Class of 2013 Employment Data Forum

[rad lulz]

d

[20141023]

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[BentleyLittle]

What was UCI's class size for 2013??

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... &start=681

Gracias!

[cotiger]

I still think it makes sense to discuss Texas w the rest of the southern states based on the one event, though yeah if any state has cleaved it's identity from the rest of the secession states it'd be tx

But civil war/reconstruction was defining even though as Americans we sorta don't want to admit it

Example: dude from fl - "I'm not southern at all." Ok then why do you live in a gated suburb and go to an all white private high school etc. you're pretty much the archetype for the modern white southerner

Agree that the root of the southern experience is how to deal w African Americans though

Agree that reconstruction is way underrated as an important event.

The thing is that (outside of E Texas) Texas just doesn't have many African-Americans. Dallas and Houston have the most, but are only 25% AA. Austin and San Antonio are 7-8%. All the southern cities are 50%+. And once you get outside the city, it's even more striking. TX has almost no rural AAs, compared to a huge population in the South.

It's hard to have the relationship w AAs be the defining aspect of your regional character when there just aren't that many around.

It's not that Texas is trying to "get out" of the historical stink of southernness (pardon my rudeness). It just really is separate, with an equally strong but different relationship at its core (with Mexico).

[fringles]

Michigan is a deserving target. They've gone around perpetuating "T10" nonsense for years now despite lacking the employment figures to back it up. Their "self-selection into PI" line is tired and frankly a little hard to believe ITE for a school not named HYS or NYU, particularly given Michigan's stinginess with scholarships and notorious refusal to negotiate.

You think Michigan doesn't have 3% more people self-selecting into PI than Duke does? That's what you're saying. It's three percentage points! Three. You think those PI-focused kids don't love Dean Z's we-love-everyone here schtick? You bet they do. These people tend to go to Michigan and not choose other schools. Additionally, I'd bet that they have pretty good PI career services too. My school doesn't, and we're always nudged to do firm work and bid NYC. It may be tired, but it shouldn't be hard to believe. I really don't see any other way to look at it.

I'll digress. I can't control the assumptions people operate under. If you guys want to keep on saying Penn>NYU, T12, etc. Go right ahead. Just a word of caution for 0Ls, some of TLS is garbage and this is a good example. Talk to actual students who you can trust before you make your decision.

The Michigan trolling is absurd. That said, the (new) TLS conventional wisdom isn't garbage. Several years ago, when I applied, we had tiers: HYS/CCN/MVPB/DCNG. That was roughly based on difficulty of admissions and USNWR, back before we had detailed ABA employment data. Five years ago when I applied, we had nothing like the insight into employment stats that we do now.

What this data tells us isn that the "T6" or "T10" split is totally fictional. It might be harder to get into Michigan or Virginia than it is to get into Cornell or Northwestern, or to get into NYU versus Penn, but the data shows there's no difference in employment stats. And that's valuable information. If you can get Cornell or Duke or Northwestern to give you more money than Michigan or Virginia, which they often will because the USNWR game, its a very smart decision to take the money and run. Its an arbitrage between the hierarchy as USNWR sees it and employers see it.

+1. Totally agree.

[cotiger]

I think secession and slavery and all the associated events are such a defining factor for the south because their legacies continue to be relevant. Widespread rural African-American poverty. Old southern families that used to be slaveowners. Those ridiculous confederate state flags.

After the civil war, Texas could pretty much shrug and just say "oops, we picked the wrong side" and forget about it without as much continuing baggage.

[BigBlackTruck]

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[cotiger]

In Appalachian Tennessee, we definitely have a Southern identity, but it is hardly related to African Americans. Appalachia didn't have the cotton industry, and our main concern (which largely still exists today) is to just be left alone. I think a similar sentiment exists throughout the South, to a degree, especially looking at political affiliation.

To simplify Southern history to slavery and treatment of blacks is short-sighted. It's easy to take the moral high ground against slavery, but the means used to achieve abolition were questionable.

Eastern Tennessee is a whole different animal..

[jk148706]

The hell is going on itt

[lawschool22]

The hell is going on itt

South is south bc of slavery and removal of slavery. Texas is not the south. East Texas doesn't exist. Hth

[jbagelboy]

In Appalachian Tennessee, we definitely have a Southern identity, but it is hardly related to African Americans. Appalachia didn't have the cotton industry, and our main concern (which largely still exists today) is to just be left alone. I think a similar sentiment exists throughout the South, to a degree, especially looking at political affiliation.

