At the risk of scaring everybody, I've written a long stream of consciousness comparing Boalt and Penn (the aspects that I found pertinent). Some of it relates to the ASWs/my impressions of the student body, and some of it compares the more tangible academic and extracurricular opportunities. If you don't want to read something really long, please just skip this. If you have questions about any of it, I'm sure I have more to say about all of it
Okay, comparing Boalt and Penn. This should be relatively easy because there are a lot of differences between the two, at least from my perspective.
First, of the three ASWs I went to, Penn’s was by far the most organized and comprehensive, and Boalt’s was by far the least. I really appreciated that Penn offered so many panels and that they were all offered multiple times so that I was able to attend every session that I was interested in. At Boalt I was disappointed that I had to choose between learning about the LRAP and learning about clinical programs. It’s true that, to some degree, you can get all this info online, but there are distinct advantages to hearing it directly from a person and being able to ask as many questions as you want. You could further argue that the level of organization at an ASW should have no bearing on your decision, and this could be true, but I did think it was a little weird that Boalt didn’t put a higher priority on admitted students’ exploring all of these subjects to the greatest possible extent. Further, their LRAP program was explained pretty poorly, and I wondered why they would choose someone to explain the program who doesn’t do a good job. Granted, Penn didn’t do a stellar job either, but Michigan did, so I know it’s possible (and Boalt’s explanation was 8 times more confusing than Penn’s). Also, Boalt offered individual financial aid counseling appts throughout the day, which led a lot of people to forgo the general financial aid (not LRAP) panel in favor of more interesting ones – but the line for the counseling turned out to be so long that a lot of people gave up or never made it in. If they wanted to offer the individual appts, they should have had enough people working that everyone could get in without missing lunch or other activities.
Overall, my impression from Boalt’s ASW was that emphasis was purposely placed on social events rather than information about academics. There were only a few events that involved faculty and administration, and overall I felt like no one was trying to sell me on Boalt by talking up the classes, the journals, the certificates or dual degree programs, the international opportunities, etc. Instead, there were 2.5 days of social events with the students. This is not necessarily a bad thing at all. At Boalt “social events” was more or less another way of talking about student organizations, clinics and journals, because all the events were structured around these institutions. For instance, there were a bunch of dinners on the first night sponsored by different groups based on ethnicities; the next day there were happy hours with the kids from various journals and clinics. I learned that Boalt is definitely a very social school – the people I talked to, who were admittedly the self-selected social ones, go out 4-5 nights a week – and that one’s social events would be determined largely by the groups one joined. This seemed to be a major factor in the groups students decided to join. For instance, when I asked why a student had joined the international journal, the answer was, “they have the best social events, including an annual trip to Tahoe.” On the one hand, I really liked that the groups were forums for making friends and having fun as well as for learning and honing a particular interest; on the other hand, it seemed a little random.
By contrast, Penn’s ASW was heavy on information about academic opportunities. They squeezed a ton of panels into the first day and, like I said, arranged the schedule so that most people could probably attend everything they were interested in. I definitely came away with a very favorable impression of Penn’s international opportunities, a clearer (and again, favorable) understanding of what it means for Penn to place such emphasis on interdisciplinariness, and a familiarity with Penn’s LRAP, public interest opportunities, and clerkship opportunities. By contrast, I felt like I learned hardly any of this at Boalt, because the panels overlapped/they didn’t offer panels on some of these topics. I came home and looked on the website for this info, and found it in some cases, not in others.
And in turn, I got much less of a view of Penn’s social life. Generally, the impression I got is that the students are not nearly as close as a Boalt. This is not to say they’re strangers – the class is smaller, and I assume that counts for something. And the students on Penn’s student life panel assured us that they see quite enough of each other. But I did not feel nearly as much community there as I did at Boalt. I think that Philly being how it is detracts from the sense of community somewhat, both because there are a ton of different places to live (more than Berkeley? I’m not sure, since lots of Boalt kids lived in Oakland and SF) and because Philly has easy access to both NYC and DC by train. A fair number of students mentioned traveling to these cities either on the weekends for fun or on weekdays for externships. Moreover, though, Penn just didn’t hold a lot of events where I really got to see students interact with each other on a close level. There were two happy hours but they were populated mainly by admits. At the Boalt parties, you saw kids interacting in a way that made it clear they were genuinely close and spent a lot of time together.
Beyond the fact that Boalt is more social, the other main impression I got is that it’s very practical and career-oriented. This is actually not a comment on Penn at all – obviously Penn is this way as well, but at Boalt it really blew me away. The message I got from most students and even faculty was, “This school thing is pretty stupid, especially the waste of time they call 1L year, but we’ve got to go through the motions so we can get to the good stuff.” The aspect of school that students were most excited about, it seemed, was their clinics (almost everyone does one), because they were actually doing something, not just sitting in a classroom. Moreover, almost everyone I spoke to seemed to have had really impressive work experience prior to law school and to have a decent idea of what they wanted to do afterwards. The funny thing is, I thought this would really appeal to me, but I ended up feeling like, “wait, don’t you guys like learning in the abstract at all? Do you like wrestling with theory or at least mastering the basics of law?” (I mean, I know 1L year isn’t supposed to be fun and riveting, but at other schools I at least heard more enthusiasm for 2L and 3L classes.) I actually asked this question of a couple people, and they assured me that Berkeley is an extremely rigorous place academically, which I guess was somewhat what I was asking, but not quite.
