Top Law Schools

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Lol.

Holy

They are going to break 90% on LST for co2016. Good for the students

I'm a current student at Iowa, and there is no 'panic' in the law school over this. The consensus from 2Ls and 3Ls is 'wow, the 1Ls will have great job prospects.'

Iowa launched a large fundraising program last year anticipating smaller student enrollment, and the Dean has been very active with alumni groups around the country since. Iowa is, will still be, a great public law school that places fairly well. Another thing to note is no student pays out of state tuition as a 2L or 3L. The law school also has a ton of faculty that are very close to retiring, so I would think faculty/student numbers start to fall back into line.

DportIA wrote:I'm a current student at Iowa, and there is no 'panic' in the law school over this. The consensus from 2Ls and 3Ls is 'wow, the 1Ls will have great job prospects.'

Iowa launched a large fundraising program last year anticipating smaller student enrollment, and the Dean has been very active with alumni groups around the country since. Iowa is, will still be, a great public law school that places fairly well. Another thing to note is no student pays out of state tuition as a 2L or 3L. The law school also has a ton of faculty that are very close to retiring, so I would think faculty/student numbers start to fall back into line.

Do they still put stips on their schollies?

IAFG wrote: Do they still put stips on their schollies?

I think that ended after my class, class of 2015.

As long as medians stayed about the same, I bet this will improve Iowa's ranking and be better for its students. As long as they have the money to keep the law school running, this is a good thing for Iowa. Only if Campos's school did something similar.....

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ajax adonis wrote:

jingosaur wrote:As long as medians stayed about the same, I bet this will improve Iowa's ranking and be better for its students. As long as they have the money to keep the law school running, this is a good thing for Iowa. Only if Campos's school did something similar.....

That's quite a contingency.

I'm not sure it really is for a large public school like Iowa.

Iowa is a really good law school but, imho, they just badly misjudged the incoming class and the dynamics of other law schools. They were too late/slow in NEGOTIATING scholarship offers, removing stipulations, extending application deadlines, etc. I know 7 who were accepted to Iowa and all opted for other schools just because they were slower to act. Higher ranked schools were handing out more money early on with no stips. In hindsight, I should have not declined enrollment early on and stayed to see what my scholarship would have been in July. I think Iowa will be better prepared next application cycle. I also think the 50% in-state requirement hurt them this year.

That's good. I think Iowa would be a cool place to practice, because almost all of the lawyers in the state graduated from an elite school.

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I don't see the point of whoring out with scholarships just to enroll more students. So people saying "Well they should have just given out more money!" aren't really being realistic.

Paying someone 140k for their 167 over someone with a 165 is utterly ridiculous behavior for a school. And it doesn't help the school either. It's just increasing competition for local jobs.

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sublime wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:I don't see the point of whoring out with scholarships just to enroll more students. So people saying "Well they should have just given out more money!" aren't really being realistic.

Paying someone 140k for their 167 over someone with a 165 is utterly ridiculous behavior for a school. And it doesn't help the school either. It's just increasing competition for local jobs.

That wasn't my point. It is that they can't expect to pull applicants if better schools are giving the same or a better offer, which they were last cycle. Especially, right or wrong, Iowa City is not somewhere that many applicants want to go, particularly when it is likely that you would have to practice somewhere in state.

Why should Iowa care about its ranking? The point is to provide good attorneys for the state at a reasonable price for the state's residents. Ranking has nothing to do with that purpose.

Tom Joad wrote:

sublime wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:I don't see the point of whoring out with scholarships just to enroll more students. So people saying "Well they should have just given out more money!" aren't really being realistic.

Paying someone 140k for their 167 over someone with a 165 is utterly ridiculous behavior for a school. And it doesn't help the school either. It's just increasing competition for local jobs.

That wasn't my point. It is that they can't expect to pull applicants if better schools are giving the same or a better offer, which they were last cycle. Especially, right or wrong, Iowa City is not somewhere that many applicants want to go, particularly when it is likely that you would have to practice somewhere in state.

