d34dluk3 wrote:
MTthePockets wrote:
I know that Harvard is the conventional answer, but because of personal circumstances (my SO is applying to med schools) one of the other three may end up being way more convenient. Will I actually be disadvantaging myself if I go to UChicago? What about Berkeley or NYU?
Chicago's academia placement is really close with H. The other two are not. --LinkRemoved-- ... hing.shtml
As far as recent placement goes, nearly all of the T14 have improved their "Per Capita" placement score in the past several years, with many doing so by rather significant margins. In the past few years HYS have moved a decent ways ahead of the rest of the pack. Chicago's placement in the years since the Leiter survey has begun to lag behind Harvard's (hmm, I can't imagine why Leiter hasn't updated the survey in the past three years with Solum's data), but is still noticeably better than Berkeley and NYU's. As a side rant, look at all the data Leiter has compiled for legal hiring - as often as possible, he will put together random statistics/data where Chicago comes out looking good. Why does Leiter randomly calculate 2006's entry level hiring data, but does so for no other year? Oh, because Chicago beat Stanford that year - of course! Why update historical trends since 1995 instead of compiling the most recent information on who is currently being hired? Oh, because Chicago's historical hiring data is much better! The fact that people cite to this data so frequently and that Leiter hasn't been completely discredited by this point astounds me - he did the same thing at Texas, and is still doing it at Chicago. On the other hand, I'd defintely hire him to teach at my school if solely for the reason that he'd put out frequently-cited data that paints my school in the best light possible to deciding students. And as a disclaimer, this isn't to say that Chicago is bad; to the contrary, Chicago is fantastic at academia placement. But HYS have moved well ahead in recent years, and the rest of the T14 (including Chicago) has been left behind. In fact, other T14 schools have been narrowing the gap of Chicago's prior advantage, but Leiter has done well to ensure that nobody notices anything other than positive evidence of Chicago's placement relative to other schools.
For a breakdown of the information we have for academic hiring post-Leiter, I've compiled the T14 2003-2010 entry level hiring data (note: 2010's data is reportedly incomplete, so this might need to be adjusted). To give a better idea of the most recent trends (since per capita placement has increased across the board) in terms of which schools are improving their own academic placement, I've also calculated per capita percentage changes in the updated data as compared to Leiter's data. Summary: The blue data is what matters the most, but the red/green data shows how placement rates are trending over the past few years.
T14 2003-2010 Entry Level Hiring Data:
Total Hires / Class Size / Per Capita Score / +or- from Leiter / Per Capita fluctuation in 08-10 relative to 03-07
Ya 155 / 200 / 0.775 / +.344 / +80%
Ha 168 / 550 / 0.305 / +.125 / +69%
St 50 / 175 / 0.285 / +.115 / +67%
Co 63 / 375 / 0.168 / +.068 / +68%
Ch 43 / 200 / 0.215 / +.065 / +43%
NY 57 / 450 / 0.126 / +.056 / +80%
Pe 21 / 250 / 0.084 / +.024 / +40%
Mi 43 / 375 / 0.114 / +.054 / +90%
Be 36 / 275 / 0.130 / +.060 / +85%
Vi 35 / 375 / 0.093 / +.023 / +32%
Du 13 / 200 / 0.065 / +.015 / +30%
NU 13 / 250 / 0.052 / +.022 / +73%
Co 4 / 200 / 0.020 / + .000 / +0%
Gt 23 / 575 / 0.040 / +.010 / +33%
Also, here is the data only from the 2008-2010 information (note: Per Capita scores will be smaller in a shorter time frame since these aren't class percentages, merely a way of equalizing the data for class size):
T14 2008-2010 Entry Level Hiring Data:
Total Hires / Class Size / Per Capita Score
Ya 69 / 200 / 0.345
Ha 67 / 550 / 0.121
St 21 / 175 / 0.120
Co 24 / 375 / 0.064
Ch 14 / 200 / 0.070
NY 24 / 450 / 0.053
Pe 7 / 250 / 0.028
Mi 21 / 375 / 0.056
Be 16 / 275 / 0.058
Vi 9 / 375 / 0.024
Du 3 / 200 / 0.015
NU 6 / 250 / 0.024
Co 0 / 200 / 0.000
Gt 7 / 575 / 0.012
Finally, since Leiter was the one suggesting that the 2010 data is incomplete (which I believe - these numbers are far smaller than normal years, and there's no reason to think hiring stopped in 2010 but not in 2009), I've compiled the two years post-Leiter where the data is "complete" and hopefully accurate:
T14 2008-2009 Entry Level Hiring Data:
Total Hires / Class Size / Per Capita Score
Ya 51 / 200 / 0.255
Ha 50 / 550 / 0.090
St 18 / 175 / 0.102
Co 19 / 375 / 0.050
Ch 11 / 200 / 0.055
NY 16 / 450 / 0.035
Pe 3 / 250 / 0.012
Mi 18 / 375 / 0.048
Be 12 / 275 / 0.043
Vi 4 / 375 / 0.010
Du 2 / 200 / 0.010
NU 4 / 250 / 0.016
Co 0 / 200 / 0.000
Gt 5 / 575 / 0.008
Take this data for what it's worth - hiring outside of Yale becomes increasingly difficult, and HYS as a whole are a good deal above the rest of the T14. Entry level hiring matches the order of the T14 pretty well, with some schools outperforming their brackets, and others slightly underperforming their brackets. The takeaway is that academia is an extremely tough nut to crack, and OP should probably be strongly considering HLS if serious about breaking into academia. Also, feel free to suggest changes to this data or alter it in whatever form you will.
Data Sources:
--LinkRemoved-- ... hing.shtml
http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2 ... -leve.html
http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2 ... eport.html
http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2 ... -2010.html