To simplify Southern history to slavery and treatment of blacks is short-sighted. It's easy to take the moral high ground against slavery, but the means used to achieve abolition were questionable.

The last sentence: o.O?

This just got awkward. (Could any means to abolish chattel slavery be questionable?).

[BigBlackTruck]

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[03152016]

I cannot believe people like this exist.

[20141023]

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[Cobretti]

ITT: bashing UMich has somehow become the lesser evil

[yost]

You're way too concerned about people making obvious jokes

Lol Michigan and Georgetown though. Seriously.

Michigan is 3 points behind Duke now? You really think there can't possibly be 3% more people at Michigan who self-select into public interest than there are at Duke? That's what you're saying.

I can only speak for one school personally, but I do know people from both of those schools and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if the number wasn't much higher than 3 percentage points. Point is, we can't possibly know. But NYU/Michigan/Georgetown are more PI-focused, so we should take this into account. Beyond that, who knows? That only leaves us with a pretty broad picture of how schools are doing. That's all these numbers are good for.

Don't worry about BigZuck. From my short time on TLS, it's obvious he has an ax to grind with Michigan. Closet OSU undergrad maybe? Who knows.

Jilted former applicant IMO

I think Dean Z's shtick is obnoxious and Michigan fanboys/apologists are even more so but you're right, Michigan is too easy of a target. I'll try to tone it down.

The T12/weird tier stuff was mocking the whole "the T14 floor is falling!" crowd who says dumb crap like "Georgetown better watch out, Vandy is breathing down its neck!" The T14 is the T14, its not going to change. And if it did it wouldn't really matter, those schools all are basically what we thought they were. I think my sarcasm was pretty obvious but I don't want any more Georgetown/Michigan apologists to have their butts hurt any more so there you go.

I know your Michigan bashing is mostly sarcastic, but there are a lot of people on TLS who are completely serious about it, so I feel the need to defend my alma mater. The difference in "elite" outcomes between Michigan and its peers is less than six percentage points, and I think most of that can be explained by its PI focus and lack of home market. Michigan certainly deserves some of the flack it gets, but certainly not the majority of it.

[jk148706]

Alright, I am jumping on this UMichigan-bashing bandwagon even though I don't have a bone to pick with them. I don't understand why the people (see fringles) in this thread are so defensive of this school despite its absolutely shitty employment numbers in comparison to the rest of the T14. School-funded jobs may not be cool, but at least they are better than letting almost 10% of your graduating class go unemployed, and another 5% go underemployed (non-FTLT work). As rickgrimes69 pointed out, this is a school that has both touted the meaningless "T10" category and claimed to be "a leader in public interest law." School-funded positions might not be ideal, but at least they allow many students to get their foot in the door to PI organizations that they otherwise couldn't afford to pursue.

Also, Michigan doesn't have a home market. For example, for the graduating classes of 2011/2012/2013, 18%/18%/17% ended up in NY; 15%/13%/15% ended up in Illinois, and 13%/12%/12% ended up in Michigan. This means that 87%~88% of the kids graduating from UMichigan are having to battle with schools from other states to find work there. UVA is similarly situated, but at least it is a lot closer to D.C., and at least it is funding its graduates so that they can get some experience right out of school.

"Absolutely shitty" a bit overly harsh, no?

[LRGhost]

Slavery wasn't economically viable, the institution would likely have collapsed on its own (it almost did before the invention of the cotton gin). The costs of maintaining a slave, which by nature is inefficient labor, greatly exceeded the cost of importing low-wage workers, like the Chinese in the West.

I don't think slavery is in any way good, and that it was a dark part of US history. It was unfortunate that the country was born with it as an institution, and it wasn't an easy issue to solve. But, at least for the South, the issue wasn't just slavery, but rather the ability to maintain states' rights. With such a polarized country, it was reckless to try to use the Federal government to impose one side's will on the other. As a result, 600,000 Americans died.

This is a joke, right?

A lot of bad things would probably end on their own. It's a good thing we don't want for market corrections when the thing being corrected is a literal atrocity. And replacing one evil, slavery of blacks, with another, slavery of Chinese and 'Orientals', hardly counts as a fix.

Slavery was a pretty easy issue to solve. From day one, abolitionists existed who recognized the atrocity for what it was. A lot of our Founding Fathers did as well. But they capitulated. Why? To appease some idiots. It's easy to hide behind 'states' rights', in fact a lot of states try to whenever they attempt to denigrate minorities. It's a good thing we have a Federal government that 'imposes' emancipation over enslavement. Or would you say that since there were 'two sides' to the issue, it would have been justifiable and righteous to allow the other side to continue being shitty because 'lol two sides bro'?

