New US News Rankings 2023-2024 Forum

[Anonymous User]

Northwestern has school funded positions but they are almost exclusively for unemployed kids. There's not that many of them because there's not that many unemployed. It's not something you pick when you have an alternative. If more people need them, I'm sure the school can find the funding for more.

This makes it seem like these are for people who couldn’t get a job, but that’s totally not true. It’s 100% for public interest students, not just for some bottom-of-the-class person who struck out in biglaw.

I graduated jobless and it was absolutely in the conversation to set me up with one of these fake jobs just so I wouldn't be unemployed. (I got a real job after the bar fwiw). Maybe there are people who use them for legit fellowships but they are available for people who couldn't get jobs.

For this year, the Northwestern fellowships were reserved for people without jobs. I know PI students who have been able to secure paid positions in government or PI or clerkships already. The Northwestern fellowship is for those who are struggling to get employed, and the application specifically asked about their current job search and options. I know some of the recent recipients and I'm aware of the hard time they've been having, and they're not very competitive candidates like other PI students I know who chose to skip the fellowship and are looking for summer openings

[Anonymous User]

Anecdotal, but I've never come across any grads from Stanford in NYC Biglaw. Perhaps its not prestigious enough.

biggest market stanford sends to is SF, followed very closely by DC. New york is a distant third, and LA is further down at fourth.

the friend thing in new york is real. They also are just all scattered throughout the country their first few years generally due to fellowships and clerkships, and there are fewer of them in total, so there will be fewer of them in any city particularly their first few years out

A lot of the west coast folks and formerly clerking folks make their way to New York and DC though once they start getting into their 30s and a few years out of law school

For sure. I think S grads could easily get NYC Biglaw but just don't think there many of them land here for whatever reason, to the extent having a large network matters to people.

Yeah, biglaw in general is not an area of interest from S and then the fact that NYC is a distant third preferred market is gonna make Stanford folks very scarce in new york biglaw

[Anonymous User]

People's efforts to excuse Stanford's non-existent presence in several of the most important and elite markets is so funny to me. Many of the arguments you're making (could've would've should've) are arguments you all frequently reject as overly speculative.

[Anonymous User]

People's efforts to excuse Stanford's non-existent presence in several of the most important and elite markets is so funny to me. Many of the arguments you're making (could've would've should've) are arguments you all frequently reject as overly speculative.

It’s a small school that only sends ~90 a year to the east coast, while its competitors are, except for Yale and Chicago, multiple times its size and don’t have nearly as much of a California market presence (which means they overpopulate the biggest markets). That’s not “non-existent” placement, it’s just realistic given the facts on the ground. However, that doesn’t change the fact that, all else being equal, the SLS grad will have an easier time than an HLS grad at finding a job on either coast.

[Anonymous User]

People's efforts to excuse Stanford's non-existent presence in several of the most important and elite markets is so funny to me. Many of the arguments you're making (could've would've should've) are arguments you all frequently reject as overly speculative.

It’s a small school that only sends ~90 a year to the east coast, while its competitors are, except for Yale and Chicago, multiple times its size and don’t have nearly as much of a California market presence. That’s not “non-existent”, it’s just realism. However, that doesn’t change the fact that, all else being equal, the SLS grad will have an easier time than an HLS grad at finding a job on either coast.

Go ahead and tell me how many SLS grads are working at the top firms in NY and DC. Not too many. Obviously they're too busy accepting offers from Munger and Gibson Dunn

[Anonymous User]

People's efforts to excuse Stanford's non-existent presence in several of the most important and elite markets is so funny to me. Many of the arguments you're making (could've would've should've) are arguments you all frequently reject as overly speculative.

It’s a small school that only sends ~90 a year to the east coast, while its competitors are, except for Yale and Chicago, multiple times its size and don’t have nearly as much of a California market presence. That’s not “non-existent”, it’s just realism. However, that doesn’t change the fact that, all else being equal, the SLS grad will have an easier time than an HLS grad at finding a job on either coast.

