New US News Rankings 2023-2024 Forum

[nixy]

They keep shuffling the rankings to draw attention and somehow stay relevant, but no matter what the latest rankings show, I always view law schools in this order when I'm looking at credentials.
1. Yale
2. Harvard, Stanford
3. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn
4. Rest of T14
5. UCLA, Texas, Washu
6. Fordham
7. Rest

For what it's worth, I'm a V20 senior associate that went to HLS.

Same with law firm rankings I suppose. From a certain point you stop caring and whatever rankings you remember from your junior associate days just stay stuck in your head.

Yeah, I could've guessed you went to HLS based on your rankings alone.

Always thought of Chicago as a great school, but not on the same level as schools like Harvard and Stanford. Not as selective. Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity. Back when I was applying to law schools several years ago, schools like Chicago and Columbia had to offer scholarships to make their offers as competitive as stickers at schools like Harvard and Stanford. I myself chose Harvard over scholarship offers from Columbia and Chicago. As I practice in a region where firms and clients tend to care about school prestige, I don't regret that decision and will do the same if I were to go back in time.

Things may be different now, and maybe Chicago no longer offers scholarships to draw people away from the top 3 schools. I don't know.

This just sounds so silly. There isn’t a material difference in ability between someone who chooses to go to Harvard and someone who takes the money at Columbia or Chicago (except that the Harvard person ends up in a lot of debt, congrats!).

[Anonymous User]

They keep shuffling the rankings to draw attention and somehow stay relevant, but no matter what the latest rankings show, I always view law schools in this order when I'm looking at credentials.
1. Yale
2. Harvard, Stanford
3. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn
4. Rest of T14
5. UCLA, Texas, Washu
6. Fordham
7. Rest

For what it's worth, I'm a V20 senior associate that went to HLS.

Same with law firm rankings I suppose. From a certain point you stop caring and whatever rankings you remember from your junior associate days just stay stuck in your head.

I think this perfectly sums up what actually matters - the general view of law schools, differences in outcomes from one year to one year or this dumb ranking system don't mean much. However, the general perception of hiring people matters and I think this is entirely accurate outside of regional bias in comparing peer schools (Harvard east coast, Stanford west coast).

[Anonymous User]

The “are Yale and Stanford (and Chicago?) a cut above HLS because of clerkship numbers” debate is only happening on TLS. No one else thinks of Harvard as lesser (or, frankly, of Columbia as lesser than Chicago) outside these forums on that basis. Harvard just has more students.

obviously not among laypeople or probably corporate practitioners but clerkship numbers are widely known and arguably the key metric in the elite litigation world. The Chicago/Columbia gap in lit outcomes is a good example of that; they’re pretty similar except that Chicago has a much better clerkship program and thus better representation in government, appellate groups, and lit boutiques even though it’s much smaller.

For those curious, the appellate groups at Kirkland, Latham, Jones Day, and Sidley (just to take four major ones with easily navigable filters) have 12 lawyers from Columbia, 45 from Chicago, and 56 from HLS

[Anonymous User]

They keep shuffling the rankings to draw attention and somehow stay relevant, but no matter what the latest rankings show, I always view law schools in this order when I'm looking at credentials.
1. Yale
2. Harvard, Stanford
3. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn
4. Rest of T14
5. UCLA, Texas, Washu
6. Fordham
7. Rest

For what it's worth, I'm a V20 senior associate that went to HLS.

Same with law firm rankings I suppose. From a certain point you stop caring and whatever rankings you remember from your junior associate days just stay stuck in your head.

Yeah, I could've guessed you went to HLS based on your rankings alone.

Always thought of Chicago as a great school, but not on the same level as schools like Harvard and Stanford. Not as selective. Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity. Back when I was applying to law schools several years ago, schools like Chicago and Columbia had to offer scholarships to make their offers as competitive as stickers at schools like Harvard and Stanford. I myself chose Harvard over scholarship offers from Columbia and Chicago. As I practice in a region where firms and clients tend to care about school prestige, I don't regret that decision and will do the same if I were to go back in time.

Things may be different now, and maybe Chicago no longer offers scholarships to draw people away from the top 3 schools. I don't know.

I'm confused. If prestige is about selectivity (which I don't necessarily agree with), why put Harvard on par with Stanford? The former has a weaker applicant pool and a much higher acceptance rate. Harvard's selectivity is quite close to Chicago's in comparison (both 15% acceptance, sls 9%). Furthermore, the profile of the avg stanford law student is different from the average HLS student's. Though GPA and LSAT are the same, the stanford student went to a better undergrad. And while we don't have quantification, I'm willing to bet other softs are also better at Stanford on average

or was your ranking not about prestige?