Why should Iowa care about its ranking? The point is to provide good attorneys for the state at a reasonable price for the state's residents. Ranking has nothing to do with that purpose.

A higher ranking will allow them to attract better students. That's just the way it is. Look at the massive jump in applications to ASU after its big jump.

Given this, it's not a terrible strategy to have a tiny class for a year in hopes of improving the ranking and bringing in a much larger class next year.

ajax adonis wrote:http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/201 ... nightmares

The chickens are coming home to roost.

I'm sure there are and will be many others.

I guess that's good for applicants who are choosing law schools! Fewer applicants leads to less selectivity. I would have applied two years from now instead of during the 2008-2010 era.

I think the author of that blog post really missed the point. Right now, law schools are essentially cash cows. Cutting student enrollment will lead to a "decline in its revenues relative to expenses", yes, but if a school was taking in more than twice what it cost to run it, then it can afford to lose quite a bit of revenue without becoming unprofitable, let alone shutting down.

The sad truth is that law schools in recent years were profit machines for their affiliated universities. If fewer people are interested in going to law school at current tuition rates, the only options are to 1) cut tuition, 2) lower your admissions standards, or 3) cut enrollment. #1 wouldn't make much of a difference, since these schools have already been using tuition-reducing scholarships to attract qualified students. #2 isn't a desirable option since it would mean both a drop in the USNWR rankings and a likely drop in graduates' bar passage rates. #3 gives them greater ability to maintain a qualified student body, and as the article notes, their LSAT medians are actually going up. Not only that, but fewer grads each year means less difficulty finding jobs for everyone. So long as they don't lower their enrollment so much that they can't cover their own costs, which I don't see likely anytime soon, this is the smart option for them.

If law schools start to fold, the ones that survive will be the ones that cut the fat and focused on what makes them effective. Sounds like Iowa's ahead of the game.

sublime wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:I don't see the point of whoring out with scholarships just to enroll more students. So people saying "Well they should have just given out more money!" aren't really being realistic.

Paying someone 140k for their 167 over someone with a 165 is utterly ridiculous behavior for a school. And it doesn't help the school either. It's just increasing competition for local jobs.

That wasn't my point. It is that they can't expect to pull applicants if better schools are giving the same or a better offer, which they were last cycle. Especially, right or wrong, Iowa City is not somewhere that many applicants want to go, particularly when it is likely that you would have to practice somewhere in state.

Why would Iowa cater to people who don't want to live in Iowa? It's a PUBLIC state university.

And still you are focusing on slight deviations in student admissions numbers as if they mean anything at all in the real world. OMG 165 vs 163!!!! It doesn't matter. That's well within the margin of error of the LSAT. There is no loss to U of Iowa if they lose some students to WUSTL because WUSTL lets them attend for free. No loss at all.

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Enrolling a bunch of people who aren't paying tuition won't help with the revenue. Might keep some professors busy, but that doesn't pay the bills.

vanwinkle wrote:I think the author of that blog post really missed the point. Right now, law schools are essentially cash cows. Cutting student enrollment will lead to a "decline in its revenues relative to expenses", yes, but if a school was taking in more than twice what it cost to run it, then it can afford to lose quite a bit of revenue without becoming unprofitable, let alone shutting down.

I don't think Campos missed that, more that his guess is the school was not taking in more than twice what it cost to run. I mean, it can't even do that. Law schools may be cash cows but they have to do something with the money since they aren't sitting there giving out dividends to shareholders. Law schools (and schools in general) have done this by pledging their money somewhere, whether that is giving a cut back to the main university, hiring expensive faculty, building new buildings, or some combination of those things. I think Campos has it right that the school likely wasn't just sitting around making a ton of profit, it was actively increasing expenses to eat up that profit. Because expenses haven't seemed to come down, it's not that much of leap to suspect the school may be losing money.