Also, to whoever mentioned that it's more accurate to look at placement rather than ranking, I think this is why there's a better argument for the strata of the T14 being rearranged. Clearly, MVP are not peers of one another. Each of those three are likely in different classes. It seems almost facetious in light of hiring statistics to argue that V is so far superior to Duke or Cornell.

[20141023]

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[jk148706]

"Absolutely shitty" a bit overly harsh, no?

Read the rest of the sentence... "absolutely shitty employment numbers in comparison to the rest of the T14."

I did.. And still ...

a bit overly harsh, no?

I mean they aren't as good as other t14s but absolutely shitty?

[hashashin]

Student at T14 here. I've been talking with my school's career services a lot lately and generally trying to see what my options will be after graduation. Jumping in here because this thread needs to get back on track. I have no skin in this game, I just want to keep 0Ls from relying on this garbage subtier stuff.

The only meaningful distinction among the top schools is:

YHS
Rest of T14

(Yes, at equal price, Y over Columbia; Columbia over Cornell; maybe even Cornell over Georgetown- I'll concede that Georgetown may actually be in decline)

People here seem to acknowledge that this metric of firms of 101+ and fed clerkships is imperfect, then we go ahead remaking these tiers again relying on this data. The point occasionally comes up that people at NYU/Michigan/Georgetown self-select into non-firm jobs. The thread generally agrees with it, but then this subtier stuff wins out.

Do you really think that these schools' PI focus can't account for the 5 percentage points that separate them from their traditional peers? When people decide on a law school, they'll decide to go to the school that they can most associate with - it's not like there is a perfectly equal distribution of people who want to go into private practice and those who do not. Sure, many (most?) people who go in thinking that decide later to do a few years of firm work first. But don't you think the schools that have historically been strong at placing into PI keep more people on this track? Again, we're not taking into account here the people who specifically chose school X because of their PI focus.

Obviously there are other factors. A school's career services might not be getting the right firms to come to OCI. They might not be making their students good interviewers. But to assume this, or that all the sudden law firms have changed their hiring practices, in face of the fact that these PI-focused schools tend to attract the people who won't help their firm/fed. clerkship numbers (or even LST numbers), is not something we can do with the information we have. We shouldn't be doing anything with these numbers besides pointing out that Georgetown does seem to be in decline, Columbia is kicking ass, Penn may actually be distinguishing itself from its peer, or broad generalizations like that. That is literally all we can do. NU is not better than UVA. Cornell is not better than NU. Duke is not better than Michigan. Penn is not better than NYU. This is all garbage and useless and could be dangerous for 0Ls who actually believe all of this T12, CCNP, stuff to be true.

Anyway, simple point here is that a difference in >10 percentage points isn't going to tell you anything at all. It just won't. We'd be assuming way too much and those assumptions would be in conflict with many things we commonly believe to be true about certain law schools' student bodies and the nature of post-grad hiring (for example, people may prefer mid-sized firms to larger ones or wanted a state/local clerkship before starting to practice).

You're way too concerned about people making obvious jokes

Lol Michigan and Georgetown though. Seriously.

0Ls should really focus on grade cutoffs for biglaw; at G, median has a pretty good chance of getting Biglaw (fuck, man, I was barely above median and am summering at a V100 this year as a 1L); at Texas and Vandy, not so much. Just look at the disparity between G's PI/Gov rating (even taking School-funded jobs out) versus V and T; if you really think that DC's only T14 isn't sending at least 8-9% into desirable PI/Gov jobs, then go ahead and believe that. And for those speaking of G's putative decline, why the hell would that be? It's not like G's student medians are appreciably different from the rest of the 7-14 schools (equal to M and NU, higher than Cornell and B), all reputational indices put it on par with DNC, etc. Even without factoring for self-selection, G's FedClerk + Biglaw numbers are still higher than UT and Vandy's. And for obtaining desirable PI + Gov work, is there really any comparison between those two schools and Georgetown?

Georgetown's class size for the class of 2016 was 544, down 6% and may be decreasing further this year.

Speaking of M, doesn't Michigan release granular data about what positions each student took? It should be pretty easy (but exhausting) to figure out which PI and government positions were actually desirable, no?

[hashashin]

Has GULC shrunk their class size at all in the last few years?

The part time program has been roughly cut in half. Not sure of the top of my head about the full time program.

FT went down by 6% last year (544 people FT + PT; unsure how many transfers they'll be taking).

