Harvard v. UChicago Forum

[Joga Bonito]

lol...thats why you need hls...there will be an initial inferiority complex when you get to harvard...but after a while it will fade away (for the most part) and while hls may not be a cure all for public ug complex's its as close to a cure as your gonna get. Besides when you name drop at bars outside of chicago at lot of chicks are gonna think uchicago is like Chicago's CUNY.

Caveat-if you have to explain how good your school is to a girl, you've already lost that battle.

Yeah, Boston is cold and shitty too, but less windy. I love the city of chicago ( i live there but I'm from the south too) but uofc's campus is outside downtown, its in the hood and it's just depressing during the winter. During the summer and late spring, harvard and boston are cool. UofC is never cool although summer time chi is great (but if you wanna be in chi during the summers, go to hls and do summer internships in chi, problem solved, that way you avoid the shittness of chicago winters which bascially goes from mid-late october to june(only slightly kidding). Plus, Harvard's campus envrionment is just better imao, and again remember the H-Bomb (I know several hot girls-reasonably smart-who have admitted that the H-Bomb is effective, again its not a cure all but its a handy asset.

Ever heard of a UofC bomb, don't think so, why...there isn't one unless it destroys fun, social lives, self respect, dignity, confidence, the joy of life, the desire to live, stuff like that.

Haha preach it. BTW Joga Bonito, you rooting for Brazil in the WC? v/c e brasileiro?

I'm def rooting for the samba kings and holland, but no I'm not brasileiro. I hope brazil wins but I'm nervous cause spain is looking really good, u?

[APimpNamedSlickback]

I caught it.

excellent - it often gets lost over the interwebz... something I have yet to master... although I'm thinking about taking a class entitled "Al Gore's Guide to the WWW, b/c I invented it" as 1L Prep

You hear that APNS? You sure you want to deal with another 1L prepping gunner up there in Cambridge?

Chicago beckons you into its icy bosom, child. Come to it.

yes, yes, on second thought, op probably would look AWESOME in one of those vintage chic maroon sweatshirts.

ok but seriously, i think it is dangerous to assume that you'll land at the top of the class at a given school. but even granting that, i've got to take issue with the assertion that you'd have the same prospects at the top of either class. if you rock out at h, you'd have a pretty fantastic shot at a coa clerkship with a feeder judge or a v5. i dont think you can say the same about the top of uchicago's class, brilliant as those kids are.

in the worst case scenario, the kind of lrap offered at each school comes into play, and while i dont know the specifics, i wouldnt be shocked if that 60k merit scholarship is to a great degree canceled out by h's more generous loan repayment assistance.

[miamiman]

I caught it.

excellent - it often gets lost over the interwebz... something I have yet to master... although I'm thinking about taking a class entitled "Al Gore's Guide to the WWW, b/c I invented it" as 1L Prep

You hear that APNS? You sure you want to deal with another 1L prepping gunner up there in Cambridge?

Chicago beckons you into its icy bosom, child. Come to it.

yes, yes, on second thought, op probably would look AWESOME in one of those vintage chic maroon sweatshirts.

ok but seriously, i think it is dangerous to assume that you'll land at the top of the class at a given school. but even granting that, i've got to take issue with the assertion that you'd have the same prospects at the top of either class. if you rock out at h, you'd have a pretty fantastic shot at a coa clerkship with a feeder judge or a v5. i dont think you can say the same about the top of uchicago's class, brilliant as those kids are.

in the worst case scenario, the kind of lrap offered at each school comes into play, and while i dont know the specifics, i wouldnt be shocked if that 60k merit scholarship is to a great degree canceled out by h's more generous loan repayment assistance.

I suspect the top of the class has largely identical options. It's the mushy middle where things get interesting.

[d34d9823]

I'm def rooting for the samba kings and holland, but no I'm not brasileiro. I hope brazil wins but I'm nervous cause spain is looking really good, u?

So true. most teams have a few superstar players, almost everyone who starts for Spain is a superstar. Who's their worst starter? Xabi Alonso? He's a total hack.

Brazil looks good too, but I'm worried about their midfield. They have like 6 great strikers and very few solid holding midfield players. Compare that to Spain who have the best center mid in the world marshaling the side.