Go ahead and tell me how many SLS grads are working at the top firms in NY and DC. Not too many. Obviously they're too busy accepting offers from Munger and Gibson Dunn

this thread is the absolute worst

[Anonymous User]

People's efforts to excuse Stanford's non-existent presence in several of the most important and elite markets is so funny to me. Many of the arguments you're making (could've would've should've) are arguments you all frequently reject as overly speculative.

It’s a small school that only sends ~90 a year to the east coast, while its competitors are, except for Yale and Chicago, multiple times its size and don’t have nearly as much of a California market presence. That’s not “non-existent”, it’s just realism. However, that doesn’t change the fact that, all else being equal, the SLS grad will have an easier time than an HLS grad at finding a job on either coast.

Go ahead and tell me how many SLS grads are working at the top firms in NY and DC. Not too many. Obviously they're too busy accepting offers from Munger and Gibson Dunn

There's a pretty decent number number in DC though I don't know the total number. NY is not considered that desirable a market by SLS (and NY corp is where you go if you fucked up), but there's still a decent number who go to the city every year.

[Anonymous User]

the corporate culture at schools below Y and S generally indicates that at schools like Harvard and Columbia, the students more often went to law school to earn money. Few people are passionate about biglaw, especially transactional. That's why the Y and S biglaw rates are the lowest in the t-14 at like 35%. Contrast this with H in the 60s% and columbia in the 80s.

The people who go to Yale and Stanford are much more likely to actually like the law and to not have a desire to earn as much money as possible. Many more folks come from more lucrative fields and MBB to yale and stanford where they consciously decide to choose a path that is less lucrative. By contrast, folks that go to HLS and lower t14s by and large did not have more lucrative options and just go biglaw, many transactional, not out of passion but out of necessity/desire to earn more/didn't know what to do with their undergrad degree

This is wrong - HLS and Chicago both have a similar percentage of prestige undergrads to YS. I get distinguishing schools based on their outcomes, but the whole a "qualitatively different sort of student" goes to Yale or Stanford thing is kinda weird nonsense.

I do think there's some self-selection at play, in that YS are more attractive to students who want non-biglaw/less traditional options (except maybe politics, all the politico wannabes want to go to H, it seems). The zeitgeist around YS is that the adcomms select for this as well, whereas H is more about the numbers, though I don't have any personal experience with that. I don't want to exaggerate those differences, though, and I very much disagree that there's a neat correlation between those differences in culture and socioeconomic background.

The ongoing attempt to revise HYS by some ppl on TLS is so strange. If you're a law student who doesn't want to practice in California, you should pick the school that places well in literally every elite market around the United States, including California. Hint: it's not Stanford.

LOL cute. If you want to join the army of legal TikTokers or impress your Midwest uncle, grandma, or high school crush, you should pick the degree mill that takes anyone with a pulse and free rides on their parent school's prestige. Hint: it's not Yale or Stanford

You guys are both idiots. HLS doesn't place better than SLS in elite markets. The HLS = diploma mill who takes anyone is dumb, a cursory glance at LSD shows that a ton of applicants above both medians who get rejected. It's harder to get into either Stanford or Harvard for undergrad than it is for law school. Get over yourselves

YLS is distinguishably better. HLS and SLS are effectively the same school - the biggest differences are the student body size and weather.

[Anonymous User]

LOL cute. If you want to join the army of legal TikTokers or impress your Midwest uncle, grandma, or high school crush, you should pick the degree mill that takes anyone with a pulse and free rides on their parent school's prestige. Hint: it's not Yale or Stanford

You guys are both idiots. HLS doesn't place better than SLS in elite markets. The HLS = diploma mill who takes anyone is dumb, a cursory glance at LSD shows that a ton of applicants above both medians who get rejected. It's harder to get into either Stanford or Harvard for undergrad than it is for law school. Get over yourselves

YLS is distinguishably better. HLS and SLS are effectively the same school - the biggest differences are the student body size and weather.