[manillabay]

Slavery wasn't economically viable, the institution would likely have collapsed on its own (it almost did before the invention of the cotton gin). The costs of maintaining a slave, which by nature is inefficient labor, greatly exceeded the cost of importing low-wage workers, like the Chinese in the West.

I don't think slavery is in any way good, and that it was a dark part of US history. It was unfortunate that the country was born with it as an institution, and it wasn't an easy issue to solve. But, at least for the South, the issue wasn't just slavery, but rather the ability to maintain states' rights. With such a polarized country, it was reckless to try to use the Federal government to impose one side's will on the other. As a result, 600,000 Americans died.

This is a joke, right?

A lot of bad things would probably end on their own. It's a good thing we don't want for market corrections when the thing being corrected is a literal atrocity. And replacing one evil, slavery of blacks, with another, slavery of Chinese and 'Orientals', hardly counts as a fix.

Slavery was a pretty easy issue to solve. From day one, abolitionists existed who recognized the atrocity for what it was. A lot of our Founding Fathers did as well. But they capitulated. Why? To appease some idiots. It's easy to hide behind 'states' rights', in fact a lot of states try to whenever they attempt to denigrate minorities. It's a good thing we have a Federal government that 'imposes' emancipation over enslavement. Or would you say that since there were 'two sides' to the issue, it would have been justifiable and righteous to allow the other side to continue being shitty because 'lol two sides bro'?

Also, to whoever mentioned that it's more accurate to look at placement rather than ranking, I think this is why there's a better argument for the strata of the T14 being rearranged. Clearly, MVP are not peers of one another. Each of those three are likely in different classes. It seems almost facetious in light of hiring statistics to argue that V is so far superior to Duke or Cornell.

Slavery was, generally speaking, not really an issue until William Lloyd Garrison came along in the '30's and demanded an immediate, uncompensated end to slavery. They (he & other abo's) also antagonized southerners by calling them heathens & the like. There had been prior talks of gradualism and recolonization, but when the abolitionists began to radicalize their approach to this question, the south reacted vigorously.

[Blessedassurance]

Georgetown's class size for the class of 2016 was 544, down 6% and may be decreasing further this year.

Speaking of M, doesn't Michigan release granular data about what positions each student took? It should be pretty easy (but exhausting) to figure out which PI and government positions were actually desirable, no?

georgetown takes a lot of transfers.

georgetown should follow michigan's lead in releasing "granular data"...unrelated but wasn't there a sheep farmer in the michigan data one year?

[lawschool22]

Slavery wasn't economically viable, the institution would likely have collapsed on its own (it almost did before the invention of the cotton gin). The costs of maintaining a slave, which by nature is inefficient labor, greatly exceeded the cost of importing low-wage workers, like the Chinese in the West.

I don't think slavery is in any way good, and that it was a dark part of US history. It was unfortunate that the country was born with it as an institution, and it wasn't an easy issue to solve. But, at least for the South, the issue wasn't just slavery, but rather the ability to maintain states' rights. With such a polarized country, it was reckless to try to use the Federal government to impose one side's will on the other. As a result, 600,000 Americans died.

This is a joke, right?

A lot of bad things would probably end on their own. It's a good thing we don't want for market corrections when the thing being corrected is a literal atrocity. And replacing one evil, slavery of blacks, with another, slavery of Chinese and 'Orientals', hardly counts as a fix.

Slavery was a pretty easy issue to solve. From day one, abolitionists existed who recognized the atrocity for what it was. A lot of our Founding Fathers did as well. But they capitulated. Why? To appease some idiots. It's easy to hide behind 'states' rights', in fact a lot of states try to whenever they attempt to denigrate minorities. It's a good thing we have a Federal government that 'imposes' emancipation over enslavement. Or would you say that since there were 'two sides' to the issue, it would have been justifiable and righteous to allow the other side to continue being shitty because 'lol two sides bro'?

Also, to whoever mentioned that it's more accurate to look at placement rather than ranking, I think this is why there's a better argument for the strata of the T14 being rearranged. Clearly, MVP are not peers of one another. Each of those three are likely in different classes. It seems almost facetious in light of hiring statistics to argue that V is so far superior to Duke or Cornell.

Slavery was, generally speaking, not really an issue until William Lloyd Garrison came along in the '30's and demanded an immediate, uncompensated end to slavery. They (he & other abo's) also antagonized southerners by calling them heathens & the like. There had been prior talks of gradualism and recolonization, but when the abolitionists began to radicalize their approach to this question, the south reacted vigorously.

This has to be a joke as well.