[APimpNamedSlickback]

.

[miamiman]

I suspect the top of the class has largely identical options. It's the mushy middle where things get interesting.

no way, man. not sure how id go about proving this, but magna cum laude at harvard is rarefied air

As is Order of the Coif, Kirkland Scholar, blah blah blah, at Chicago

[d34d9823]

I suspect the top of the class has largely identical options. It's the mushy middle where things get interesting.

no way, man. not sure how id go about proving this, but magna cum laude at harvard is rarefied air

I think both of these are a little off. #1 at Harvard is better than #1 at Chicago sure, but where's the equivalence? #1 at Chicago is still V5/feeder material. I would guess the opportunities are slightly staggered, with top 10% at Harvard = top 6% at Chicago or something similar.

Edit: also lol that the Harvard guy and the Chicago guy are debating this

[sfdreaming09]

Harvard.

[swimbrad]

I suspect the top of the class has largely identical options. It's the mushy middle where things get interesting.

no way, man. not sure how id go about proving this, but magna cum laude at harvard is rarefied air

I think both of these are a little off. #1 at Harvard is better than #1 at Chicago sure, but where's the equivalence? #1 at Chicago is still V5/feeder material. I would guess the opportunities are slightly staggered, with top 10% at Harvard = top 6% at Chicago or something similar.

Edit: also lol that the Harvard guy and the Chicago guy are debating this

To my surprise this thread has been extraordinarily useful and full of good information, which is kinda hard to come by... I guess that's what I get for not being a troll/flame huh?

also...I love the details given by the poster above me

[Joga Bonito]

I'm def rooting for the samba kings and holland, but no I'm not brasileiro. I hope brazil wins but I'm nervous cause spain is looking really good, u?

So true. most teams have a few superstar players, almost everyone who starts for Spain is a superstar. Who's their worst starter? Xabi Alonso? He's a total hack.

Brazil looks good too, but I'm worried about their midfield. They have like 6 great strikers and very few solid holding midfield players. Compare that to Spain who have the best center mid in the world marshaling the side.

Yeahh, I have to give it to Spain, bascially everybody in their strating lineup is a superstar, it's insane. I feel like Brazil used to be like that. Now they have a lot of really good players, a lot of up and coming stars and a some old stars who are pass their prime, perfect ex. Ronaldinho, also Gilberto (both), Lucio and Adriano. When Brazil plays well, they're my favorite team to watch and I love their style of play, but Spains a beast and they play well consistently.

I hope the U.S. makes it out of group stage, I think its very possible and I feel like they get better every year.

[AngryAvocado]

You hear that APNS? You sure you want to deal with another 1L prepping gunner up there in Cambridge?

Chicago beckons you into its icy bosom, child. Come to it.

yes, yes, on second thought, op probably would look AWESOME in one of those vintage chic maroon sweatshirts.

ok but seriously, i think it is dangerous to assume that you'll land at the top of the class at a given school. but even granting that, i've got to take issue with the assertion that you'd have the same prospects at the top of either class. if you rock out at h, you'd have a pretty fantastic shot at a coa clerkship with a feeder judge or a v5. i dont think you can say the same about the top of uchicago's class, brilliant as those kids are.

in the worst case scenario, the kind of lrap offered at each school comes into play, and while i dont know the specifics, i wouldnt be shocked if that 60k merit scholarship is to a great degree canceled out by h's more generous loan repayment assistance.

I suspect the top of the class has largely identical options. It's the mushy middle where things get interesting.

You calling me fat? And APNS, maroon is the new crimson. Get with the times, bra.

[Rand M.]

The thread discussion seems a great deal more balanced than the vote totals. I think OP wins either way. Lean on Chicago for more money, visit Harvard, and see if these things tip the scale in one direction or another.

[doyleoil]

i'm not gonna contribute much substantive other than to say op can't make a bad choice here (he can, however, make bad choices after he starts in the fall at either place)

i ducked in to say this:

getting hired by skadden and a coa feeder judge are two vastly different worlds, brah;

to this:

at h, you'd have a pretty fantastic shot at a coa clerkship with a feeder judge or a v5

[swimbrad]

The thread discussion seems a great deal more balanced than the vote totals. I think OP wins either way. Lean on Chicago for more money, visit Harvard, and see if these things tip the scale in one direction or another.

