Top Law Schools

ZOMG NOT ALL LAW STUDENTS KEEP THEIR SCHOLARSHIPS IN THEIR SECOND OR THIRD YEARS?!?!?!?!

No need to wait until Sunday. The article is now available online.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/busin ... rants.html

Granted that this is already TLS conventional wisdom, it is nice to see it being covered by the media.

While those of us on TLS may know what's up, it's good to see a major news outlet cover this material as well. Law schools are acting in bad faith with practices like not informing scholarship students of their actual chances of losing their scholarships or publishing the number of students who lose scholarships each year. Giving increased media attention to this practice means that students may be less likely to be fooled, and schools will be less able to use this practice to increase their ranking at the expense of individual students.

People are idiots though, so even if they knew coming in that 95% of the class was guaranteed to lose their scholarships a lot of morons would still be totally confident that that would never happen to them and would take the plunge.

fuckin stips. Thank God they're getting called out

I was actually contacted on LSN to be interviewed for this article, but I hadn't logged in in weeks and by the time I e-mail the author it was this last Friday... anyone else get contacted? I'm kind of glad I didn't do it, though, 'cause you never know how you'll come off looking and NY Times stuff stays with you forever.

Why is merit scholarship retention not part of the U.S. News data haul? “The main reason is that we haven’t thought about it,” said Robert Morse, who oversees the rankings. “It’s not a great answer, but it’s an honest answer.”

Then Mr. Morse thought about it.

“This isn’t meant to be sarcastic,” he said, “but these students are going to law school and they need to learn to read the fine print.”

This thread is now about why Robert Morse and USNWR should have bought TLS.

Why am I not surprised that, according to the article, schools' fixation on the US News ranking is really behind this scam? They do provide a great service, don't they? Thank you future T4 law Professor Morse, looking out to educate law students about fine print.

I always thought that the curve applied to every year equally. I now realize that the first-year curve can be harder and that law schools take advantage of this to free scholarship money.

scammedhard wrote:I always thought that the curve applied to every year equally. I now realize that the first-year curve can be harder and that law schools take advantage of this to free scholarship money.

Same here. Found out a couple of months ago, courtesy of TLS, that 1L curve can be much harsher.

I'm kind of annoyed that they didn't mention the most important part of stipulations: those who are losing their scholarships are the ones more likely to be jobless.

I love that the dean's name at GGU is Drucilla. Wasn't that one of the evil stepsister's names in Cinderella?

Hannibal wrote:I'm kind of annoyed that they didn't mention the most important part of stipulations: those who are losing their scholarships are the ones more likely to be jobless.

There is a hint of that in the last paragraph:

Ms. Leumer today is volunteering at an environmental nonprofit organization as she looks for a paying job in a gruesome recession in the legal market. She has some warm memories of her years at Golden Gate, but ultimately, she says, the place did not work for her. But by spending $60,000 on tuition, and by helping to bolster a key statistic, she worked for Golden Gate.

Maybe David Segal will write yet another law school article about that. I certainly don't mind. Keep them coming.

Solid article, def. worth forwarding to people you know who are going on stips.

Also, if you're not in the top third of the toilet that is GGU, just drop out anyway.

But the A.B.A. seems unaware of the issues raised by merit grants. Its annual survey of law schools is granular enough to ask for the number of hours the library is open, but it doesn’t ask how many students lose their scholarships each year.

The schools already know that number. Why not publish it?

“That is a good question, a legitimate question,” said Bucky Askew, who directs the A.B.A. division that accredits schools. “It hasn’t been an issue brought to our attention. Nobody has written us, contacted us, to say, ‘This needs to be on the table.’ ”

This sounded rather childish to me. "Nobody told us to, how were we supposed to know this needed to happen or was a good idea?" It's the same answer I'd give to my mom as a kid when she'd ask why I didn't clean my room. "Nobody told me to."

Another way schools manipulate scholly retention is to curve by section, then stack scholly students in the same section(s). Asking certain schools about this will not necessarily elicit a candid answer. A school might at least admit they curve by section, which could be a red flag.

fastforward wrote:Another way schools manipulate scholly retention is to curve by section, then stack scholly students in the same section(s). Asking certain schools about this will not necessarily elicit a candid answer. A school might at least admit they curve by section, which could be a red flag.

I believe many many schools curve by section, including those whose scholarships have no stipulations.

Having GPA curves with median well under 3.0 is uncommon, especially compared to undergrad curving systems. I think it's pretty clear that these students don't realize how their curve plays out until it's too late. It just screams bad faith not to tells students in advance, or right on the damn letter, that only 1/3rd of the class manages to maintain the GPA requirement for the scholarship.

I mean I could understand if it was used to filter out a small % of students who might try to coast through law school on a free ride, but letting in a material portion of the class with merit money while statistically knowing that they won't be able to keep it seems downright criminal.

The worst example would be schools who give out merit aid to a % of the incoming class that exceeding the % of the class eligible to continue receiving the aid. How can you possible even call it merit aid at that point? Hey we think you're good enough to get this money, but since your GPA/LSAT composite puts you at median, we really don't think you're good enough to keep receiving this money.

Merit makes sense when it's treated like traditional merit scholarships. You give it to the top applicants you want to attract as a fair trade-off between their opportunity to go to a better school and the financial security you are offering them. GPA requirements have no place in this relationship since it basically says "We wanted you as a top student, but we were mistaken about your abilities and used bad judgment in offering you large sums of money... so we're just going to be taking that money back now". That seems so perverse when the school has superior resources, superior information, superior bargaining position, etc...

Hannibal wrote:

fastforward wrote:Another way schools manipulate scholly retention is to curve by section, then stack scholly students in the same section(s). Asking certain schools about this will not necessarily elicit a candid answer. A school might at least admit they curve by section, which could be a red flag.

I believe many many schools curve by section, including those whose scholarships have no stipulations.

That's not the point. Nothing wrong with curving by section. Something DEFINITELY wrong with throwing all the merit scholars into the same section.

Does anyone understand why the school claims that upwards of 70% of students *could* maintain a 3.0 GPA, while only 1/3 did? Are professors using their own discretion in grading to shift the curve down?

Even if you meet GPA scholarship requirements, it makes school a lot more stressful than it would normally be. For example, my undergrad awarded me a renewable scholarship with a 3.8 GPA/full time stipulation, and although I've met it each year and will receive the full amount (nearly full tuition each year for four years), it was freaking STRESSFUL and made me way more neurotic about my grades than I would have been. They also have been really irritating to deal with each year when I have to remind them to renew it (although it SHOULD be automatic), which has given me the impression that they don't like renewing scholarships and don't expect you to maintain it. And that's just undergrad.

In the end though I was thankful for the GPA stip since it made slacking off a complete non-option and kept my GPA pretty for LS apps.

"Why is merit scholarship retention not part of the U.S. News data haul? “The main reason is that we haven’t thought about it,” said Robert Morse, who oversees the rankings. “It’s not a great answer, but it’s an honest answer.”

Then Mr. Morse thought about it.

“This isn’t meant to be sarcastic,” he said, “but these students are going to law school and they need to learn to read the fine print"

Hannibal wrote:I'm kind of annoyed that they didn't mention the most important part of stipulations: those who are losing their scholarships are the ones more likely to be jobless.

Yes! And, they are less likely to be able to transfer to a cheaper school.

Hannibal wrote: I believe many many schools curve by section, including those whose scholarships have no stipulations.

That is true, which is why I said it "could be" a red flag. It's suspicious when certain schools claim to assign sections randomly, yet scholly students consistently end up grouped together.