[Anonymous User]

They keep shuffling the rankings to draw attention and somehow stay relevant, but no matter what the latest rankings show, I always view law schools in this order when I'm looking at credentials.
1. Yale
2. Harvard, Stanford
3. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn
4. Rest of T14
5. UCLA, Texas, Washu
6. Fordham
7. Rest

For what it's worth, I'm a V20 senior associate that went to HLS.

Same with law firm rankings I suppose. From a certain point you stop caring and whatever rankings you remember from your junior associate days just stay stuck in your head.

Yeah, I could've guessed you went to HLS based on your rankings alone.

Always thought of Chicago as a great school, but not on the same level as schools like Harvard and Stanford. Not as selective. Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity. Back when I was applying to law schools several years ago, schools like Chicago and Columbia had to offer scholarships to make their offers as competitive as stickers at schools like Harvard and Stanford. I myself chose Harvard over scholarship offers from Columbia and Chicago. As I practice in a region where firms and clients tend to care about school prestige, I don't regret that decision and will do the same if I were to go back in time.

Things may be different now, and maybe Chicago no longer offers scholarships to draw people away from the top 3 schools. I don't know.

This just sounds so silly. There isn’t a material difference in ability between someone who chooses to go to Harvard and someone who takes the money at Columbia or Chicago (except that the Harvard person ends up in a lot of debt, congrats!).

Agree it’s dumb, but as someone who turned down the Hamilton to go to Harvard and was solidly median (presumably would have been median at either), I do sincerely think that the Harvard name and connections opened doors just a little bit wider for me. I’m in my dream job now and wouldn’t have gotten it if not for the Harvard name (it’s things like “oh this internship made you stand out as an applicant,” but the internship was only the result of the Harvard name standing out, that kind of indirect thing) Similarly the fact I had a couple of stints abroad for a couple of years was fully riding the Harvard name (which unjustly carries way more weight outside the States than Columbia or Chicago).

If you’re just going to do NY biglaw and aim for partner or something, though, then taking Harvard over Columbia or Chicago has probably 0 benefit and is silly if you give up a scholarship. But as someone who did give up the Hamilton to go to Harvard and spent 5 years paying off unnecessary debt, I 100 percent think it was worth it for me.

[Anonymous User]

They keep shuffling the rankings to draw attention and somehow stay relevant, but no matter what the latest rankings show, I always view law schools in this order when I'm looking at credentials.
1. Yale
2. Harvard, Stanford
3. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn
4. Rest of T14
5. UCLA, Texas, Washu
6. Fordham
7. Rest

For what it's worth, I'm a V20 senior associate that went to HLS.

Same with law firm rankings I suppose. From a certain point you stop caring and whatever rankings you remember from your junior associate days just stay stuck in your head.

Yeah, I could've guessed you went to HLS based on your rankings alone.

Always thought of Chicago as a great school, but not on the same level as schools like Harvard and Stanford. Not as selective. Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity. Back when I was applying to law schools several years ago, schools like Chicago and Columbia had to offer scholarships to make their offers as competitive as stickers at schools like Harvard and Stanford. I myself chose Harvard over scholarship offers from Columbia and Chicago. As I practice in a region where firms and clients tend to care about school prestige, I don't regret that decision and will do the same if I were to go back in time.

Things may be different now, and maybe Chicago no longer offers scholarships to draw people away from the top 3 schools. I don't know.

I'm confused. If prestige is about selectivity (which I don't necessarily agree with), why put Harvard on par with Stanford? The former has a weaker applicant pool and a much higher acceptance rate. Harvard's selectivity is quite close to Chicago's in comparison (both 15% acceptance, sls 9%)

I think selectivity gets conflated with caliber of entering students. HLS typically has higher entering UGPA and LSAT stats compared to S and C. Also, Harvard's acceptance rate most recently was around 10%, whereas Stanford was around 7% and Chicago was around 14%: https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/.

[Anonymous User]

I think selectivity gets conflated with caliber of entering students. HLS typically has higher entering UGPA and LSAT stats compared to S and C. Also, Harvard's acceptance rate most recently was around 10%, whereas Stanford was around 7% and Chicago was around 14%: https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/.

I'd say roughly the same GPA and sometimes slightly higher LSAT sure. But you must acknowledge the average HLS student went to a significantly worse undergrad institution than the average SLS student. Again, no quantification, but I'm willing to bet that correlates with weaker softs

There are a ton of HLS students with great softs. The top student at HLS is the best law student in the US of that year imo simply because of how large it is making up for the weaker student body compared to yale and stanford. But there are just hundreds of folks at Harvard who do not stand out relative to the folks at Y and S

[Anonymous User]

This is all nonsense. Prestige is not dependent on admissions rates. Prestige depends on what goes through the minds of people doing hiring, and we know that HLS, YLS, and SLS have the highest prestige scores according to US News. Which is unsurprising because everyone knows that HYS are in a class by themselves

[butonawednesday]

I will sum up this entire thread.
A 20 yr old is obsessed by it.
A 40 yr old thinks you're all idiots.