I agree with this on many counts... I think I'm going to Harvard on Thurs and Fri to check it out

I think the initial inclination, just looking at the title is Harvard, you dumb-ass, but upon further reading it's actually a hard choice...
Thanks again for the advice

[APimpNamedSlickback]

x

[Joga Bonito]

The thread discussion seems a great deal more balanced than the vote totals. I think OP wins either way. Lean on Chicago for more money, visit Harvard, and see if these things tip the scale in one direction or another.

I agree with this on many counts... I think I'm going to Harvard on Thurs and Fri to check it out

I think the initial inclination, just looking at the title is Harvard, you dumb-ass, but upon further reading it's actually a hard choice...
Thanks again for the advice

OP, I'm not trying to be douchey or simplistic, but the only way I see this being a hard decision is if you
A. Hate Harvard/Boston
B. UChicago gives you tons of money, well over half tuition.
C. Your Doing a Ph.D in Economics and the econ prof. you really want to work with is at UofC, (although harvard is till just as good).
D. You can't stand the idea of being in a large law school class and want a small one but can't go to Yale.

Otherwise why not just go to the best school, Harvard is clearly better?

[swimbrad]

The thread discussion seems a great deal more balanced than the vote totals. I think OP wins either way. Lean on Chicago for more money, visit Harvard, and see if these things tip the scale in one direction or another.

I agree with this on many counts... I think I'm going to Harvard on Thurs and Fri to check it out

I think the initial inclination, just looking at the title is Harvard, you dumb-ass, but upon further reading it's actually a hard choice...
Thanks again for the advice

OP, I'm not trying to be douchey or simplistic, but the only way I see this being a hard decision is if you
A. Hate Harvard/Boston
B. UChicago gives you tons of money, well over half tuition.
C. Your Doing a Ph.D in Economics and the econ prof. you really want to work with is at UofC, (although harvard is till just as good).
D. You can't stand the idea of being in a large law school class and want a small one but can't go to Yale.

Otherwise why not just go to the best school, Harvard is clearly better?

no... this is good!

A. I've never been to Boston so this is the great unknown
B. They are giving me half
C. N/A
D. I don't know the advantages of a large class, as I've never really been a part of one academically... for my masters, we had ~120 kids

So the large thing does scare me a bit as far as how much will the administration take interest/care of me, which was something I liked about Chicago. They seemed like they would, unequivocally, go to bat for each and every one of their students (something I didn't feel about Columbia or NYU - the only large schools I visited)

[Joga Bonito]

The thread discussion seems a great deal more balanced than the vote totals. I think OP wins either way. Lean on Chicago for more money, visit Harvard, and see if these things tip the scale in one direction or another.

I agree with this on many counts... I think I'm going to Harvard on Thurs and Fri to check it out

I think the initial inclination, just looking at the title is Harvard, you dumb-ass, but upon further reading it's actually a hard choice...
Thanks again for the advice

OP, I'm not trying to be douchey or simplistic, but the only way I see this being a hard decision is if you
A. Hate Harvard/Boston
B. UChicago gives you tons of money, well over half tuition.
C. Your Doing a Ph.D in Economics and the econ prof. you really want to work with is at UofC, (although harvard is till just as good).
D. You can't stand the idea of being in a large law school class and want a small one but can't go to Yale.

Otherwise why not just go to the best school, Harvard is clearly better?

no... this is good!

A. I've never been to Boston so this is the great unknown
B. They are giving me half
C. N/A
D. I don't know the advantages of a large class, as I've never really been a part of one academically... for my masters, we had ~120 kids

So the large thing does scare me a bit as far as how much will the administration take interest/care of me, which was something I liked about Chicago. They seemed like they would, unequivocally, go to bat for each and every one of their students (something I didn't feel about Columbia or NYU - the only large schools I visited)

I would see if you can find some students to talk to about faculty, student relations. I have a good friend in a ph.d at uchicago right now and couple in the b school, two who finished law school there and the consensus for them seems to be that the facutly in general don't seem to be that concerned with their students. I've heard that hls and yls profs are equally as distant but not necessarily condescending to the point where UofC students have a slogan for their experience there, "we're your best isn't good enough." My friend in the ph.d program there says he hates his doctoral advisor and most profs don't care about you. This is anecdotal, but I think they reflect the culture there in general. Al lot of the people I know who have gone their have said they were depressed their first few months there, but they all learn a lot sooo...idk?