I don’t understand the Havard, Stanford, etc. undergrad is better meme.

Anyone who’s worked at a top law firm has witnessed the army of top undergrad paralegals who would love to go to a good law school and work for a good firm. Or the army of banking analysts from those schools who are doing ok but not that great compared their top law school peers.

[Anonymous User]

the corporate culture at schools below Y and S generally indicates that at schools like Harvard and Columbia, the students more often went to law school to earn money. Few people are passionate about biglaw, especially transactional. That's why the Y and S biglaw rates are the lowest in the t-14 at like 35%. Contrast this with H in the 60s% and columbia in the 80s.

The people who go to Yale and Stanford are much more likely to actually like the law and to not have a desire to earn as much money as possible. Many more folks come from more lucrative fields and MBB to yale and stanford where they consciously decide to choose a path that is less lucrative. By contrast, folks that go to HLS and lower t14s by and large did not have more lucrative options and just go biglaw, many transactional, not out of passion but out of necessity/desire to earn more/didn't know what to do with their undergrad degree

This is wrong - HLS and Chicago both have a similar percentage of prestige undergrads to YS. I get distinguishing schools based on their outcomes, but the whole a "qualitatively different sort of student" goes to Yale or Stanford thing is kinda weird nonsense.

I do think there's some self-selection at play, in that YS are more attractive to students who want non-biglaw/less traditional options (except maybe politics, all the politico wannabes want to go to H, it seems). The zeitgeist around YS is that the adcomms select for this as well, whereas H is more about the numbers, though I don't have any personal experience with that. I don't want to exaggerate those differences, though, and I very much disagree that there's a neat correlation between those differences in culture and socioeconomic background.

The ongoing attempt to revise HYS by some ppl on TLS is so strange. If you're a law student who doesn't want to practice in California, you should pick the school that places well in literally every elite market around the United States, including California. Hint: it's not Stanford.

LOL cute. If you want to join the army of legal TikTokers or impress your Midwest uncle, grandma, or high school crush, you should pick the degree mill that takes anyone with a pulse and free rides on their parent school's prestige. Hint: it's not Yale or Stanford

You guys are both idiots. HLS doesn't place better than SLS in elite markets. The HLS = diploma mill who takes anyone is dumb, a cursory glance at LSD shows that a ton of applicants above both medians who get rejected. It's harder to get into either Stanford or Harvard for undergrad than it is for law school. Get over yourselves

YLS is distinguishably better. HLS and SLS are effectively the same school - the biggest differences are the student body size and weather.

Neither anon here, but I think there's a solid argument that it's harder to get into the law schools than the respective undergrads. The LSAT is harder than the SAT, college is harder than high school, and you're competing against more impressive people. For a lot of top schools, bc of the common app the acceptance rates are artificially low.

[Anonymous User]

Law schools and lawyers shouldn’t be concerned with whether a top undergrad is somehow better but whether business schools are scooping up would be top lawyers due to law school over-reliance on GPA and LSAT.

[Anonymous User]

it is without a doubt harder to get into undergraduate schools than law schools in terms of general comparisons. A few exceptions may exist.

Across the board at elite ug institutions, qualifying competitive stats not being enough to get you in is basically the rule. For nonURM students, it's not unusual to have a 4.0+ gpa and a competitive SAT, and still not get into a top 10 or 20 school.

For law school, other than Yale, Stanford, and Chicago, if you have a high enough LSAT and GPA, you're more likely than not to get in.

Part of this is the smaller pool of students applying to law school generally. It's a self selecting sample. Whereas for college, applying to college is more universally just what you do after graduating. And highschoolers across the country all apply for the same start.

[Anonymous User]

Law schools and lawyers shouldn’t be concerned with whether a top undergrad is somehow better but whether business schools are scooping up would be top lawyers due to law school over-reliance on GPA and LSAT.