[Rooks]

Keeping USC out of the UCLA/WUSTL/Texas tier doesn't make sense if we're talking strictly employment outcomes.

Per LST, 2019-2021 biglaw/FC:

USC: 47.7%, 55.5%, 55.5%
UCLA: 46.7%, 51.9%, 52.4%
WUSTL: 42.1%, 49.3%, 55.6%
Texas: 48.1%, 49.4%, 48.7%

[Anonymous User]

Perceived school quality on this board has always been skewed because clerkship #s only look at students who are clerking within like approx. 9 months of graduation.

Once you look at clerkship #s after a few years, the differences between HYS flatten considerably. Y still beats SH in the very elite clerkships like SCOTUS, but otherwise the absolute % of people with fed clerkship is actually very close between the three schools.

This is a myth, lots of Yale, Stanford, and Chicago students also clerk more than a year out so their “have you ever clerked” numbers are still way ahead of other schools’—about 50%. After all what would explain HLS grads clerking substantially later than YLS grads? Imo it’s mostly a culture and class size thing.

Pretty obvious self selection plays a role. If you're an applicant who greatly cares about doing a clerkship and have offers from YSH, chances are you'll choose Y or S.

If you are an applicant that cares less about clerking you might choose H over YS for other reasons (e.g., location). Y and S class sizes are so small that it really only takes a handful of students flipping to YS solely for clerkship potential to skew the stats.

That would explain a difference in whether you clerk at all, not the timing of clerkships. The NYU/CLS excuse is always “well we apply in NYC” but YLS and HLS are basically in the same position geographically.

I’m also seriously skeptical that 50% of HLS students eventually clerk; their website says it’s 50-50 between clerking immediately and clerking later, and on their measure, that clerking later number includes students doing second clerkships (unlike Chicago’s referenced above). And Harvard’s clerking immediately rate is only 13%. Plus having 40% of your class doing delayed clerkships would be pretty extraordinary.

For those curious, both CLS and NYU say about 20% of their classes eventually clerk.

People do not fully appreciate just how different the culture at HLS is relative to SLS and YLS. The corporate culture is real, and there are tons of people who have zero interest in academia or clerking. And yes, all the people who wanted clerkships got clerkships. Numerous 1Ls got appellate clerkships after their first semester. Many many got them after 2L

[Anonymous User]

I think selectivity gets conflated with caliber of entering students. HLS typically has higher entering UGPA and LSAT stats compared to S and C. Also, Harvard's acceptance rate most recently was around 10%, whereas Stanford was around 7% and Chicago was around 14%: https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/.

I'd say roughly the same GPA and sometimes slightly higher LSAT sure. But you must acknowledge the average HLS student went to a significantly worse undergrad institution than the average SLS student. Again, no quantification, but I'm willing to bet that correlates with weaker softs

There are a ton of HLS students with great softs. The top student at HLS is the best law student in the US of that year imo simply because of how large it is making up for the weaker student body compared to yale and stanford. But there are just hundreds of folks at Harvard who do not stand out relative to the folks at Y and S

How can anyone know if that is true?

[Anonymous User]

They keep shuffling the rankings to draw attention and somehow stay relevant, but no matter what the latest rankings show, I always view law schools in this order when I'm looking at credentials.
1. Yale
2. Harvard, Stanford
3. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn
4. Rest of T14
5. UCLA, Texas, Washu
6. Fordham
7. Rest

For what it's worth, I'm a V20 senior associate that went to HLS.

Same with law firm rankings I suppose. From a certain point you stop caring and whatever rankings you remember from your junior associate days just stay stuck in your head.

Yeah, I could've guessed you went to HLS based on your rankings alone.

Always thought of Chicago as a great school, but not on the same level as schools like Harvard and Stanford. Not as selective. Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity. Back when I was applying to law schools several years ago, schools like Chicago and Columbia had to offer scholarships to make their offers as competitive as stickers at schools like Harvard and Stanford. I myself chose Harvard over scholarship offers from Columbia and Chicago. As I practice in a region where firms and clients tend to care about school prestige, I don't regret that decision and will do the same if I were to go back in time.

Things may be different now, and maybe Chicago no longer offers scholarships to draw people away from the top 3 schools. I don't know.

