Top Law Schools

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i'd say overall H and S are comparable schools. in terms of lay prestige if that is important, i think H has an edge.

check numbers for clerking--i don't know these and will not take the effort to find.

hate cold weather

boston is cold. period. full stop. thus, i don't know the full CoA and CoL numbers but if you really hate the cold and CoA is the same, and you really have few other preferences, hit Stanford

tourdeforcex wrote:i'd say overall H and S are comparable schools. in terms of lay prestige if that is important, i think H has an edge.

I'm from Norcal. H has more than an edge in lay prestige.

On the other hand, who cares? Life at Stanford is awesome. It also has a much, much smaller class, which should be seen as an advantage for networking and getting to know profs, etc.

sundance95 wrote: It also has a much, much smaller class, which should be seen as an advantage for networking and getting to know profs, etc.

BTW- "etc" includes finding jobs (i.e. S's smaller class size is seen as an advantage in terms of finding a job ITE).

Stanford without a doubt. It's warmer, cheaper, and it should pretty much offer the same career prospects.

JD, stop asking people on this forum. As you can see from the posts already you're going to get the same responses from people who are not at either school and just dispelling tls wisdom. I'd only ask those with first hand experience. How does one know you'd enjoy like at SLS more than Harvard? I wouldn't. Think about how debt averse you are and proceed from there. Research the clerking numbers. But no one has that HLS lay prestige if its that important to you. But if. I get into HLS and you stay...we can be classmates lol...and that's my selling point.

HYS will all get you where you want to go. They're all as prestigious as possible. Yes, lay prestige favors H over S over Y and law prestige favors Y over H over S, but they're all so close in both categories. You'd be silly to pay $30,000 more over 3 years (at 6.8% or 7.9% interest) for the slightly higher prestige of H.

Follow the $$ and enjoy Palo Alto.

Are you coming to the SLS ASW this weekend? What about HLS's? If I were you, I'd pick the school in which you feel most comfortable and believe you will enjoy the next three years the most. You can't go wrong between them...(esp. with your grants!)

Both S and H have a ton of lay prestige, so it's far from an either-or choice. H has the slight edge, but this is going to be the difference between something like 8/10 of the grocers checking you out at the supermarket being impressed and 9/10.

S has the edge for clerkships...for the past several years, S has had about 5% more of its class clerk than H. For the currently graduating, soon-to-clerk class of S, the number of students clerking is at a whopping 40% (I got my hands on the internal list of S students clerking this coming year and counted them)! That number is split pretty evenly between federal appellate and district clerkships (slightly weighted towards appellate), with maybe 5 (3%) or so State Supreme Court clerks in the mix. I doubt Yale has even done so well.

But ultimately, The Stig is right--pick the school where you feel the most comfortable. How you do at H or S is going to affect your post-law school opportunities far more than which one you choose, so going to the school where you feel the most comfortable is important not just for your happiness over the next three years, but your post-law school career.

sundance95 wrote:

tourdeforcex wrote:i'd say overall H and S are comparable schools. in terms of lay prestige if that is important, i think H has an edge.

I'm from Norcal. H has more than an edge in lay prestige.

On the other hand, who cares? Life at Stanford is awesome. It also has a much, much smaller class, which should be seen as an advantage for networking and getting to know profs, etc.

Yep, this has been discussed multiple times and we all know that at Stanford the professors go out of there way to get to know you and find you jobs and at Harvard they kick your puppy. (Sorry, I am a little cranky due to lack of sleep.)

They are both top schools. One is not inherently better than the other. But Stanford clearly has warmer weather. If you really hate the cold, then that option problably makes the most sense.

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Stanford.

Attorney wrote:HYS will all get you where you want to go. They're all as prestigious as possible. Yes, lay prestige favors H over S over Y and law prestige favors Y over H over S, but they're all so close in both categories. You'd be silly to pay $30,000 more over 3 years (at 6.8% or 7.9% interest) for the slightly higher prestige of H.

Follow the $$ and enjoy Palo Alto.

Lay prestige favors S over Y? Are you kidding? Maybe in California, but nowhere else...

But yeah, OP go to Stanford. Harvard isn't worth $10k more a year, especially if you hate cold weather.

chasgoose wrote:Lay prestige favors S over Y? Are you kidding? Maybe in California, but nowhere else...

Among the "layest of the lay" (e.g. truck drivers) Harvard rules all and Stanford and Yale are tied behind it. Among grad students and PhDs in non-law fields, Stanford has a much better brandname than Yale and is nearly tied with Harvard. Also, when I was paying attention to US News undergrad rankings and metrics, college presidents would consistently rate Harvard and Stanford a 4.9/5 but Yale a 4.8/5 on the reputation survey. Stanford also has an incredible rep in the business world, probably beyond that of Harvard and well beyond Yale.