I can’t really draw a counterpoint here with Penn, except to say that I guess I felt it struck a good balance between academics and more hands-on practice. The clinics offered at Penn seemed really appealing, but you can’t pursue most of them until your fourth semester (some are available earlier, but I forget whether “earlier” means starting in your first year or in your third semester). By contrast, Boalt lets you enroll in clinics starting a few weeks into your 1L year (technically, the ones you can join as a 1L are called student initiated legal something somethings, but they are the same as clinics). This is a demonstration of how much emphasis Boalt places on the practical, and its tendency to attract students who are more interested in hands-on work than theoretical work. On a related point, I enjoyed both Penn’s and Boalt’s mock class, but they were fairly different. Penn’s was, I think, closer to what an actual 1L class would be like, and the professor was really good – gentle on students, and had a sense of humor, but did a lot of cold calling, and asked some tough questions that involved analysis. The reading was something like 10-15 pages and the case was one that seemed rather typical. Boalt’s class was based on a three-page reading of a very sensational case, and the professor used a powerpoint that involved cartoons (along with serious slides). Boalt’s prof was also really good, but different – her questions were less analytical and more opinion-based (this sort of made sense because the case had less to analyze, but still, she picked the case, so it seemed to mean something) – at points it felt like an undergrad into to ethics class – “Okay, so most students by a show of hands think they wouldn’t eat someone else if they were starving – but what if I throw in this shocker point of view and make you all reconsider your entire values system!” Boalt’s class gave us a sexier, more fun view of law scholarship than is realistic, while Penn’s challenged us to get out our fine-tooth combs and prepare to examine minute, boring questions for the next three years while remaining intellectually engaged.
Although I have done some research in the last few days on the aspects of Boalt that I didn’t learn much about at ASW (the full range of clinics available, international opportunities, interdisciplinariness, etc.) I don’t feel fully qualified to compare those aspects to Penn’s, because Berkeley’s website doesn’t seem very informative – it’s hard to find the info you’re looking for and when you find it, it seems incomplete. I’ll take a brief stab at it:
- Clinics: Berkeley has about 18 options, if you count the 1L student-initiated projects and the multiple projects that you can choose within the
East Bay Community Law Center Clinic. (All of this information is especially poorly organized on Boalt’s website, which make it look like they only have about 5.) Of those 18, about 8 were immediately appealing to me (based on the name alone); I bet anyone could find a number that appeal based on whatever interests you have. Penn has ten (unless they have some layered clinics-within-clinics that I didn’t note), of which seven stood out to me. Penn’s location gives it a couple of unique clinic opportunities – the Supreme Court clinic partners with an appellate firm in DC, and the Legislative Clinic lets you work on U.S. Congressional committees two days per week. Obviously Berkeley can’t offer clinics on federal government stuff like that, but instead they excel at direct services clinics – just a few that caught my eye are the California Asylum Representation Clinic, Advocates for Youth Justice and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Clinic. I should mention that Penn obviously has direct services clinics too, and Berkeley lets you do an externship semester in DC, so you can do either thing at either school – it’s a matter of the emphasis.
- Interdisciplinariness: At Penn you can take up to four courses in other graduate departments. At Berkeley it was “8 or 9 credits.” Penn has 9 certificate programs. I could not find a central page on Boalt’s website about certificate programs, but I know they offer them because I’ve heard about the new Clean Energy Certificate. Both schools offer a number of joint degrees – I didn’t look into them at all because I’m not considering one. Overall, Penn articulated well (via faculty members at a panel) why being interdisciplinary is important and what it means, while Berkeley did not focus on this issue at all, as far as I saw.
- Penn’s international opportunities bowled me over. They offer summer public interest fellowships abroad with a variety of organizations (including an international human rights summer fellowship), an international internship program for those who prefer corporate law (during the school year and maybe in the summer too?), a study abroad program with schools in 7 foreign countries (or you can directly enroll anywhere). The Lauder Program (at Wharton) lets law students develop business language skills. Penn is one of seven universities outside India that is certified to enable graduates to take the bar in India (overall they mentioned a lot of different opportunities in India, which was exciting because of all the legal questions being explored there). Berkeley’s international opportunities – again, it was just hard to find info on the website, and they did not even offer a panel on the subject (it may have been discussed within the panel on careers or another one that I couldn’t attend). What I could find on the website: You can find your own field placement abroad for externships; they have a long track record of students working at the Hague – I talked to a kid who had done this and it sounded like a great experience. I really couldn’t find any structured programs to work or study abroad, but this doesn’t mean they’re not there, just that if they do exist they’re not easy to find.