This just sounds so silly. There isn’t a material difference in ability between someone who chooses to go to Harvard and someone who takes the money at Columbia or Chicago (except that the Harvard person ends up in a lot of debt, congrats!).

I'm the person that wrote the original post. First of all, what a stupid response. The scholarship offers I had were not full rides. If Chicago gave me a Ruby, I would have taken that. Never meant to say that school prestige is everything. That's oversimplifying what I was saying. Of course there's no material difference between person A that went to H and person B that went to Chicago or Columbia. We are just comparing schools. The topic is rankings. All else equal (it's almost never equal I know), firms prefer a median guy from Harvard over a median guy from Columbia. I'm a senior and I do get involved in hiring, so I know.

And no, I'm not in my 40s. I'm in my early 30s. Paid off my debt in the first 3 years of my career and now I own a house and will keep working hard to achieve my financial goals.

Holy fuck. No, I don't think someone that got 175 is smarter than someone that got 174. Harvard was simply the more preferred school, so unless schools like Columbia, Chicago offered money, they had no chance of attracting cross admits. No one sane would choose Chicago sticker over Harvard sticker. That was the case when I was applying to schools.

Where in the whole fucking world does saying school A is more selective and prestigious than school B translate to saying any particular person from school A is more capable or smarter than any particular person from school B? Jesus.

[nixy]

They keep shuffling the rankings to draw attention and somehow stay relevant, but no matter what the latest rankings show, I always view law schools in this order when I'm looking at credentials.
1. Yale
2. Harvard, Stanford
3. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn
4. Rest of T14
5. UCLA, Texas, Washu
6. Fordham
7. Rest

For what it's worth, I'm a V20 senior associate that went to HLS.

Same with law firm rankings I suppose. From a certain point you stop caring and whatever rankings you remember from your junior associate days just stay stuck in your head.

Yeah, I could've guessed you went to HLS based on your rankings alone.

Always thought of Chicago as a great school, but not on the same level as schools like Harvard and Stanford. Not as selective. Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity. Back when I was applying to law schools several years ago, schools like Chicago and Columbia had to offer scholarships to make their offers as competitive as stickers at schools like Harvard and Stanford. I myself chose Harvard over scholarship offers from Columbia and Chicago. As I practice in a region where firms and clients tend to care about school prestige, I don't regret that decision and will do the same if I were to go back in time.

Things may be different now, and maybe Chicago no longer offers scholarships to draw people away from the top 3 schools. I don't know.

This just sounds so silly. There isn’t a material difference in ability between someone who chooses to go to Harvard and someone who takes the money at Columbia or Chicago (except that the Harvard person ends up in a lot of debt, congrats!).

I'm the person that wrote the original post. First of all, what a stupid response. The scholarship offers I had were not full rides. If Chicago gave me a Ruby, I would have taken that. Never meant to say that school prestige is everything. That's oversimplifying what I was saying. Of course there's no material difference between person A that went to H and person B that went to Chicago or Columbia. We are just comparing schools. The topic is rankings. All else equal (it's almost never equal I know), firms prefer a median guy from Harvard over a median guy from Columbia. I'm a senior and I do get involved in hiring, so I know.

And no, I'm not in my 40s. I'm in my early 30s. Paid off my debt in the first 3 years of my career and now I own a house and will keep working hard to achieve my financial goals.

Holy fuck. No, I don't think someone that got 175 is smarter than someone that got 174. Harvard was simply the more preferred school, so unless schools like Columbia, Chicago offered money, they had no chance of attracting cross admits. No one sane would choose Chicago sticker over Harvard sticker. That was the case when I was applying to schools.

Where in the whole fucking world does saying school A is more selective and prestigious than school B translate to saying any particular person from school A is more capable or smarter than any particular person from school B? Jesus.

Then why the hell does selectivity matter if it’s not actually supposed to have a meaning outside itself? Like what is the point of selectivity if it isn’t supposed to have some relevance for ability? A school could be the most selective if it accepted only students with middle names beginning with Y, or something similarly random and uncommon, but no one would care.

[Anonymous User]

They keep shuffling the rankings to draw attention and somehow stay relevant, but no matter what the latest rankings show, I always view law schools in this order when I'm looking at credentials.
1. Yale
2. Harvard, Stanford
3. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn
4. Rest of T14
5. UCLA, Texas, Washu
6. Fordham
7. Rest

For what it's worth, I'm a V20 senior associate that went to HLS.

Same with law firm rankings I suppose. From a certain point you stop caring and whatever rankings you remember from your junior associate days just stay stuck in your head.

Yeah, I could've guessed you went to HLS based on your rankings alone.

