Top Law Schools

I plan on going the corporate route after graduation, preferably on the West Coast. Eventually, I'd like to enter academia. Which school would be better for my goals?

Georgetown seems to have great lay prestige, but will Cornell's Ivy status give it better international/non-law academic prestige?

How important are small class sizes?

How terrible is Ithaca?

I'd pick GULC based on having more west coast firms at OCI compared to Cornell.

They place roughly comparably into biglaw however.

wiseguy33 wrote:I plan on going the corporate route after graduation, preferably on the West Coast. Eventually, I'd like to enter academia. Which school would be better for my goals?

Georgetown seems to have great lay prestige, but will Cornell's Ivy status give it better international/non-law academic prestige?

How important are small class sizes?

How terrible is Ithaca?

If you want to work on the west coast, you should really choose UCLA (if admitted). You might even be able to wiggle some $$ at of them with these two acceptances.

As for your last two questions, that is all what you make of it. You have to figure out whats important to you.

For what it's worth, my brother went to undergrad in Ithaca, and I always thought the town was lovely - fun restaurants, amusing hippie related shops, etc. The weather and snow is dreadful, but I thought the town itself was very cute.

BeachandRun23 wrote:If you want to work on the west coast, you should really choose UCLA (if admitted). You might even be able to wiggle some $$ at of them with these two acceptances.

As for your last two questions, that is all what you make of it. You have to figure out whats important to you.

This is really pointless advice to give to a splitter.

For west coast I'd take the either ucla, usc, or something like davis or hastings with money. But if you specifically will settle for biglaw anywhere, my hunch is cornel is a decent bit safer

Small class sizes--if you are referring to individual sections--are important to some, but not to others. Probably depends on your learning style. Cornell, however, has fairly large section sizes of about 100 to 103 students while Georgetown is even larger at about 118 students per section. Graduating class size may be relevant in your situation because few West Coast firms are likely to make the trip to Ithaca to recruit from a small East Coast centric graduating class.
Cornell's Ivy League membership shouldn't be a consideration since Georgetown has Ivy prestige.
As for a career in academia, Cornell's per capita is 0.42 (83 alums teaching law) for graduates teaching law whereas Georgetown's is lower at 0.27 with 154 alums teaching law.

Per Capita Graduates teaching law as of Spring, 2008:

Yale 3.56

Harvard 1.99
Chicago 1.44
Stanford 1.24

Columbia 0.82
Michigan 0.82
Berkeley 0.73

Penn 0.60
NYU 0.54

Duke 0.46
Northwestern 0.44
Cornell 0.42
Virginia 0.41

Illinois 0.30
Wisconsin 0.30
UCLA 0.29
Georgetown 0.27
Texas 0.25
Minnesota 0.23
Boston Univ. 0.22

I'll be facing a similar choice but with less restrictive geographic considerations. I wish you luck. And Cwolf, you really think G-town has Ivy Prestige? Do you mean regarding undergrad or law school?

Both, but I don't view Cornell Law as being in the same prestige category as Harvard, Yale, Columbia or Penn even though all are Ivy League law schools.

Sure, sure. Makes sense. I suppose in some ways the easiest way to measure prestige (as if we could) is what, NLJ 250 placement + Fed clerkships (Art. 3?) plus somehow knowing who did prestigious PI/NGO/non-profit stuff. That last group is the hardest one to measure and one that often gets left out of the placement numbers we bandy about here. Gov't jobs? I try to not think about prestige, but it's one of those things that gets under your skin because you know it matters but you don't really know how much.

The Ivy distinction is meaningless when it comes to law schools.

bk187 wrote:The Ivy distinction is meaningless when it comes to law schools.

Sure, but some here would argue that's true of their undergrad as well, e.g., HYP >>> all others in Ivy

CanadianWolf wrote:Both, but I don't view Cornell Law as being in the same prestige category as Harvard, Yale, Columbia or Penn even though all are Ivy League law schools.

I don't think anyone here was arguing that. But there are different levels of Ivy cachet. The other examples really belong to three different, if only slightly, levels of prestige as well, from one what reads/hears/intuits (YH > C > P > Crnl).

mr_toad wrote:

bk187 wrote:The Ivy distinction is meaningless when it comes to law schools.

Sure, but some here would argue that's true of their undergrad as well, e.g., HYP >>> all others in Ivy.

That's probably true as well but whether it is or not has no bearing on law school prestige.

bk187 wrote:

mr_toad wrote:

bk187 wrote:The Ivy distinction is meaningless when it comes to law schools.

Sure, but some here would argue that's true of their undergrad as well, e.g., HYP >>> all others in Ivy.

That's probably true as well but whether it is or not has no bearing on law school prestige.

I guess what I'm implying is that to an extent the Ivy mark is very anachronistic as it by no means implies the very best (i.e., necessary condition). And that's true whether of undergrad, law, or other. Their reputations are becoming atomized (to steal from Houellebecq), i.e., separated from a previous entity seen as a whole.

bk187 wrote:I'd pick GULC based on having more west coast firms at OCI compared to Cornell.

