14, i.e. median here gets Cravath and more often than not lands up in the V10, but that probably doesn't offset the higher financial cost. Of course, the irony is that this is the majority of HLS students.

Outcomes aside, between HYS, it's easy to forget that all three simply are fantastic schools and that fit will often be the dispositive factor. I cringe at the, ahem, zealotry (and pure ignorance) of quite a few posters who'd defend a HLS education whatever the circumstances, but they're no worse than TLS's teeming reflexive anti-HLS mob (none of whom actually attended a peer school) that can simply screw off.

ha ha ha holy shit

you'd think that one of the major pluses of going to HLS would be that you don't feel the need to defend its honor against the teeming mass of T-6 plebes who would impugn it

and yet here we are

On the contrary, once upon I tried, now I just roll my eyes and shuffle on. Can't hold back the tide, etcetera etcetera.

Call me cynical to ever hope that your everyday TLS poster will give me the same benefit of the doubt that (after, you know, quite a bit of thought) I made the right decision to go to Harvard that I give to their decision to attend a T5/UChicago/T13/T1/whatever.

[jbagelboy]

Fwiw I have no ambitions of clerking for scotus. I definitely want to do PI but clerking sounds like a cool way to experience a different side of the justice system for a few years without dedicating my life to becoming a judge

I for one don't regret HLS (I came off the SLS waitlist). That said, I also have the benefit of having done quite well here, which helps with staying on the standard prestige track that I'm interested in. With my admittedly juvenile goals, I'll probably be a lot more unhappy if I turned out to finish around median, which after all is the . . . median outcome.

I think with PI, my understanding is that HLS's advantage is simply the critical mass of that community (in students, but also the infrastructure supporting that students), which aligns you with other people with similar interests, provides an incredible network that goes further the more niche your targeted field is, and so on.

In my mind, the person who least benefits from HLS -- and comes off worst when she could have taken a boatload of money elsewhere -- is the person who's aiming / would slide towards biglaw. There are some advantages here vis-a-vis elsewhere in the T-14, i.e. median here gets Cravath and more often than not lands up in the V10, but that probably doesn't offset the higher financial cost. Of course, the irony is that this is the majority of HLS students.

Outcomes aside, between HYS, it's easy to forget that all three simply are fantastic schools and that fit will often be the dispositive factor. I cringe at the, ahem, zealotry (and pure ignorance) of quite a few posters who'd defend a HLS education whatever the circumstances, but they're no worse than TLS's teeming reflexive anti-HLS mob (none of whom actually attended a peer school) that can simply screw off.

ha ha ha holy shit

you'd think that one of the major pluses of going to HLS would be that you don't feel the need to defend its honor against the teeming mass of T-6 plebes who would impugn it

and yet here we are

On the contrary, once upon I tried, now I just (physically) roll my eyes and shuffle on. Can't hold back the tide, etcetera etcetera.

Call me cynical to ever hope that your everyday TLS poster will give me the same benefit of the doubt that (after, you know, quite a bit of thought) I made the right decision to go to Harvard that I give to their decision to attend a T5/UChicago/T13/T1/whatever.

I assume you're largely referring to me in these posts (inaccurate in your description, but no matter), and I will just say that I think you made the right decision to go to Harvard, as did most of the people there. It's a pretty narrow set of circumstances where going to HLS is an objectively wrong choice.

[lawlorbust]

I assume you're largely referring to me in these posts (inaccurate in your description, but no matter), and I will just say that I think you made the right decision to go to Harvard, as did most of the people there. It's a pretty narrow set of circumstances where going to HLS is an objectively wrong choice.

Actually, no, I really don't spend much time on this forum so I don't have very a deep impression of many posters, but you've struck me as being the paradigm of reasonableness with regards to the core idea that different schools are better fits for different people.

I'm more referring to the HLS v. XXX ($$$) threads where you have 20 people whose automatic one-line response is "duh, don't be stupid, take the money and run." It's more often than not more complicated than that. (To be clear, I don't necessarily think this is the Wrong Answer, and separately I think in many cases the outcome of getting bad advice is a result of not properly framing the context or asking the right questions.)

