Top Law Schools

Money aside (I don't know yet whether I'll get anything from either of them), how do these two schools compare? Pros and cons of each, pros and cons of location? Anything would be helpful.

CLS seems to be more prestigious but I don't think their job placement is drastically different.

I'd say if all is equal then take CLS, but go visit the schools and see which you prefer.

One caveat being if you want something other than NYC, I'd lean CLS.

The consensus on TLS seems to be:

Prestige: Columbia>NYU
NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia=NYU
Non-NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia>NYU
Public Interest/Government Placement: Columbia<NYU
Location: Columbia<NYU

Also, in past threads, many people have posited the stereotype that the NYU student body is more laid-back and less gunnerish.

A bunch of Columbia students have complained about the administration at CLS. Search the TLS threads for more info. I think Columbia has also increased the number of transfers it accepts, which may affect on-campus interviews.

vicuna wrote:The consensus on TLS seems to be:

Prestige: Columbia>NYU
NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia=NYU
Non-NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia>NYU
Public Interest/Government Placement: Columbia<NYU
Location: Columbia<NYU

Also, in past threads, many people have posited the stereotype that the NYU student body is more laid-back and less gunnerish.

please...

Columbia > NYU (at prestigious firm placement)

check Wachtell, Cravath, & Sullivan Cromwell's attorney pages then come back to me...

only school that competes with CLS when it comes to prestigous biglaw placement is Harvard

ShakeDemHatersOff wrote:

vicuna wrote:The consensus on TLS seems to be:

Prestige: Columbia>NYU
NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia=NYU
Non-NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia>NYU
Public Interest/Government Placement: Columbia<NYU
Location: Columbia<NYU

Also, in past threads, many people have posited the stereotype that the NYU student body is more laid-back and less gunnerish.

please...

Columbia > NYU (at prestigious firm placement)

check Wachtell, Cravath, & Sullivan Cromwell's attorney pages then come back to me...

only school that competes with CLS when it comes to prestigous biglaw placement is Harvard

V10 firm I'm going to this summer sent a list of its summer class. Number of CLS students: 11, number of NYU students: 23. Last year 70% of NYU students that did EIW got biglaw, 69% of CLS students did. The difference is minimal and at this point more likely self selection than anything else(ie number of students that want it, and attrition rates over time)

Someone needs to roust the actual Columbia and NYU students to post in here about professors and experiences. Reading you people argue about placement is entirely pointless.

sophie316 wrote:

ShakeDemHatersOff wrote:

vicuna wrote:The consensus on TLS seems to be:

Prestige: Columbia>NYU
NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia=NYU
Non-NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia>NYU
Public Interest/Government Placement: Columbia<NYU
Location: Columbia<NYU

Also, in past threads, many people have posited the stereotype that the NYU student body is more laid-back and less gunnerish.

please...

Columbia > NYU (at prestigious firm placement)

check Wachtell, Cravath, & Sullivan Cromwell's attorney pages then come back to me...

only school that competes with CLS when it comes to prestigous biglaw placement is Harvard

V10 firm I'm going to this summer sent a list of its summer class. Number of CLS students: 11, number of NYU students: 23. Last year 70% of NYU students that did EIW got biglaw, 69% of CLS students did. The difference is minimal and at this point more likely self selection than anything else(ie number of students that want it, and attrition rates over time)

if it makes you feel better I guess you can convince yourself thats why

I however just rest on the FACTS

ShakeDemHatersOff wrote:

sophie316 wrote:

ShakeDemHatersOff wrote:

vicuna wrote:The consensus on TLS seems to be:

Prestige: Columbia>NYU
NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia=NYU
Non-NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia>NYU
Public Interest/Government Placement: Columbia<NYU
Location: Columbia<NYU

Also, in past threads, many people have posited the stereotype that the NYU student body is more laid-back and less gunnerish.

please...