They place roughly comparably into biglaw however.

Don't get fooled by this distinction. Georgetown's entering class size is 300% bigger than Cornell's (and pretty much the same size as the entire enrollment of Cornell's entire J.D. program). The total number of firms interviewing doesn't mean as much when there's 3x as much competition. Also, having West Coast firms at On Campus Interview isn't necessarily a good indicator. Both Cornell and Georgetown host recruiting events on the West Coast for their students and employers to attend (The schools have even co-hosted these events in the past).

Class sizes are also a misleading indicator. Either school will put you in several 100+ person lectures during your first year. The more important factors are how you spend the rest of your time studying. In a larger, urban school you're more likely to have more part-time faculty and a less close-knit student body that would be willing to help you if you need it. The plus side, though, is wider course offerings in your later years.

Finally, Ithaca is currently 28 degrees, and thats a warm day. It was -9 while I was walking to class yesterday.

bk187 wrote:

BeachandRun23 wrote:If you want to work on the west coast, you should really choose UCLA (if admitted). You might even be able to wiggle some $$ at of them with these two acceptances.

As for your last two questions, that is all what you make of it. You have to figure out whats important to you.

This is really pointless advice to give to a splitter.

1) I didnt know he was a splitter, his original post never said that.

2) If the OP's sure he/she wants to work on the west coast, then even USC may be better than GULC or Cornell.

GULC.

BeachandRun23 wrote: 1) I didnt know he was a splitter, his original post never said that.

2) If the OP's sure he/she wants to work on the west coast, then even USC may be better than GULC or Cornell.

1. Fair enough. Blame my profile stalking.

2. USC is pretty hostile to splitters as well.

wiseguy33 wrote: How terrible is Ithaca?

It's really not terrible to be a law student here. You get a small class and make lots of great friends. The isolation is pretty conducive to getting shit done but it doesn't mean that you don't see your friends about 20 times a day by default. I'm really enjoying it here and I know that most of my classmates are decently happy as well. Right now, it's aggressively cold but nothing is more than 3 blocks away from you at any given moment and most people just spend less time outside. The campus itself is very pretty and there are some great places to eat.

There are about 5 bars that people frequent and there is something going on every night of the week (trivia, drink specials, karaoke ect.) so it's not that bad. It's also nice that you'll always end up somewhere with a shitton of other law students.

I would, however, like to reiterate how fucking cold it is right now..I think it dropped to -17 the other night (Fahrenheit)

GULC all the way. GULC is awesome.

Ostrizr316 wrote:

bk187 wrote:I'd pick GULC based on having more west coast firms at OCI compared to Cornell.

They place roughly comparably into biglaw however.

Don't get fooled by this distinction. Georgetown's entering class size is 300% bigger than Cornell's (and pretty much the same size as the entire enrollment of Cornell's entire J.D. program). The total number of firms interviewing doesn't mean as much when there's 3x as much competition. Also, having West Coast firms at On Campus Interview isn't necessarily a good indicator. Both Cornell and Georgetown host recruiting events on the West Coast for their students and employers to attend (The schools have even co-hosted these events in the past).

Class sizes are also a misleading indicator. Either school will put you in several 100+ person lectures during your first year. The more important factors are how you spend the rest of your time studying. In a larger, urban school you're more likely to have more part-time faculty and a less close-knit student body that would be willing to help you if you need it. The plus side, though, is wider course offerings in your later years.

Finally, Ithaca is currently 28 degrees, and thats a warm day. It was -9 while I was walking to class yesterday.

So would you say they are equal for the West Coat?

How many people get jobs through the West Coast job fair?

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

I would like to attend a T14 just to keep my options open in the future. Re: UCLA... what bk187 said. Haven't heard back from UCLA or USC, and I applied months ago. With my splitter stats, Stanford and Berkeley are also out of the question.

The two things I'm most worried about right now are job placement and student QOL. D.C.'s city vibe is great, but I'm guessing OCI gets pretty cutthroat with so many students. Good to hear that Ithaca isn't that terrible a location--though it's 72* where I am today, so uh, -17* is slightly intimidating.

tag

bk187 wrote:

BeachandRun23 wrote: 1) I didnt know he was a splitter, his original post never said that.

2) If the OP's sure he/she wants to work on the west coast, then even USC may be better than GULC or Cornell.

1. Fair enough. Blame my profile stalking.

2. USC is pretty hostile to splitters as well.

USC doesn't look all that splitter unfriendly to me. I think OP is above their LSAT threshold.

http://usc.lawschoolnumbers.com/stats/0910/

I agree with the UCLA assesment though, it's pretty unlikely.

bdubs wrote:USC doesn't look all that splitter unfriendly to me. I think OP is above their LSAT threshold.

http://usc.lawschoolnumbers.com/stats/0910/

I agree with the UCLA assesment though, it's pretty unlikely.

Admitting only 4 people below a 3.4 (3 of which were URM's) doesn't seem like splitter unfriendly to you?