Always thought of Chicago as a great school, but not on the same level as schools like Harvard and Stanford. Not as selective. Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity. Back when I was applying to law schools several years ago, schools like Chicago and Columbia had to offer scholarships to make their offers as competitive as stickers at schools like Harvard and Stanford. I myself chose Harvard over scholarship offers from Columbia and Chicago. As I practice in a region where firms and clients tend to care about school prestige, I don't regret that decision and will do the same if I were to go back in time.

Things may be different now, and maybe Chicago no longer offers scholarships to draw people away from the top 3 schools. I don't know.

This just sounds so silly. There isn’t a material difference in ability between someone who chooses to go to Harvard and someone who takes the money at Columbia or Chicago (except that the Harvard person ends up in a lot of debt, congrats!).

I'm the person that wrote the original post. First of all, what a stupid response. The scholarship offers I had were not full rides. If Chicago gave me a Ruby, I would have taken that. Never meant to say that school prestige is everything. That's oversimplifying what I was saying. Of course there's no material difference between person A that went to H and person B that went to Chicago or Columbia. We are just comparing schools. The topic is rankings. All else equal (it's almost never equal I know), firms prefer a median guy from Harvard over a median guy from Columbia. I'm a senior and I do get involved in hiring, so I know.

And no, I'm not in my 40s. I'm in my early 30s. Paid off my debt in the first 3 years of my career and now I own a house and will keep working hard to achieve my financial goals.

Holy fuck. No, I don't think someone that got 175 is smarter than someone that got 174. Harvard was simply the more preferred school, so unless schools like Columbia, Chicago offered money, they had no chance of attracting cross admits. No one sane would choose Chicago sticker over Harvard sticker. That was the case when I was applying to schools.

Where in the whole fucking world does saying school A is more selective and prestigious than school B translate to saying any particular person from school A is more capable or smarter than any particular person from school B? Jesus.

Then why the hell does selectivity matter if it’s not actually supposed to have a meaning outside itself? Like what is the point of selectivity if it isn’t supposed to have some relevance for ability? A school could be the most selective if it accepted only students with middle names beginning with Y, or something similarly random and uncommon, but no one would care.

Nobody said selectivity is irrelevant either. Again, you are oversimplifying.

School pedigree is a proxy for productivity, among other proxies. Grades from more selective schools are presumed to have greater signalling value as we presume that it must have been tougher to get those grades there than at less selective schools. The idea is that someone that had median grades from the top 3 schools probably could get top 10% grades from 13th or 14th ranked school. Employers try to assess productivity based on imperfect signals.

This is in fact how it works in practice. Assuming typical hiring market, bottom 20% folks from the top 3 schools can still get biglaw, whereas bottom 20% folks from lower ranked schools will find it much more difficult.

[Anonymous User]

I think selectivity gets conflated with caliber of entering students. HLS typically has higher entering UGPA and LSAT stats compared to S and C. Also, Harvard's acceptance rate most recently was around 10%, whereas Stanford was around 7% and Chicago was around 14%: https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/.

I'd say roughly the same GPA and sometimes slightly higher LSAT sure. But you must acknowledge the average HLS student went to a significantly worse undergrad institution than the average SLS student. Again, no quantification, but I'm willing to bet that correlates with weaker softs

There are a ton of HLS students with great softs. The top student at HLS is the best law student in the US of that year imo simply because of how large it is making up for the weaker student body compared to yale and stanford. But there are just hundreds of folks at Harvard who do not stand out relative to the folks at Y and S

How can anyone know if that is true?

FWIW, I just ran a search on the HLS student database and ~65% of the class went to a T20 undergrad and ~20% went to HYPSM. Not sure where that info pushes but there it is

[Anonymous User]

I think selectivity gets conflated with caliber of entering students. HLS typically has higher entering UGPA and LSAT stats compared to S and C. Also, Harvard's acceptance rate most recently was around 10%, whereas Stanford was around 7% and Chicago was around 14%: https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/.

I'd say roughly the same GPA and sometimes slightly higher LSAT sure. But you must acknowledge the average HLS student went to a significantly worse undergrad institution than the average SLS student. Again, no quantification, but I'm willing to bet that correlates with weaker softs

There are a ton of HLS students with great softs. The top student at HLS is the best law student in the US of that year imo simply because of how large it is making up for the weaker student body compared to yale and stanford. But there are just hundreds of folks at Harvard who do not stand out relative to the folks at Y and S

How can anyone know if that is true?

