. Forum

[amorfati]

Great (/fun) calculator! Unfortunately, though, it told me to go to WUSTL when I just put down my deposit at CLS. Obviously that was most likely largely due to discrepancies in aid ($0 vs. $90k) - although it seems that it might still be a bit off, considering I ranked the importance of cost as very low (2-3?) and prestige as very high(10) and that put that I was aiming for PI in NY.

Still though, cool concept.

[tooswolle]

Great job with the website. Seems very useful.

[Wholigan]

Interesting. I have an observation, however. It seems to only rank the financial costs among the schools listed. For example, I chose five schools at sticker after selecting the other factors. The one with the lowest cost had a "cost score" of 100, even at sticker. I therefore proceeded to change the scholarship info to a full scholarship for that school, and the cost score was still 100, resulting in no change in the overall score. I see it changes the other schools cost factors, so maybe that is somehow accounted for.

[aliarrow]

Interesting. I have an observation, however. It seems to only rank the financial costs among the schools listed. For example, I chose five schools at sticker after selecting the other factors. The one with the lowest cost had a "cost score" of 100, even at sticker. I therefore proceeded to change the scholarship info to a full scholarship for that school, and the cost score was still 100, resulting in no change in the overall score. I see it changes the other schools cost factors, so maybe that is somehow accounted for.

Whichever is cheapest always gets a score of 100. Was it still the cheapest at stick compared to the other schools?

[Non-Chalant1]

The point is that if people are going to think out their decision that rationally (doing the math as you described above) they're not going to use this calculator to actually make a decision. For a fun tool, dividing by 3 will work just fine.

I never said it wasn't a "fun" tool. You guys were the ones who claimed I couldn't "do math". Though I actually just mess up the amounts to add up to 62K lol....oops...I don't know why I thought I said 63k. I was simply saying that my "cost of attendance" will be different for the different years and I thought that would be helpful to be able to break it down by years along with having total cost of attendance. I actually like the tool. Except that it told me to go to Boston College over Columbia and Chicago (scholly difference I guess).

But we're good.

[adt231]

No offense to OP but I think that there are too many variables and too many changing facts to make this a truly useful tool. While I applaud the effort you've put into it, I just feel that this isn't as simple a decision as something like LSP and because of that putting work into this is not that fruitful.

This is why we don't really need a "What are my chances?" forum (it is replaceable by a link to LSN and LSP) but a "What school should I go to?" forum is necessary because a tool can't really reflect all the nuances.

+1

While this is a really fun tool (I'm using it right now!), I'm putting about 0 stock in what it says. Deciding where to go is not a mechanical decision, but I applaud the effort for trying to make it one.

Also, if you want to continue in this futile effort, LRAP needs to be taken account for those interested in PI/Gov.

[BobSacamano]

I logged in just to say that I put in all my relevant info, trying to stay as true to the decision I faced a couple years ago as I could (meaning I did not make it obvious which school I ended up at), and you totally nailed the school I ended up picking. Impressive.

[Wholigan]

Interesting. I have an observation, however. It seems to only rank the financial costs among the schools listed. For example, I chose five schools at sticker after selecting the other factors. The one with the lowest cost had a "cost score" of 100, even at sticker. I therefore proceeded to change the scholarship info to a full scholarship for that school, and the cost score was still 100, resulting in no change in the overall score. I see it changes the other schools cost factors, so maybe that is somehow accounted for.

Whichever is cheapest always gets a score of 100. Was it still the cheapest at stick compared to the other schools?

Yes, it was already the cheapest with no scholarship. It just seemed weird that the school's overall score didn't change whether you were paying sticker or had a full scholarship.

[aliarrow]

It seems to me like there are a lot of problems.

If I am choosing between a full ride at UGA vs. $20/year at Columbia vs. $0/year at Harvard. The cost scores for these schools are 100, 14 and 8, respectively. If, instead, I remove UGA from the calculator, the cost score of Columbia is 100 while the cost score of Harvard is 60! This means that now columbia has a 40 points lead due to cost where it had only a 6 point lead with UGA in the mix. This can lead to scenarios where the calculator will tell me to pick Columbia, but if I'm also considering UGA, to pick Harvard, which doesn't make sense. Perhaps cost should be absolutely rated instead.

In addition, because the clerkship percentages are so much lower than BigLaw, it's difficult to make the clerkship placement matter at all. And in general, even if cost and employment are both rated at 10, cost ends up being weighted significantly more than employment because the employment number can never reach 100.

Also, it doesn't look like the geographic score is even being added to the overall score. So right now geography doesn't affect anything.

Whoops! ... You were right... I misspelled a variable when calculating overall score and up until now Location wasn't accounted for in overall score. Everything looks right now hehe ......

And I've changed score calculation to provide more representation to employment and location by using an indexing system similar to the cost structure.

[aliarrow]

Interesting. I have an observation, however. It seems to only rank the financial costs among the schools listed. For example, I chose five schools at sticker after selecting the other factors. The one with the lowest cost had a "cost score" of 100, even at sticker. I therefore proceeded to change the scholarship info to a full scholarship for that school, and the cost score was still 100, resulting in no change in the overall score. I see it changes the other schools cost factors, so maybe that is somehow accounted for.

Whichever is cheapest always gets a score of 100. Was it still the cheapest at stick compared to the other schools?