[swimbrad]

Speaking of that... does anyone know of, or is anyone, a current HLS student that will be around Thurs/Fri that wouldn't mind chatting with me/showing me around... I would be greatly appreciative and I always buy the beer
If so, please PM me

[c0rpusdelicti]

I swear I never get tired of reading this.

How did it happen that making the tired claim that this ghetto shithole is UNDERrated became the signature conversation piece for people who desperately want to be thought smart; really, really smart. smart people love “rigor” and Chicago is full of it; it must be, what with its hair-splitting number grades, punishingly low enforced mean, and oppressive course load. Chicago boosterism usually comes in the form of a comparison with the appallingly UNrigorous Stanford or Yale — gradeless, abundantly pass-fail, unserious; students who do nothing and know nothing. Chicago: graded, competitive, serious… That it’s really just a ruptured ego rehab clinic for Harvard rejects is a fact not emphasized. I have seen a homely Chicago girl, deep into her second year, still spontaneously weeping upon Proustian recollections of the stiff NO Harvard sent her, in brisk three-week turnaround time from the point her doomed application was deemed complete. Happy December, chickiepoo. Then the Yale axe fell, as it does. Welcome to the New Year, dipshit. January passed; February crawled by with those joyless acceptances that only accentuated the horror of Plan B: Georgetown, which is a “Law Center,” a failed euphemism if ever there was one. Next: woeful Cornell. Oh, what a very bad school. And — what do we have here?!? — a Boston University full-ride. Ummmm, no. On second thought in stead of BU I’d prefer the f free roasted dogshit mignon with a pus reduction sauce and a heaping blob of earwax garnish. Thank you no. I am woe.\