FWIW, I just ran a search on the HLS student database and ~65% of the class went to a T20 undergrad and ~20% went to HYPSM. Not sure where that info pushes but there it is

HLS also has a substantial Canadian population these days, basically all of whom go to two or three of the top colleges in Canada that would definitely rank in the T20 in the States (McGill etc)

[Anonymous User]

FWIW, I just ran a search on the HLS student database and ~65% of the class went to a T20 undergrad and ~20% went to HYPSM. Not sure where that info pushes but there it is

I stand corrected then because SLS is only about ~25% HYPSM. Not much of a difference. That said:

"People do not fully appreciate just how different the culture at HLS is relative to SLS and YLS. The corporate culture is real, and there are tons of people who have zero interest in academia or clerking."

That reflects something about the student body. Folks at HLS are, for whatever reason, less "ambitious" with respect to traditional "prestige" things. That's going to reflect a lower gunneriness on average, which is why median at SLS will look slightly better than median at HLS. I imagine a higher proportion of folks at HLS just chill after 1L after getting their SA locked in. That's not a big thing at SLS at least

so to the extent you don't want to count the low clerkship % against HLS, you have to count the lower gunneriness against them

[Anonymous User]

FWIW, I just ran a search on the HLS student database and ~65% of the class went to a T20 undergrad and ~20% went to HYPSM. Not sure where that info pushes but there it is

I stand corrected then because SLS is only about ~25% HYPSM. Not much of a difference. That said:

"People do not fully appreciate just how different the culture at HLS is relative to SLS and YLS. The corporate culture is real, and there are tons of people who have zero interest in academia or clerking."

That reflects something about the student body. Folks at HLS are, for whatever reason, less "ambitious" with respect to traditional "prestige" things. That's going to reflect a lower gunneriness on average, which is why median at SLS will look slightly better than median at HLS. I imagine a higher proportion of folks at HLS just chill after 1L after getting their SA locked in. That's not a big thing at SLS at least

HLS grad, can confirm. One of the things I liked about HLS tbh

[Anonymous User]

FWIW, I just ran a search on the HLS student database and ~65% of the class went to a T20 undergrad and ~20% went to HYPSM. Not sure where that info pushes but there it is

I stand corrected then because SLS is only about ~25% HYPSM. Not much of a difference. That said:

"People do not fully appreciate just how different the culture at HLS is relative to SLS and YLS. The corporate culture is real, and there are tons of people who have zero interest in academia or clerking."

That reflects something about the student body. Folks at HLS are, for whatever reason, less "ambitious" with respect to traditional "prestige" things. That's going to reflect a lower gunneriness on average, which is why median at SLS will look slightly better than median at HLS. I imagine a higher proportion of folks at HLS just chill after 1L after getting their SA locked in. That's not a big thing at SLS at least

HLS grad, can confirm. One of the things I liked about HLS tbh

They're not less ambitious, it's a totally different career path. Going straight from HLS to the tax department at DPW isn't an objectively worse outcome than someone who goes to clerk for a judge on the first circuit

[Anonymous User]

I think selectivity gets conflated with caliber of entering students. HLS typically has higher entering UGPA and LSAT stats compared to S and C. Also, Harvard's acceptance rate most recently was around 10%, whereas Stanford was around 7% and Chicago was around 14%: https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/.

I'd say roughly the same GPA and sometimes slightly higher LSAT sure. But you must acknowledge the average HLS student went to a significantly worse undergrad institution than the average SLS student. Again, no quantification, but I'm willing to bet that correlates with weaker softs

There are a ton of HLS students with great softs. The top student at HLS is the best law student in the US of that year imo simply because of how large it is making up for the weaker student body compared to yale and stanford. But there are just hundreds of folks at Harvard who do not stand out relative to the folks at Y and S

How can anyone know if that is true?

FWIW, I just ran a search on the HLS student database and ~65% of the class went to a T20 undergrad and ~20% went to HYPSM. Not sure where that info pushes but there it is

Entrance “quality” of students is a metric of student body quality, but the true measurement is not what students have done before school (or more likely, what their hopeful parents have done), but what they do after. The post-school output creates these long established feelings about the impressiveness of one’s school. No one would care about Yale without the SCOTUS pipeline, academia, etc.

[Anonymous User]

FWIW, I just ran a search on the HLS student database and ~65% of the class went to a T20 undergrad and ~20% went to HYPSM. Not sure where that info pushes but there it is

I stand corrected then because SLS is only about ~25% HYPSM. Not much of a difference. That said:

"People do not fully appreciate just how different the culture at HLS is relative to SLS and YLS. The corporate culture is real, and there are tons of people who have zero interest in academia or clerking."