Columbia > NYU (at prestigious firm placement)

check Wachtell, Cravath, & Sullivan Cromwell's attorney pages then come back to me...

only school that competes with CLS when it comes to prestigous biglaw placement is Harvard

V10 firm I'm going to this summer sent a list of its summer class. Number of CLS students: 11, number of NYU students: 23. Last year 70% of NYU students that did EIW got biglaw, 69% of CLS students did. The difference is minimal and at this point more likely self selection than anything else(ie number of students that want it, and attrition rates over time)

if it makes you feel better I guess you can convince yourself thats why

I however just rest on the FACTS

wow, points for ignorance & unnecessary bellicosity.

you do realize that sophie was throwing you a bone with bolded, right? if you rest on the "FACTS" she presented, then NYU>Columbia in biglaw placement, so she was actually being quite magnanimous to your claim.

the internetz is no place for warfare.

NYU 1L here, happened to wander in on this latest iteration of the classic NYU/CLS dilemma. I got into both and chose NYU. Completely certain it was the right decision. Conversations with a good friend of mine who's at CLS have confirmed this suspicion. There have been a couple of times I wished I had the Columbia name, mainly for bragging rights, but that's my single regret, if you even can call it that, because I'm also glad I foreclosed my ability to act like a name-dropping douchebag. (Not that CLS students are; just that I would be.)

I don't really want to get into a public pissing match over this, because people have perfectly good reasons to be at both schools. But I do want to say, there tends to be a subtle (sometimes explicit) sentiment on this board that you'd be an idiot not to attend the most prestigious school, but you really need to make your own decisions. It's very easy in the legal field to find yourself seeking the things that are prestigious rather than the ones that you're interested in; if you want to be happy in your career, you'd better start getting good at soul-searching now, and go to the school that makes sense for you.

I'm just one person on the internet, but if anyone has more specific questions, feel free to PM me.

tagging myself onto this.

Historically, Columbia has trumped everyone else (including Harvard, sometimes), in V10 placement. I don't know/doubt if this has held up in the past few years as class sizes have been slashed (e.g. Cravath can just pick from Kent, not Stone). But winning the prestige placement doesn't equal winning overall firm placement. Either way, I have friends with jobs and friends without jobs at both schools.

ahduth wrote:Someone needs to roust the actual Columbia and NYU students to post in here about professors and experiences. Reading you people argue about placement is entirely pointless.

please, nyu and cls students, i would really like to see this!

At a party with NYU and CLS grads I was told by grads from both schools that NYU was the recommended place to go to school. Although for the most part they worked for the Federal Government (except one who worked for a biglaw firm in DC).

bdubs wrote:At a party with NYU and CLS grads I was told by grads from both schools that NYU was the recommended place to go to school. Although for the most part they worked for the Federal Government (except one who worked for a biglaw firm in DC).

For government placement or for the quality of life?

vicuna wrote:

bdubs wrote:At a party with NYU and CLS grads I was told by grads from both schools that NYU was the recommended place to go to school. Although for the most part they worked for the Federal Government (except one who worked for a biglaw firm in DC).

For government placement or for the quality of life?

I think it was generally qualilty of life. They didn't make a big deal out of differences in placement, but I didn't press them on it.

alicen wrote:

ahduth wrote:Someone needs to roust the actual Columbia and NYU students to post in here about professors and experiences. Reading you people argue about placement is entirely pointless.

please, nyu and cls students, i would really like to see this!

I'm a CLS student arguing about placement because at the end of the day, I'm willing to take a slight hit in QoL for three years if it means getting a fucking job. I'm not saying that CLS outplaces NYU or that NYU is better for QoL, but any difference in placement should be the most important difference when deciding how to incur debt near 200k. Experiential anecdotes are usually only indicative of your experience; CLS or NYU are going to be as fun or shitty as you make them. It's fucking New York. If you can't have a good time, then it's your own damn fault.

There are 200+ professors at each school, so your selection of professors beyond 1L year is entirely up to you as well.