So I'd say, yes, overall there is a lot of evidence pointing to Stanford having more lay (i.e. non-law) prestige than Yale. There is no evidence I can find for the opposite view.

OH but my point, really, was that HYS are all basically tied. So nevermind.

Stanford, cause they have death lasers

Attorney wrote:

chasgoose wrote:Lay prestige favors S over Y? Are you kidding? Maybe in California, but nowhere else...

Among the "layest of the lay" (e.g. truck drivers) Harvard rules all and Stanford and Yale are tied behind it. Among grad students and PhDs in non-law fields, Stanford has a much better brandname than Yale and is nearly tied with Harvard. Also, when I was paying attention to US News undergrad rankings and metrics, college presidents would consistently rate Harvard and Stanford a 4.9/5 but Yale a 4.8/5 on the reputation survey. Stanford also has an incredible rep in the business world, probably beyond that of Harvard and well beyond Yale.

So I'd say, yes, overall there is a lot of evidence pointing to Stanford having more lay (i.e. non-law) prestige than Yale. There is no evidence I can find for the opposite view.

OH but my point, really, was that HYS are all basically tied. So nevermind.

I just saw that Texas A and M was ranked above some ivies for prestige on that link....I know people at A and M...it's a good school, but they would laugh at you. It's just something that I noticed and found funny, not saying you're wrong.

Non-Chalant1 wrote:

Attorney wrote:

chasgoose wrote:Lay prestige favors S over Y? Are you kidding? Maybe in California, but nowhere else...

Among the "layest of the lay" (e.g. truck drivers) Harvard rules all and Stanford and Yale are tied behind it. Among grad students and PhDs in non-law fields, Stanford has a much better brandname than Yale and is nearly tied with Harvard. Also, when I was paying attention to US News undergrad rankings and metrics, college presidents would consistently rate Harvard and Stanford a 4.9/5 but Yale a 4.8/5 on the reputation survey. Stanford also has an incredible rep in the business world, probably beyond that of Harvard and well beyond Yale.

So I'd say, yes, overall there is a lot of evidence pointing to Stanford having more lay (i.e. non-law) prestige than Yale. There is no evidence I can find for the opposite view.

OH but my point, really, was that HYS are all basically tied. So nevermind.

I just saw that Texas A and M was ranked above some ivies for prestige on that link....I know people at A and M...it's a good school, but they would laugh at you. It's just something that I noticed and found funny, not saying you're wrong.

TAMU came in at 2% among the "layest of laypeople". I think we can safely ignore anything below 4% or 5%. But if you think that truck drivers have ever heard of Dartmouth College (0%) it does show that you are wrong... laypeople can't begin to identify the schools of the Ivy League beyond Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Most laymen would probably incorrectly identify Stanford as "Ivy League" even though it is far too geographically distant and its athletics are way too good.

For what it's worth, here are the schools at 4% or higher among total laypeople and then among people with post-grad educations (including current grad students and PhDs, doctors, lawyers, etc.)

PRESTIGE AMONG THE FILTHY MASSES
Harvard, 24%
Stanford, 11%
Yale, 11%
MIT, 6%
Princeton, 4%
Berkeley, 4%
Notre Dame, 4%

PRESTIGE AMONG THE SUPER-EDUCATED
Harvard, 29%
Stanford, 27%
Yale, 14%
MIT, 11%
Princeton, 7%
Berkeley, 7%
Michigan, 7%

The ordinal ranking of lay prestige appears to be Harvard > Stanford > Yale > MIT > Princeton whether the survey is of the uneducated or the super-educated. No other Ivies are in any way a factor when it comes to lay prestige. Laypeople are not impressed with "I went to Brown." One would have to say "I went to school in the Ivy League" for anyone to take notice of Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Penn, or Dartmouth. It depends on where and to whom you're talking of course. New York in general and Wall $treet in particular loves Columbia, for example.

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I feel most people Ive come across that say Harvard first...say Yale and or Princeton second. But lol you're right...people do always think Stanford is ivy league.

It's funny, the schools at the top of my list would be MIT and the University of Chicago, followed by Stanford and Berkeley. To me, MIT seems vastly underrated by the list in this time where technology affects our lives more than ever before. And Chicago's invented more schools of thought than probably any other university in the world. There's a very influential "Chicago school of economics" for example. There is no "Harvard school of economics" and there is most certainly no "Yale school of economics". The University of Chicago seems to have gotten 0% of the vote in both categories. It saddens me.

Then you have Stanford and Berkeley, with Silicon Valley existing solely because they were there. Especially true in the case of Stanford, but Berkeley professors invented the nuclear bomb that will destroy us all, gave us BSD Unix that is the core of all Apple products, discovered the elements of Berkelium and Californium and named them after their school, etc.