That reflects something about the student body. Folks at HLS are, for whatever reason, less "ambitious" with respect to traditional "prestige" things. That's going to reflect a lower gunneriness on average, which is why median at SLS will look slightly better than median at HLS. I imagine a higher proportion of folks at HLS just chill after 1L after getting their SA locked in. That's not a big thing at SLS at least

HLS grad, can confirm. One of the things I liked about HLS tbh

They're not less ambitious, it's a totally different career path. Going straight from HLS to the tax department at DPW isn't an objectively worse outcome than someone who goes to clerk for a judge on the first circuit

sure, just like people who go to lower ranked schools who have a passion for personal injury are not objectively worse/less ambitious than harvard students are. Point is we are trying to measure what school sets people up better for doing any given thing. Certain outcomes are objectively more difficult to achieve and we generally think if someone can get some difficult thing, they can generally get things that are less difficult than that thing

Now you could argue at Stanford people just work harder than people at harvard, so a prospective student should just go to either one. But I think that for a person who intends on simply slacking at either school, they benefit from the better reputation of Stanford. I guess if you intend to gun hard, the gap between H and S is probably smaller but I also don't think the clerkship difference is all about self selection. If I had to guess it's at most half due to self-selection. I've definitely heard harvard students complain about difficulties in getting a clerkship, at least a clerkship they want. I think other than self-selection, we have to consider ease of getting close to professors as well as judge's perceptions

[Anonymous User]

FWIW, I just ran a search on the HLS student database and ~65% of the class went to a T20 undergrad and ~20% went to HYPSM. Not sure where that info pushes but there it is

I stand corrected then because SLS is only about ~25% HYPSM. Not much of a difference. That said:

"People do not fully appreciate just how different the culture at HLS is relative to SLS and YLS. The corporate culture is real, and there are tons of people who have zero interest in academia or clerking."

That reflects something about the student body. Folks at HLS are, for whatever reason, less "ambitious" with respect to traditional "prestige" things. That's going to reflect a lower gunneriness on average, which is why median at SLS will look slightly better than median at HLS. I imagine a higher proportion of folks at HLS just chill after 1L after getting their SA locked in. That's not a big thing at SLS at least

HLS grad, can confirm. One of the things I liked about HLS tbh

They're not less ambitious, it's a totally different career path. Going straight from HLS to the tax department at DPW isn't an objectively worse outcome than someone who goes to clerk for a judge on the first circuit

sure, just like people who go to lower ranked schools who have a passion for personal injury are not objectively worse/less ambitious than harvard students are. Point is we are trying to measure what school sets people up better for doing any given thing. Certain outcomes are objectively more difficult to achieve and we generally think if someone can get some difficult thing, they can generally get things that are less difficult than that thing

Now you could argue at Stanford people just work harder than people at harvard, so a prospective student should just go to either one. But I think that for a person who intends on simply slacking at either school, they benefit from the better reputation of Stanford. I guess if you intend to gun hard, the gap between H and S is probably smaller but I also don't think the clerkship difference is all about self selection. If I had to guess it's at most half due to self-selection. I've definitely heard harvard students complain about difficulties in getting a clerkship, at least a clerkship they want. I think other than self-selection, we have to consider ease of getting close to professors as well as judge's perceptions

Most of this is wrong, but rather than going through point by point, I'll just reiterate that everyone who wanted a clerkship got one, and everyone who wanted to develop relationships with profs did so as well. According to the US News peer scores for employers and judges, HYS are all equal.

[nixy]

They keep shuffling the rankings to draw attention and somehow stay relevant, but no matter what the latest rankings show, I always view law schools in this order when I'm looking at credentials.
1. Yale
2. Harvard, Stanford
3. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn
4. Rest of T14
5. UCLA, Texas, Washu
6. Fordham
7. Rest

For what it's worth, I'm a V20 senior associate that went to HLS.

Same with law firm rankings I suppose. From a certain point you stop caring and whatever rankings you remember from your junior associate days just stay stuck in your head.

Yeah, I could've guessed you went to HLS based on your rankings alone.

Always thought of Chicago as a great school, but not on the same level as schools like Harvard and Stanford. Not as selective. Prestige, as we all know, is about selectivity. Back when I was applying to law schools several years ago, schools like Chicago and Columbia had to offer scholarships to make their offers as competitive as stickers at schools like Harvard and Stanford. I myself chose Harvard over scholarship offers from Columbia and Chicago. As I practice in a region where firms and clients tend to care about school prestige, I don't regret that decision and will do the same if I were to go back in time.

Things may be different now, and maybe Chicago no longer offers scholarships to draw people away from the top 3 schools. I don't know.

This just sounds so silly. There isn’t a material difference in ability between someone who chooses to go to Harvard and someone who takes the money at Columbia or Chicago (except that the Harvard person ends up in a lot of debt, congrats!).