JG Hall wrote:

alicen wrote:

ahduth wrote:Someone needs to roust the actual Columbia and NYU students to post in here about professors and experiences. Reading you people argue about placement is entirely pointless.

please, nyu and cls students, i would really like to see this!

I'm a CLS student arguing about placement because at the end of the day, I'm willing to take a slight hit in QoL for three years if it means getting a fucking job. I'm not saying that CLS outplaces NYU or that NYU is better for QoL, but any difference in placement should be the most important difference when deciding how to incur debt near 200k. Experiential anecdotes are usually only indicative of your experience; CLS or NYU are going to be as fun or shitty as you make them. It's fucking New York. If you can't have a good time, then it's your own damn fault.

There are 200+ professors at each school, so your selection of professors beyond 1L year is entirely up to you as well.

I don't think that arguing about placement is worthwhile for these two schools; your grades and work experiences will likely determine your opportunities far more than any statistical difference in hiring outcomes when you're talking about these two. Tell me if I'm mistaken, but I think that neither school will close off any opportunities that the other would open, and from what I understand, employers have the same GPA cutoffs for them. So, if there's any difference between the experiences provided by each school, I'd like to hear about it.

Not to be annoying, but I don't see how people on here can compare the two. We can talk about our own experiences but any comparisons we may make will be based on anecdotes told by others. I can tell you, for example, that I think the professors at NYU are amazing, as are the opportunities for PI/gov work, as is the clinical program. I'm not a huge fan of the village, I actually prefer morningside heights, but most people seem to think the village is far superior. I cannot tell you at all how my experience compares to that of a CLS student. To do the anecdotal thing, I have heard a lot better things about NYUs PI resources(a couple of people I know that went/go to CLS complain about insufficient support and they also decreased their summer PI funding). I think Columbia's campus is way nicer(not necessarily the law school but the overall campus, but Im biased because I went there undergrad). The people I've met at NYU tend to be a little more chill, but I by no means consider them a representative sample.

All in all, you're probably gonna have to visit both, and unless you HAVE to have an Ivy league school on your resume or DEFINITELY want to do PI, you're probably just going to have to guess.

To give my $0.02 as someone admitted to both and considering both:

Columbia was the school I set my sights on when I started the law school application process. After visiting both schools during winter break, I was surprised at how much I liked NYU's location. Even with its location, if both schools offered me no money I would go with CLS. I'm not sure how much aid from NYU would cause me to switch over because I think the chances of getting a good biglaw job if you're a decent student at both is basically the same, although Columbia does seem to have an edge. How much of an edge is worth the extra loans I would have to take? No idea; I'll cross that bridge when I see what, if any, scholarship money NYU might throw my way.

So my simple preference equations would be:
Columbia > NYU
Columbia = NYU + $
Columbia < NYU + $$

Basically if you don't care about prestige at ALL then maybe this is a debate

otherwise your a fool to turn down CLS for NYU

Well Damn doode. Lol can we at least agree that nyu is still a fine school to attend?

I turned down CLS for NYU and couldn't be happier. So, no, you don't have to be crazy.

The schools might as well be sister-campuses, and I would never say there is a "right" choice between them. It depends what you want to do with your life.

NYU 1L here. Feel free to PM me with questions.

I will say that NYU students are very chill and social. Lots of fun people here and I actually love it here.

ShakeDemHatersOff seems bitter about something . . .

vicuna wrote:The consensus on TLS seems to be:

Prestige: Columbia>NYU
NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia=NYU
Non-NYC BigLaw Placement: Columbia>NYU
Public Interest/Government Placement: Columbia<NYU
Location: Columbia<NYU

Also, in past threads, many people have posited the stereotype that the NYU student body is more laid-back and less gunnerish.

This part seems mostly personal preference. Columbia's location appeals to me more than NYU's (but not in NYC appeals to me most, which is why I didn't apply to NYU/am turning down Columbia/am going to Michigan. So take this all with a huge grain of salt)