Is Columbia at sticker worth it? Forum

[Nebby]

I'm the future it's best to research something before giving your knee-jerk reaction

[call-me-bubbles]

.

[flowering]

.

[UVA2B]

Probably half the people entering CLS are interested in PI. Only about 15% end up doing it. Reason is because, law students in our generation are risk averse due to the crash, and (1) it's easy to get biglaw and (2) much harder to get PI, therefore most go with the less risky route.

How easy is it to get a big law job from a school like CLS? What percentage of students would you say want biglaw jobs but end up without offers, and what causes them to strike out?

Not a CLS student, but they place in Biglaw as well as/better than any school in the country. If you're gunning for NYC BIglaw, you can't pick a better school (well you can based on cost, but in a vacuum, nothing out punches CLS for Biglaw statistically). CLS is the de facto feeder of NYC Biglaw, along with NYU, with everyone else filling in the rest of the gaps. Beyond NYC, the playing field gets evened, but CLS still carries equal weight to other T13s.

[Rigo]

If you miss biglaw at Columbia you either bid extremely stupidly or have an aggressively offputting personality.

[T3TON]

Probably half the people entering CLS are interested in PI. Only about 15% end up doing it. Reason is because, law students in our generation are risk averse due to the crash, and (1) it's easy to get biglaw and (2) much harder to get PI, therefore most go with the less risky route.

How easy is it to get a big law job from a school like CLS? What percentage of students would you say want biglaw jobs but end up without offers, and what causes them to strike out?

Not a CLS student, but they place in Biglaw as well as/better than any school in the country. If you're gunning for NYC BIglaw, you can't pick a better school (well you can based on cost, but in a vacuum, nothing out punches CLS for Biglaw statistically). CLS is the de facto feeder of NYC Biglaw, along with NYU, with everyone else filling in the rest of the gaps. Beyond NYC, the playing field gets evened, but CLS still carries equal weight to other T13s.

If youre talking about NY big law this is a bit of an overstatement. CLS does send the highest % of its class into NY big law but at least some of that is self-selection (look at its clerkship numbers and the % of people heading to other markets). When you look at placement power (the ability to get coveted jobs, especially from the bottom of the class) it falls a bit behind Harvard and a bit farther behind Yale and Stanford. Once you start talking about non-NY big law the gap between HYS and CCN grows further, and depending on the market other t14 schools may enjoy a slight regional advantage.

All the same CLS has an unimpeachable reputation in NY. If you do even slightly well there you can comfortably get a big law job in the city. Whether that is worth sticker is another story. I think Id feel comfortable paying that much if my other options were similar, but I would be a bit bitter having to pay off such a large amount of debt.

[Nebby]

If youre talking about NY big law this is a bit of an overstatement. CLS does send the highest % of its class into NY big law but at least some of that is self-selection (look at its clerkship numbers and the % of people heading to other markets). When you look at placement power (the ability to get coveted jobs, especially from the bottom of the class) it falls a bit behind Harvard and a bit farther behind Yale and Stanford. Once you start talking about non-NY big law the gap between HYS and CCN grows further, and depending on the market other t14 schools may enjoy a slight regional advantage

Like? Examples?

[T3TON]

If youre talking about NY big law this is a bit of an overstatement. CLS does send the highest % of its class into NY big law but at least some of that is self-selection (look at its clerkship numbers and the % of people heading to other markets). When you look at placement power (the ability to get coveted jobs, especially from the bottom of the class) it falls a bit behind Harvard and a bit farther behind Yale and Stanford. Once you start talking about non-NY big law the gap between HYS and CCN grows further, and depending on the market other t14 schools may enjoy a slight regional advantage

Like? Examples?

Im not sure what you want examples of. If its difference in placement power, V15 firms routinely give offers to people with straight Ps at YS. I think its uncontroversial that the very bottom of CLS's class isnt as fortunate. If you are looking for examples of regional advantage it all depends on what you want. It definitely makes sense to take UChi over CLS if you want Chicago. Parts of the south are also difficult to break into and tend to favor their own schools (e.g. UVA).

None of this takes away from CLS's excellence as a school. The vast plurality of students get a good outcome.

[hangingtree]

If youre talking about NY big law this is a bit of an overstatement. CLS does send the highest % of its class into NY big law but at least some of that is self-selection (look at its clerkship numbers and the % of people heading to other markets). When you look at placement power (the ability to get coveted jobs, especially from the bottom of the class) it falls a bit behind Harvard and a bit farther behind Yale and Stanford. Once you start talking about non-NY big law the gap between HYS and CCN grows further, and depending on the market other t14 schools may enjoy a slight regional advantage

Like? Examples?

Im not sure what you want examples of. If its difference in placement power, V15 firms routinely give offers to people with straight Ps at YS. I think its uncontroversial that the very bottom of CLS's class isnt as fortunate. If you are looking for examples of regional advantage it all depends on what you want. It definitely makes sense to take UChi over CLS if you want Chicago. Parts of the south are also difficult to break into and tend to favor their own schools (e.g. UVA).

None of this takes away from CLS's excellence as a school. The vast plurality of students get a good outcome.

+1 to T3TON's comments.

Went to lower T10 and now friends with a number of Columbia grads (elite NYC biglaw). We haven't talked at length about what brought us here, but I understand that at Columbia you needed to be top 25% or so to get past the screener at OCI, which was the same for my school. Upside is better at Columbia, as a top student has a solid chance at SCOTUS, for example, whereas the lower T10 will just send a student or two there each year.

Most importantly, risk of striking out at OCI is lot lower at Columbia. Median (25th-60th percentile or so) at lower T10 will get you biglaw 100% if you hustle and aren't bad at interviewing. Same grades at Columbia, from what I understand, will get you biglaw basically without those conditions.

That is a huge difference. Even if it turns out that you are bad at law school, working as hard as you possibly can for all of 1L will very likely get you out of the bottom quarter/third of the class.

If the choice is attending Michigan for $100K vs. Columbia at anything close to sticker, the answer is Michigan (unless you are very risk-averse and very not debt-averse.) But as soon as Columbia starts throwing money at you, the answer should quickly become Columbia. Would you pay, say, $200K for guaranteed biglaw over $100K very likely biglaw? I probably would.