Top Law Schools

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enkle wrote:I'm just wondering if I should be viewing non T14 schools (yet still Tier 1) as having the pro of there being a much higher chance I finish top 10% at those schools versus a T14 school where the students are obviously stronger in the opinion of admissions.

No. Forget probabilities. You don't know how well you will perform in LS exams. i.e. no, it shouldn't be a factor

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School like northwestern has a median lsat of 168 and median gpa of 3.75. Scool like WUSTL has median lsat of 166 and median gpa of 3.69. Northwestern places 63.3 % into Big Law + Fed Clerk. WUSTL places 32.3 % into Big Law + Fed Clerk. Are northwestern students almost twice as smart as WUSTL students? Uh, no. Difference in medians suggests "intelligence" as defined by lsat and gpa medians is close to negligible, hence you aren't gonna be top 10 % at WUSTL and bottom 25 % at NU or anything.

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Also work ethic is not the best indicator of how well you will do in law school IMO. Not even close.

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But are people in the bottom 25% in Northwester with a lot of debt in any better position than the bottom 60% in WUSTL with less debt?

oceanmd wrote:But are people in the bottom 25% in Northwester with a lot of debt in any better position than the bottom 60% in WUSTL with less debt?

Isn't this moving the goal post?

These are kind of arbitrary percentages. I would think anyone woul rather less debt than more debt. It's all just so hard to predict.

I sort of did what the OP is talking about. Big law was my desired outcome but opted to take a school with worse big law chances to save 60K or so rather than go to a T14. But I did that only because my debt level at the school I chose would leave me ok if I ended up getting like a 50K job, not because I thought I would do better GPA wise. I'm guessing I would have ended up roughly the same class rank wise if I went to Duke or Cornell.

sublime wrote:

BigZuck wrote:Also work ethic is not the best indicator of how well you will do in law school IMO. Not even close.

If anything work ethic is over hyped. A lot of it is just natural intelligence combined with knowing how to write a LS exam. Nobody wants to hear that though because it is depressing and implies a lack of any real control.

It's not even natural intelligence. I don't think I ever encountered a deep, thorny problem that required serious mental horsepower on a law school exam. Normally, it's just a bunch of superficial shit that is easy to overlook that creates the curve. Essays for upper level classes? Sure. And I did well in law school so I'm not just hating.

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Ok, let's say you are special snowflake who correctly predicts that you are naturally good at law school exams.

There is still no way to avoid the professor who uses the staircase method/grades in an unusual way/looked for something different than you expected. I know many students who did really well 1L except for one class. This is NBD if you don't need to be in the top 10% to get big law because your other grades can boost up your GPA, but at a school like Washington and Lee? I wouldn't want to be in that position.