If business schools are scooping up potential lawyers it's not because of the LSAT, it's because it's a better career.

[Anonymous User]

Law schools and lawyers shouldn’t be concerned with whether a top undergrad is somehow better but whether business schools are scooping up would be top lawyers due to law school over-reliance on GPA and LSAT.

If business schools are scooping up potential lawyers it's not because of the LSAT, it's because it's a better career.

Business schools are begging for students. I'm not even joking, current Penn Law student and Wharton straight up solicits law students. Practically anyone in the law school can get into the MBA program right now.

[Anonymous User]

Law schools and lawyers shouldn’t be concerned with whether a top undergrad is somehow better but whether business schools are scooping up would be top lawyers due to law school over-reliance on GPA and LSAT.

If business schools are scooping up potential lawyers it's not because of the LSAT, it's because it's a better career.

Business schools are begging for students. I'm not even joking, current Penn Law student and Wharton straight up solicits law students. Practically anyone in the law school can get into the MBA program right now.

I'm not sure what that's supposed to prove. Again, if law students are taking them up on it, it's because that career is attractive to them.

[Anonymous User]

it is without a doubt harder to get into undergraduate schools than law schools in terms of general comparisons. A few exceptions may exist.

Across the board at elite ug institutions, qualifying competitive stats not being enough to get you in is basically the rule. For nonURM students, it's not unusual to have a 4.0+ gpa and a competitive SAT, and still not get into a top 10 or 20 school.

For law school, other than Yale, Stanford, and Chicago, if you have a high enough LSAT and GPA, you're more likely than not to get in.

Part of this is the smaller pool of students applying to law school generally. It's a self selecting sample. Whereas for college, applying to college is more universally just what you do after graduating. And highschoolers across the country all apply for the same start.

Yeah, completely accurate about undergrad - also just simply has less to do with numbers. More common for people with good but not elite grades at a feeder school (Collegiate, St. Annes, Spence, Andover, Exeter, etc) to get in top a top school.

Also, Chicago's admissions decisions correlate more strongly with GPA/LSAT than Harvard's lol

https://www.lsd.law/school/University-o ... chool/2022

https://www.lsd.law/school/Harvard-University/2022

[dyemond]

it is without a doubt harder to get into undergraduate schools than law schools in terms of general comparisons. A few exceptions may exist.

Across the board at elite ug institutions, qualifying competitive stats not being enough to get you in is basically the rule. For nonURM students, it's not unusual to have a 4.0+ gpa and a competitive SAT, and still not get into a top 10 or 20 school.

For law school, other than Yale, Stanford, and Chicago, if you have a high enough LSAT and GPA, you're more likely than not to get in.

Part of this is the smaller pool of students applying to law school generally. It's a self selecting sample. Whereas for college, applying to college is more universally just what you do after graduating. And highschoolers across the country all apply for the same start.

The legions of HYP/T50 resumes that have graced my desk during OCI would black out the sun.

[Anonymous User]

Law schools and lawyers shouldn’t be concerned with whether a top undergrad is somehow better but whether business schools are scooping up would be top lawyers due to law school over-reliance on GPA and LSAT.

If business schools are scooping up potential lawyers it's not because of the LSAT, it's because it's a better career.

Business schools are begging for students. I'm not even joking, current Penn Law student and Wharton straight up solicits law students. Practically anyone in the law school can get into the MBA program right now.

I'm not sure what that's supposed to prove. Again, if law students are taking them up on it, it's because that career is attractive to them.

The point is that law schools definitely don’t need to worry about business schools scooping up lawyers. Top MBA programs are actively soliciting from other graduate programs because they can’t even fill out a class and a ton of mediocre programs have been abolished entirely. MBAs are insanely expensive and they aren’t required at all. The top business talent doesn’t get an MBA because they either already have the MBB/Bulge Bracket IB jobs or are just entrepreneurial and not interested at all. MBAs basically just give people a second chance at recruiting for those jobs.