Yes, it was already the cheapest with no scholarship. It just seemed weird that the school's overall score didn't change whether you were paying sticker or had a full scholarship.

Yeah the cheapest is always going to be 100 exactly, however if it got more expensive (no scholarship), it just won't be as close because of the indexing system - all the other scores will rise for other schools, so it will give that school less of an edge in comparison.

[emjay]

i love this so much.

[NoleinNY]

I think the value for Pepperdine has a glitch/typo. I plugged Pepperdine, LLS, and USC into the calculator and got this (bolded the glitch, since the data is a bit tl; dr):


University of Southern California
Geographic Placement
Placement in Pacific: 86.00%
Placement in No region selected: 0%
Placement in No region selected: 0%
Raw Geographic Score: 86
Geographic Index Score: 89
Weight Factor: 1
Overall Score: 159


Loyola Marymount University (LA)
Geographic Placement
Placement in Pacific: 97.00%
Placement in No region selected: 0%
Placement in No region selected: 0%
Raw Geographic Score: 97
Geographic Index Score: 100
Weight Factor: 1

Overall Score: 160.9


Pepperdine University
Geographic Placement
Placement in Pacific: 77.70%
Placement in No region selected: 0%
Placement in No region selected: 0%
Raw Geographic Score: 77.7
Geographic Index Score: 777000
Weight Factor: 1

Overall Score: 777058.1

[aliarrow]

I think the value for Pepperdine has a glitch/typo. I plugged Pepperdine, LLS, and USC into the calculator and got this (bolded the glitch, since the data is a bit tl; dr):

You should attend Pepperdine University based on your preferences.

Odd, I'll look into that

[aliarrow]

I think the value for Pepperdine has a glitch/typo. I plugged Pepperdine, LLS, and USC into the calculator and got this (bolded the glitch, since the data is a bit tl; dr):

Can you try again? I'm unable to replicate the error... Maybe you tried it while I was updating the code?

[NoleinNY]

OK. I tried again, but this time I'm getting inconsistent results. First it suggests USC due to a glitch that put LLS and PU at 0% biglaw placement... I ran the same values again, and now I get PU 777000 value again!

EDIT: If the PU/LLS 0% figures aren't glitches, then they are simply inaccurate.

EDIT 2:

What I entered:
Region: Pacific - 10
Employment: Other firms - 8, BigLaw - 6
Geographic Preference - 10
Employment - 7
Cost+Prestige - Don't Care
USC-0
LLS - 87000
PU - 69000
(includes CoL for all)

[aliarrow]

OK. I tried again, but this time I'm getting inconsistent results. First it suggests USC due to a glitch that put LLS and PU at 0% biglaw placement... I ran the same values again, and now I get PU 777000 value again!

EDIT: If the PU/LLS 0% figures aren't glitches, then they are simply inaccurate.

Not glitches, its just that they don't have NLJ 250 %s available due to them being <13% (law.com only provided info for the top 50 in 2009). I clarified that on my graph post, but I forgot to here.

[Hannibal]

I'd like to see stipulations on there. It would be hard since grade medians vary from school to school, 100% of students who are offered money at LLS think they'll get it, only three out of ten will.

[aliarrow]

I'd like to see stipulations on there. It would be hard since grade medians vary from school to school, 100% of students who are offered money at LLS think they'll get it, only three out of ten will.

I was originally thinking of that, but I could only do it as a % stip which would fluster anyone who has a gpa stip and doesn't know what % it equates to.

[northwood]

theres a glitch for pittsburgh as well

edited for issue taken care of by op. thanks!

[aliarrow]

theres a glitch for pittsburgh as well:

Ill bold it

You should attend University of Pittsburgh based on your preferences.

Ah, there was a glitch. It should now be fixed.

If you still have it open, go back and re-submit to see if it comes up correct now

[The Stig]

this is awesome!

[northwood]

maybe add soemthing to go with how you felt about the area? After all you will be spending at least the next 3 years of your life in a certain city/ area. If you hate a city- then that wont be the best place for you to go.

[Knock]

It's definitely a fun tool. I kind of want to see prestige removed though, since I kind of envision this tool as a helpful informational tool which help people see past prestige and pick the best option. How are you even measuring prestige? If you're measuring lay prestige, well then that really shouldn't be a significant factor in your decision. If your measuring legal prestige, how are you measuring it? Reputation scores? I feel that similarly ranked schools are similarly prestigious. Prestige is pretty regional as well (obviously with some exceptions). I'm just not a huge fan of including prestige in this equation.

Edited: I think a lot of times people get blinded by prestige and make what might not be the best decision for them.

[lakerfanimal]

It's definitely a fun tool. I kind of want to see prestige removed though, since I kind of envision this tool as a helpful informational tool which help people see past prestige and pick the best option. How are you even measuring prestige? If you're measuring lay prestige, well then that really shouldn't be a significant factor in your decision. If your measuring legal prestige, how are you measuring it? Reputation scores? I feel that similarly ranked schools are similarly prestigious. Prestige is pretty regional as well (obviously with some exceptions). I'm just not a huge fan of including prestige in this equation.

I think he's using USNWR points for each school (not the actual rank, but the score from 0-100 with Yale having 100 I think).

[Hannibal]

I'd like to see urban/suburban/rural in there. That was my main factor in choosing between my two best options.