Add to that the fact that the imbecile whoalways posts about how Sean Hannity is a “serious thinker” just got into Harvard. Time for you to start some damage-control posting here, on the PR board, pretending to seriously consider this BU affront. You wave the flag of thrift and test out a quaintly anachronistic abhorrence of debt. Substantively, you add in some tommyrot about how BU’s “really strong in …’international law,’ whatever the fuck that is. BU? Yeah, right. But you need something that gives the illusion that Georgetown, if it comes to that, isn’t the three years incarcerated in a smegma chamber that it is. So good, so fine you’ll drop the cash dollars despite that lovely gift from BU. You’re forming a cover story; something to puff the very real and very nauseating prospect of joining 600 other defeated mediocrities at … fuck, no … Georgetown. And you thought going to college at Penn was bad. . Still, there are two more to hear from. Two more law schools …There’s that late April Stanford rejection (inconsiderate bastards) which at least affords you ample time to manufacture the next layer in the cover story: e.g., a strict policy against California, a suburban aversion, a preference for bigness, all of which eliminate Stanford from the sweepstakes. Be sure, too, to ridicule their tepid 25-75 LSAT %ile, too. Kill it dead, if you must. Maybe you thrust out of your frozen horror by sending off one of those strategic “withdrawal” letters, the way all those clowns do when Harvard puts them on hold … “.you cant’t fire me … i quit! ” Adios, Stanford. Suck my cunt, you no-SCOTUS-clerking/dike-dean-TTT. … die, die, you gravy-sucking pig. …. and now, then, there is just one. Chicago. The Law School. Chicago does do that pathetic yield-maximizing stall, so February passes, March crawls. They haven’t the nuts to try the ricockulous move Stanford does. So they write. Ever rigorous, The Law School requests the pleasure of your company. Not so fast . No decision has been made. They want to inspect you in person. The “evaluative interview. Looking for people skills. And evident thirst for knowledge. The life of the law is the law itself. It seems you’ve fucked up; quite possible3 when the went “behind the numbers.” Maybe those two essay paragraphs about why the 171, exactly where you topped out in Kaplan, is a truer measure than the 164. maybe it was two paragraphs too many. You weren’t an auto-admit. So off to the “evaluative interview,” and you give them not much to evaluate. You stay on message, though: owing to its RIGOR, Chicage is now, and ever was, your FIRST CHOICE. Tell your audience what it wants to hear. Then they decide, engaging the only evaluation that matters in this gig. Looks like they can break even with your sorry ass. Median-wise, your 171 nullifies the 159 URM from Howard they took yesterday. They’ll swallow your 3.46; sometimes that’s the price of a yield-lock, and you’re that. (No one’s swallowing the Howard guy, if you catch my racy double entendre.) These admissions guys talk, as you suspected, and you wisely decide against telling them it had come down to Chicago or Harvard for you; first versus second choice; no choice at all. Never get caught lying. Bad idea, even worse than telling that stupid girl from Emory you were “a Kennedy.” These things get found out. Like they say, no sense lying about your cock size. Turns out you didn’t need to fake a bidding war. The usual stampede of all Chicago’s best admitees are going to Y and H and S without so much as the courtesy of telling C to go pound sand. Why tell them what they already know? They need to fill place #143 of their famously teeny-weenie class. The assumed occupant got unheld at Harvard this morning; never so relieved, he had the audacity to ask Chicago for his deposit back. They don’t need these headaches. You’re in. They write, very pleased to offer admission; then a recital of just how “keen” the competition was for the few precious “seats” in the class of 2006; and, finally, a paragraph celebrating the legal profession with a toploftiness and richly felt purpose so precisely at variance with reality that you are unsettled by the suspicion that you might be the target of a satire so subtly corrosive that you will never connect it with the despair that will progress, exponentially; beginning as a persistent annoyance progressing into a pervasive physical and mental crapulence and ending in the crippling burden as lumber and writhe and tumble toward the epiphany
.
What epiphany is that? That this “career” of yours –BIGLAW! — has somewhat less to recommend it than residence in the “shoe” at Pelican Bay. For now, though, the seed of tragic hopelessness finds expression in the “Law Discussion Area.” You post — IN AT CHICAGO — and, without overtly lying, you manufacture the entirely erroneous impression that you “chose” Chicago, being also the originator of the CHICAGO v. HARVARD and YALE v. CHICAGO threads, under various of your insipid monikers, all selected from either Pulp Fiction or Friends. Be careful not to ass fuck your credibility, though. The purported Yale turn-down is a tough one to pull off. The “New Haven’s-an-armpit” trope just doesn’t pass the ha-ha test. It’s too puny a reason to toss away a lifetime of being supposed a genius … fuck it: always good to give your fabrications a little populist tint, not to mention a dollop of truth. Join the commiseration thread of Yale rejects; pretend to be sad for that Nuisance turd; be one of the masses for once. Getting rejected isn’t the same thing as not getting in, You merely did not get in. You claim to have been wait-listed; and, with admirable maturity, you hold out no hope. Remember, too, this lie must be built on several fronts. Lard up the Harvard thread with grave concern about big classes, low morale, faculty acrimony, and speculation about a precipitous US News ranking drop. Throughout April, you go political, fulminating about Tribe and Dershowitz and how Duncan Kennedy drives a far-too-expensive car. to be a genuine socialist. Chicago’s “conservative climate” is just a better fit for you; marginal cost curves figure in your every analytical moment; you read Posner opinions on the crapper; Coase is as important as Socrates. There is that little stinging glitch, though. Somehow Stanford neglected to process that request to quash your application, which is not favorably acted upon and this is memoriaized in a letter that suggests the Stanford Admissions Office ignores their LaserWriter Pro’s TONER LOW warning. On May 7th they regret to inform and wish you well at any of the scores of other law schools that, they assure you “offer excellent programs of legal instruction.” (Which, you have no doubt, they do. What they don’t offer, is really the only important thing Stanford does offer: the opportunity to sit for three years with your thumb up your ass, comatose, and still get the job you’ll have to bust nuts to get coming from whichever craphole you end up at.) It’s sealed. An ugly, styleless maroon CHICAGO LAW, Champion sweatshirt has arrived, per your online order. You wear it, eliciting congratulations from the babe you want to rail. She’s so happy for you, and you’re so wrapped up in the fantasy of creaming on her tits you nearly miss perky aside that her boyfriend remains in the throes of elation from his admission to Yale, back in January. Throughout the summer, you bookmark links that embody the wisdom US News lacks. Your are heading off, soon, to your own first choice, which also places first in a ranking produced by the rigorous methodology conceived by a statistician from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. That Harvard tied for #14 undermines your confidence in the ranking diminishes the likelihood it will supplant US News’ preeminence. So you go.