To me, no schools in the Ivy League can touch MIT, Chicago, Stanford, and Berkeley when it comes to discovering new science, new technology, and new philosophies. That's whom I'd vote for! Not the stuffy "old money" schools of the northeast... although probably Harvard in particular has done some interesting things in many fields. Princeton and possibly Yale don't even make it onto the radar for innovation, my primary criteria here.

All in my opinion, of course.

I think you're stereotyping a bit. A lot of people have that anti-east coast in them. With that said..MIT is very affiliated with Harvard so that's not your best argument. For everything those schools you listed do in innovation from a tech perspective... Harvard and Yale do so from a public sector perspective. Most people going to Stanford aren't exactly poor either....but I understand your perspective and it's legitimate.

Attorney wrote:It's funny, the schools at the top of my list would be MIT and the University of Chicago, followed by Stanford and Berkeley. To me, MIT seems vastly underrated by the list in this time where technology affects our lives more than ever before. And Chicago's invented more schools of thought than probably any other university in the world. There's a very influential "Chicago school of economics" for example. There is no "Harvard school of economics" and there is most certainly no "Yale school of economics". The University of Chicago seems to have gotten 0% of the vote in both categories. It saddens me.

Then you have Stanford and Berkeley, with Silicon Valley existing solely because they were there. Especially true in the case of Stanford, but Berkeley professors invented the nuclear bomb that will destroy us all, gave us BSD Unix that is the core of all Apple products, discovered the elements of Berkelium and Californium and named them after their school, etc.

To me, no schools in the Ivy League can touch MIT, Chicago, Stanford, and Berkeley when it comes to discovering new science, new technology, and new philosophies. That's whom I'd vote for! Not the stuffy "old money" schools of the northeast... although probably Harvard in particular has done some interesting things in many fields. Princeton and possibly Yale don't even make it onto the radar for innovation, my primary criteria here.

All in my opinion, of course.

I agree w/ this sentiment, but as someone who tried to go the natural sciences route and couldn't cut it, I have a tremendous amount of respect for problem solving skills in that area... success at science can't be bullshitted, but success in liberal arts/government is so vague... you see all these people w/ fancy titles from fancy schools and they are basically administrators/bureaucrats/middle men in gigantic agencies... I distrust someone w/ those credentials much more readily. Not because there aren't some brilliant and honorable people that work those jobs, but it's just that it's not easy for them to show "here, this is the problem I solved, this is what I invented/created/researched" so those sorts of credentials just don't hold as much water for me. [I mean yeah, there's some bullshitting in the grant request process, but at some point you'll have to actually have publishable research]

MIT scientist that figures out a relationship in nature that can lead to faster processor >>>>> Harvard grad that's Executive VP of Accounts or GS-14 at Department of Labor

but then again, I think my view generally falls in line w/ America's skills. What America does best: 1) Agriculture 2) Information Technology 3) Weapons 4) Finance 5) Stable Government

#4 and #5 have been big disappointments as of late... #1, 2, and 3 are heavily dependent on our scientists. #4 and #5 are more like people like us: vaguely professional people w/ no discernable skills other than some refined argumentation skills, maybe even math for the analysts (but usually masters level education in policy/law... other mushy stuff like that)

But as a New England product I've met many an MITA student who couldn't solve a public sector problem or didn't care. Solving problems from a tech perspective is more meritorious to me only if it contributes to some public good. But that's just how I am. With that said, I do think we need more people with tech/engineering backgrounds in government instead of ivy-educated lawyers.

Stanford, no question, better weather, tons of local and national prestige (though possibly less than Haaahvahd) cooler past Alumni (like Steinbeck) and most importantly, they have sports teams worth watching. Go fighting trees.


I can't believe that no one else cares about having a good football team.

Non-Chalant1 wrote:But as a New England product I've met many an MITA student who couldn't solve a public sector problem or didn't care. Solving problems from a tech perspective is more meritorious to me only if it contributes to some public good. But that's just how I am. With that said, I do think we need more people with tech/engineering backgrounds in government instead of ivy-educated lawyers.

This is true... and certainly, we shouldn't honor anyone who doesn't contribute to the public good (however we define it). As a product of Virginia I've seen far too many people w/ vague goals/interests but w/ a fancy degree and nice rhetorical skills "make it" (as in get a job w/ the Feds)... and I admit that I'm a hater to a certain to degree. On a whole I think our Fed gov't is full of the entitled and uninspired sons and daughter of upper income white families (sorry to bring race into it, but upper income folks like Indians, Asians tend to go to other sectors).

In my every day life I've seen countless problems solved by our scientists... in fact they are so good at what they do that technological progress has outpaced our ability to actually pay for it (see healthcare). I don't experience that w/ the finance and government sectors. Finance? Extremely innovative... maybe a bit too innovative, was a big let down... Government? The Fed is about to shut down... failed programs or those w/ no evident efficacy continue indefinitely.

course, I could just be a hater