I'm the person that wrote the original post. First of all, what a stupid response. The scholarship offers I had were not full rides. If Chicago gave me a Ruby, I would have taken that. Never meant to say that school prestige is everything. That's oversimplifying what I was saying. Of course there's no material difference between person A that went to H and person B that went to Chicago or Columbia. We are just comparing schools. The topic is rankings. All else equal (it's almost never equal I know), firms prefer a median guy from Harvard over a median guy from Columbia. I'm a senior and I do get involved in hiring, so I know.

And no, I'm not in my 40s. I'm in my early 30s. Paid off my debt in the first 3 years of my career and now I own a house and will keep working hard to achieve my financial goals.

Holy fuck. No, I don't think someone that got 175 is smarter than someone that got 174. Harvard was simply the more preferred school, so unless schools like Columbia, Chicago offered money, they had no chance of attracting cross admits. No one sane would choose Chicago sticker over Harvard sticker. That was the case when I was applying to schools.

Where in the whole fucking world does saying school A is more selective and prestigious than school B translate to saying any particular person from school A is more capable or smarter than any particular person from school B? Jesus.

Then why the hell does selectivity matter if it’s not actually supposed to have a meaning outside itself? Like what is the point of selectivity if it isn’t supposed to have some relevance for ability? A school could be the most selective if it accepted only students with middle names beginning with Y, or something similarly random and uncommon, but no one would care.

Nobody said selectivity is irrelevant either. Again, you are oversimplifying.

School pedigree is a proxy for productivity, among other proxies. Grades from more selective schools are presumed to have greater signalling value as we presume that it must have been tougher to get those grades there than at less selective schools. The idea is that someone that had median grades from the top 3 schools probably could get top 10% grades from 13th or 14th ranked school. Employers try to assess productivity based on imperfect signals.

This is in fact how it works in practice. Assuming typical hiring market, bottom 20% folks from the top 3 schools can still get biglaw, whereas bottom 20% folks from lower ranked schools will find it much more difficult.

Grades are a proxy for productivity? How about a proxy for socio-economic status (which is often itself a proxy for race)? Keep in mind that the grades we’re talking about here are UG grades, since that’s what gets you into HYS, which is what you’re claiming makes them a better indicator of (whatever quality). We’re not talking about what grades you need in law school to get a particular legal job - you’re saying you’d prefer to hire HYS students because the fact that they got into those schools means they worked harder in UG?

And what actual evidence do you have to support the presumption in bold? I think you’re putting way too much weight on very small differences in LSAT/GPA, not to mention the opportunity to engage in the kind of stand-out softs (that also correlate really strongly with socioeconomic status) that help lead to acceptances to at least Y and S, although H seems more willing to take high stats with a pulse.

[Anonymous User]

FWIW, I just ran a search on the HLS student database and ~65% of the class went to a T20 undergrad and ~20% went to HYPSM. Not sure where that info pushes but there it is

I stand corrected then because SLS is only about ~25% HYPSM. Not much of a difference. That said:

"People do not fully appreciate just how different the culture at HLS is relative to SLS and YLS. The corporate culture is real, and there are tons of people who have zero interest in academia or clerking."

That reflects something about the student body. Folks at HLS are, for whatever reason, less "ambitious" with respect to traditional "prestige" things. That's going to reflect a lower gunneriness on average, which is why median at SLS will look slightly better than median at HLS. I imagine a higher proportion of folks at HLS just chill after 1L after getting their SA locked in. That's not a big thing at SLS at least

HLS grad, can confirm. One of the things I liked about HLS tbh

They're not less ambitious, it's a totally different career path. Going straight from HLS to the tax department at DPW isn't an objectively worse outcome than someone who goes to clerk for a judge on the first circuit

sure, just like people who go to lower ranked schools who have a passion for personal injury are not objectively worse/less ambitious than harvard students are. Point is we are trying to measure what school sets people up better for doing any given thing. Certain outcomes are objectively more difficult to achieve and we generally think if someone can get some difficult thing, they can generally get things that are less difficult than that thing

Now you could argue at Stanford people just work harder than people at harvard, so a prospective student should just go to either one. But I think that for a person who intends on simply slacking at either school, they benefit from the better reputation of Stanford. I guess if you intend to gun hard, the gap between H and S is probably smaller but I also don't think the clerkship difference is all about self selection. If I had to guess it's at most half due to self-selection. I've definitely heard harvard students complain about difficulties in getting a clerkship, at least a clerkship they want. I think other than self-selection, we have to consider ease of getting close to professors as well as judge's perceptions

Most of this is wrong, but rather than going through point by point, I'll just reiterate that everyone who wanted a clerkship got one, and everyone who wanted to develop relationships with profs did so as well. According to the US News peer scores for employers and judges, HYS are all equal.

I mean if you really think tax at DPW is as difficult to get as a first circuit clerkship then yeah what you're saying makes sense