Your Hyde Park apartment is actually rather nice. Your housemate went to Harvard College. One night, instead of jacking off before sleep, you register as an active component of your self-conception the notion that, transitively, your housemate’s undergraduate credential nullifies the Harvard rejection that left you lusterless and unlaid at your senior prom, — and has persisted as a gnawing ache, going on five years. You are now on equal footing with a Harvard graduate. Should your law school prowess exceed his — say a 75 in Torts to his 74 — you will once and for all flick away the scab of that Harvard wound. First cut is the deepest. As it turns out, your housemate is an engaging, witty fellow. He’s porking the big bosomed lady with the Dutch accent. Wow! He offers to you, his new chum, the story of his own execution — by lethal injection — as expected, he painlessly relates, by the HLS admission staff. You pretend to explore what might have caused things to go awry, flatulating the usual fatuousness about Harvard being excessively “numbers driven,” the “arbitrariness” of it all, dangling the threat of going on at some length, when he offers up the only information you genuinely care to know about him: : 178/3.34 ..Of course some one will inevitably have the 6th percentile college GPA in every HLS class; probably not a white guy from Greenwich, though. Friendship is built through reciprocity. So you tell your own story. You attempt to weave compassion into the telling of your story, being careful not to appear boastful about not just possessing, but discarding something he does not possess. HLS. Dreamy, So, your story: the grueling back-and-forth … one day it’s Chicago, the next Harvard; the hardest decision you’ve ever made; that feeling of immense responsibility to yourself; discovering and summoning the emotional maturity to pierce the specious veil that is prestige. With the bearing of a battle weary soldier you tell what it is to do something rarely done — circumnavigate the Earth, dunk a basketball on a regulation hoop, turn down Harvard Law School . You picked Chicago. You chose, you adorable little existentialist. You are not exposed, chiefly because this a shared lie, Community glue. (Postscript: Throughout the 1Lyear you and your housemate discover much commonality, He, too, prefers the Stones to the Beatles. You both smoke pot. neither is circumcised. You’ve each fucked 5 girls; gotten head from several others. Each of you applies to transfer. He gets into HLS. He turns down Harvard Law School. Of course no two people are exactly alike. Your desire to transfer wanes around the time Stanford and Yale’s decisions on your transfer applications reach you by mail. You begin the CHIGAGO 1L TAKING QUESTIONS thread. One of your alter ego monikers asks simply: how do you like Chicago. You love it. You wouldn’t go anywhere else and, you note, there were other places you could have gone. Same for your housemate. He transfers to Yale.)

[swimbrad]

^ I specifically asked for better punctuation/the use of paragraphs if this was gonna be linked/quoted... c'mon

[c0rpusdelicti]

^ I specifically asked for better punctuation/the use of paragraphs if this was gonna be linked/quoted... c'mon

who do you think broke the original block of text up?

a little credit, come on.

[swimbrad]

^ I specifically asked for better punctuation/the use of paragraphs if this was gonna be linked/quoted... c'mon

who do you think broke the original block of text up?

a little credit, come on.

hahahaha... fair 'nuff

[ToTransferOrNot]

As a UChicago student, this is a no-brainer. Harvard. Short of a full tuition scholarship (which Chicago doesn't really do,) I don't think you should be giving this much thought.

[swimbrad]

As a UChicago student, this is a no-brainer. Harvard. Short of a full tuition scholarship (which Chicago doesn't really do,) I don't think you should be giving this much thought.

Bold, brazen, truth... I appreciate it...

so did you transfer in to UChi, or are you considering transferring out - if I may ask, in the interest of full disclosure