[Tiago Splitter]

Why so douchey after admitting that most HLS students will end up in the position where they should have taken the money? Please tell us more 2L.

[WheninLaw]

Sometimes I have to remember that when a school enrolls 9 billion law students, you are bound to get a few like those in this thread.

[Single-Malt-Liquor]

Why so douchey after admitting that most HLS students will end up in the position where they should have taken the money? Please tell us more 2L.

This is clutch. As I face like $150K in student loans, it's not turning down SLS that haunts me, it's turning down the full ride at UVA.

[eph]

No. But had I done the opposite the answer would still be no. No.

[The Greyest Goose]

I chose HLS and I don't regret it one bit. I actually didn't really care that much for my time at HLS. Boston kind of sucks and half your classmates are are extremely neurotic. But it's such a big school you will always find plenty of great people to be around, and there are a ton of options for classes, seminars, clinics, speakers etc.

Harvard is for life though and I think the benefits become more and more apparent after graduation. It's silly and petty but people immediately think you more competent and you rarely have to waste time trying to prove your intelligence or qualification. No matter where on EARTH you go, people will recognize your school in a very positive light. This doesn't matter very much if you stay in law or stay in the United States, but if you leave law or work abroad, I think you will find HLS carries significantly more weight than either YLS or SLS.

I also turned down money, and a full ride, at lower T-14 schools. I don't regret it one bit, in part because I ended up around median at HLS, so I may have struck out had I gone to a lower T-14. I also just don't think 200k is that significant in the long run. Not that it isn't a lot of money, but if 200k ends up being a relevant amount to me over the course of my career, then I have failed in more ways than one.

SLS is a great school though and all my friends that went there really enjoyed their time and seem to be doing great things career wise. You can't really go wrong and wherever you go, I'm sure in 10 years you will look back on it as a good decision.

[eph]

Why so douchey after admitting that most HLS students will end up in the position where they should have taken the money? Please tell us more 2L.

Your avatar tells the story. A select few play in the NBA (which by the way sucks, but I digress). Fewer still have rings. Some do all they can to increase their chances. Logical? Maybe not. Prudent? Not necessarily. Real? Since time immemorial.

[landshoes]

It's not defending HLS that is the douchey part. HLS is a fine school, blah blah blah. It's that pretty much every single one of these "defenses" contains at least one line that is so snobby and/or arrogant that it reads as parody

I mean:

if 200k ends up being a relevant amount to me over the course of my career, then I have failed in more ways than one.

that's...someone has to be fucking with us right now? it's like the HLS stereotype mass registered a bunch of accounts 2-3 years ago just to pull off this magnificent troll

[landshoes]

Fwiw I have no ambitions of clerking for scotus. I definitely want to do PI but clerking sounds like a cool way to experience a different side of the justice system for a few years without dedicating my life to becoming a judge

I for one don't regret HLS (I came off the SLS waitlist). That said, I also have the benefit of having done quite well here, which helps with staying on the standard prestige track that I'm interested in. With my admittedly juvenile goals, I'll probably be a lot more unhappy if I turned out to finish around median, which after all is the . . . median outcome.

I think with PI, my understanding is that HLS's advantage is simply the critical mass of that community (in students, but also the infrastructure supporting that students), which aligns you with other people with similar interests, provides an incredible network that goes further the more niche your targeted field is, and so on.

In my mind, the person who least benefits from HLS -- and comes off worst when she could have taken a boatload of money elsewhere -- is the person who's aiming / would slide towards biglaw. There are some advantages here vis-a-vis elsewhere in the T-14, i.e. median here gets Cravath and more often than not lands up in the V10, but that probably doesn't offset the higher financial cost. Of course, the irony is that this is the majority of HLS students.

Outcomes aside, between HYS, it's easy to forget that all three simply are fantastic schools and that fit will often be the dispositive factor. I cringe at the, ahem, zealotry (and pure ignorance) of quite a few posters who'd defend a HLS education whatever the circumstances, but they're no worse than TLS's teeming reflexive anti-HLS mob (none of whom actually attended a peer school) that can simply screw off.

ha ha ha holy shit

you'd think that one of the major pluses of going to HLS would be that you don't feel the need to defend its honor against the teeming mass of T-6 plebes who would impugn it

and yet here we are

On the contrary, once upon I tried, now I just roll my eyes and shuffle on. Can't hold back the tide, etcetera etcetera.