- Grading and competition: Both schools talked a lot about collegiality (actually Penn used that annoying buzzword far more often), but Boalt was clearly the less competitive school. The most important factor is probably Boalt’s grading system – 60% get Pass, 30% get Honors and 10% get High Honors. The idea is that because so much of the class gets a P, there’s no stigma attached to it and there’s less pressure to avoid Ps. NPs (Not Pass, or something) are almost non-existent; you would have to, say, not show up to the final to get one. While I appreciate that this would lead to less animosity among students, I think I would also get annoyed to work hard in a class and end up with the same grade as someone who did little other than show up to the exam. According to everyone I talked to, it’s hard to predict whether you’ll get a P, an H or an HH based on the amount of effort you put into the class (or how well you think you’ve mastered it), and this also sounds frustrating; though I’m sure that is true to some degree at every school, the effect may be pronounced at Boalt because there are fewer grade options than elsewhere. Because of this unusual grading system, employers rely heavily on the extracurriculars that Boalt students choose (and prior WE) in determining hires. In addition to the unusual grading system, Boalt kids never learn their class rank unless they apply for clerkships, in which case they are sworn to secrecy. All in all, it was obvious that this took a lot of pressure off of students to compete for grades, and let them put more effort into the less academics aspects of law school. For info on Penn’s grading policy, I will refer you here:
http://www.law.upenn.edu/cpp/employer/a ... grading%22, because I do not recall much discussion on this subject at ASW. Due to the difference in grading system, obviously it is a somewhat more competitive atmosphere, despite all the protestations about collegiality.
Student body and general quality of life: The two student bodies seemed equally interested in drinking and I heard good things about the parties at both schools. I guess the most striking difference is the corporate/conservative (personally, not politically) feel at Penn versus the public interest/liberal (both personally and politically) feel at Boalt. This was definitely expressed in the two school’s career placement stats (Penn 2008 graduates: 2.8% into public interest, 0% into gov't; Boalt 2008 graduates: 9.9% into public interest, 5% into gov't), but I also felt it in other ways – the way they dressed (Penn students were more likely to wear dress shoes & brand name clothing); the number of LGBTQ students at each school (Berkeley appeared to have a far larger and/or more visible LGBTQ community); the number of conversations that touched on social justice issues (way greater at Berkeley).
Some students at Boalt seemed too political correct for my taste – it wasn’t clear to me that playing devil’s advocate, questioning liberal political views or just giving consideration to other points of view was usually welcomed. Some Penn students seemed too fratty or boring, and no one could tell me where the farmers market was. (As a typical environmentally conscious yuppie liberal with suppressed libertarian urges, I was turned off by both of these extremes.) Students at both schools seemed about equally happy with their schools and their fellow students - as I said earlier, though, Boalt students seemed like a tighter-knit community. A couple of Boalt kids had quite critical things to say about the priorities of the law school administration – though I didn’t always learn the specifics of this attitude, I think it was rooted largely in resistance to the direction in which Dean Edley has taken the law school – big expansions, lots of money spent, maybe sort of corporate-seeming – and, relatedly, in the absolutely gigantic tuition hikes that the students have seen. I think the Boalt students are more likely to be critical of the administration than the Penn students are just because of Berkeley’s tradition of agitation for student democratic rule.
Both school’s students seemed to like their cities a lot. Berkeley’s campus and surrounding area offers a lot more in the way of natural beauty, but if you care to seek it out at Penn, Fairmount park isn’t too far (I didn’t go, but I hear it’s quite nice). There’s also the matter of the weather difference… when I visited Berkeley, the temps ranged from 50s to high 60s or so; I was surprised to find that throughout my stay, even on the warmest day, I could go from being over-warm to very chilly within a minute’s time. There were people on the street wearing coats, and others wearing mini dresses; it was like no one knew how to dress for the variable weather. Spring on the East Coast is not like that, in my experience; the weird comfort variations put a small damper on my excitement about Bay Area weather. However, there’s just no arguing with the array of greenery all around you in Berkeley. I saw trees, flowers, birds I’d never seen. There is a real appeal to going to school in such an aesthetically pleasing place. For me personally, though, I think it would be more distracting than soothing. I found Philadelphia to be pretty neat. I liked the neighborhoods I saw and especially the fact that Philly is a “neighborhood city” where there’s a lot of variation from one area to another. Though Berkeley had a great preponderance of solid used bookstores, I was not crazy about the dirty hippies and street punks.
In awkward conclusion, ultimately I didn't feel comfortable in either Penn's corporate-leaning environment or Boalt's politically correct environment. I think I could have been happy at either place because I'm pretty adaptable, but I felt at home at Michigan, and not either of these schools.
Okay, the end. I hope this is helpful for some of you making this decision!
I'm still crunching the numbers though (meaning comparing the various offerings at each school - clinics, journals, certificates, etc.), and a last-minute scholarship of some kind from Boalt (however unlikely) could change things.