[bwj216]

Realistically, it's...

Tier 1: Yale, Stanford
Tier 1.5: Harvard, Chicago
Tier 2: Columbia-Cornell
Tier 2.5: Georgetown, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Texas, WashU

It's YSH, CCN, and then the rest. SLS and HLS are peers

Just being honest I feel like all of the aggressive promoting of the concept of the T6 comes from NYU students. There's no serious story you can tell that makes NYU a full step above Penn, or even UVA really.

Look at the 25%iles - the variance at the poles is MORE than enough to justify considering NYU a full step above Penn and UVA - there's a reason the notion of a T6 exists, it's because after that you have schools where the general strength of the student body starts to suffer (e.g., splitters with low LSATs and high GPAs or vice versa).

[Anonymous User]

Realistically, it's...

Tier 1: Yale, Stanford
Tier 1.5: Harvard, Chicago
Tier 2: Columbia-Cornell
Tier 2.5: Georgetown, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Texas, WashU

It's YSH, CCN, and then the rest. SLS and HLS are peers

Just being honest I feel like all of the aggressive promoting of the concept of the T6 comes from NYU students. There's no serious story you can tell that makes NYU a full step above Penn, or even UVA really.

Look at the 25%iles - the variance at the poles is MORE than enough to justify considering NYU a full step above Penn and UVA - there's a reason the notion of a T6 exists, it's because after that you have schools where the general strength of the student body starts to suffer (e.g., splitters with low LSATs and high GPAs or vice versa).

That's all irrelevant, focus on prestige scores and employment

[not2spicy4]

Realistically, it's...

Tier 1: Yale, Stanford
Tier 1.5: Harvard, Chicago
Tier 2: Columbia-Cornell
Tier 2.5: Georgetown, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Texas, WashU

It's YSH, CCN, and then the rest. SLS and HLS are peers

Just being honest I feel like all of the aggressive promoting of the concept of the T6 comes from NYU students. There's no serious story you can tell that makes NYU a full step above Penn, or even UVA really.

Look at the 25%iles - the variance at the poles is MORE than enough to justify considering NYU a full step above Penn and UVA - there's a reason the notion of a T6 exists, it's because after that you have schools where the general strength of the student body starts to suffer (e.g., splitters with low LSATs and high GPAs or vice versa).

I'd push back on this a bit—I think you are working from the assumption that LSAT and GPA are good indicators of law school aptitude, as opposed to the best (and most quantifiable) among a variety of weak indicators. Admittedly, as a former splitter myself, I may harbor some bias on the matter, but I think the point holds up to inspection. I don't think any of the students who received the named scholarship(s) at my school ended up in the top 10 in the class (or even on law review) from either my year, the year above me, or the year below.

[Anonymous User]

Even HYS takes splitters (I knew of multiple non-URMs with 17high and 3.6/3.7 at my HYS). The notion that UVA/Penn are worse than NYU because they take splitters is just ridiculous lmfao.

[Anonymous User]

Even HYS takes splitters (I knew of multiple non-URMs with 17high and 3.6/3.7 at my HYS). The notion that UVA/Penn are worse than NYU because they take splitters is just ridiculous lmfao.

I’ll take that a step further and say it’s laughable that an individual K-JD 4.0+ / 174+ grind bot with no life (no offense) is considered a better catch for a school than a splitter who has already done something in the real world (whether its non-academic accomplishments in college or getting a quality job later and producing and advancing) to show promise.

[Anonymous User]

Yeah another thing is at my MVPB a LOT of people got into NYU. I think there's significantly fewer who were admitted into Columbia or Chicago. But Columbia outcomes aren't super distinguishable (aside from ELITE NYC BIGLAW) from those at NYU or the MVPB, so I think it says there isn't a real jump until you get to UChi.

[Anonymous User]

Edit: I thought better of this post