Call me cynical to ever hope that your everyday TLS poster will give me the same benefit of the doubt that (after, you know, quite a bit of thought) I made the right decision to go to Harvard that I give to their decision to attend a T5/UChicago/T13/T1/whatever.

it's not that, it's that you felt the need to remind us that none of the "mob" attended a "peer" school

it's that I feel like one of the benefits of going to HLS is that you don't have to constantly remind people that, you know, it's ranked pretty high

it's not like you're at penn and people are confusing it with penn state. but you still feel the need to constantly remind us that other schools are ranked lower. and that is weird and something that I would not have predicted from someone going to HLS, where a large part of the point is that most people assume you're at the best law school in the country.

[landshoes]

also look HLS is a totally fine school and a totally fine choice

I still find it funny/horrible that they sent all their most blatantly status-conscious posters here today

also, OP, I forgot to mention that Cambridge and Palo Alto are very different and it's (obviously) a lot easier to get around the East Coast from Cambridge, so if you are close with your family and want to see them a lot, then you should take that into consideration.

[Single-Malt-Liquor]

I'm gonna make this easy. Watch a couple of episodes of Silicon Valley and watch this five minute parody clip about Boston called Spawtlight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIFepDzQsbE
Go to the school who's parody seems less horrible.

[landshoes]

Call me cynical to ever hope that your everyday TLS poster will give me the same benefit of the doubt that (after, you know, quite a bit of thought) I made the right decision to go to Harvard that I give to their decision to attend a T5/UChicago/T13/T1/whatever.

also wait were you legitimately trying to make me mad by putting uchi outside of the "T5"

omg

there is no way this is real, and I would like the SLS admissions staff to own up to this immediately or else I will I report all of you to the bar

[The Greyest Goose]

It's not defending HLS that is the douchey part. HLS is a fine school, blah blah blah. It's that pretty much every single one of these "defenses" contains at least one line that is so snobby and/or arrogant that it reads as parody

I mean:

if 200k ends up being a relevant amount to me over the course of my career, then I have failed in more ways than one.

that's...someone has to be fucking with us right now? it's like the HLS stereotype mass registered a bunch of accounts 2-3 years ago just to pull off this magnificent troll

Some people have high goals. My only point is that with PAYE your downside on 200k of debt is capped. If you do PI or government you will get it forgiven anyway. If you want to stick with private practice or go in house, and you went to a top law school, then I think it's fair to aim to make enough that 200k won't matter much in the long run. Of course it's a ridiculous amount of money, more than my parents ever made, but there really are millions of people in the world for whom 200k isn't a significant amount of money, and I don't think there is any shame in aspiring to such wealth. You should realize by the time you enroll in law school WHY you are doing it. Even if it is as vague as helping the poor or making a lot of money. I went to law school so that I would have a significantly better standard of living than the one I grew up with, and so I could provide the same for my family. So yea, if 200k ends up being relevant to me, then I have failed in a way because I will not have followed through on my primary reason for going to law school.

[chevelle64]

Can't speak to the PI/clerking info here, but there is SO much misinformation on HLS and biglaw placement in this thread. Someone earlier made the insinuation that offers to firms like Ropes and Cravath only go to the top 100 students (top 1/6), which is laughable. There may be a couple of places with that level of selectivity or higher at HLS (W&C, MTO), but the overwhelming majority of students including those with straight Ps can get jobs at great biglaw firms if they wanted.

People who strike out have themselves and not HLS to blame (getting LPs, failing to know even rudimentary information about firms, etc).

[kloseframe]

I chose SLS over HLS and also have no regrets, for what its worth. I'm out of law school now and back on the East Coast and still have no regrets. I think the folks who say that its really about fit and which place you like more are right. I wouldn't get too bogged down in the minutiae of SCOTUS clerkships, or anything else. For PI, there are advantages and disadvantages to both, and both will afford you enough of a platform to have a meaningful career. Go where you want.