Financial Reality v TLS Bias Forum

[splitterswallow]

There's a lot of problematic banter in this thread. When critiquing this forum, you have to consider its history. In many instances, TLS does a poor job of discouraging students from assuming too much debt due to the lingering and powerful undercurrent of signaling-obsession among the demographic of young students that would frequent a site called top law schools. It's taken years of hard work on the part of many regular posters (including myself) and a shrinking applicant pool to turn the tide back from the dangerous recession-era follow the commercial magazine survey with deplorable journalistic ethics to the letter and allow a well-respected, cost-conscious, long-term humane approach to prevail. It's probably the internet-related achievement I'm most proud of. Yet we still lose students every year.

This isn't to say that taking on some debt is always bad. The issue is not some abstract amount of student loans, within reason; it's considering your decision holistically: your inputs, your goals, the employment statistics, the market. The worst decision someone can make is to throw away years of added financial security and emotional well-being for a few ever-shifting slots in for-profit magazine surveys. At the end of the day, each decision is individual, but TLS has developed a rigorous and carefully considered framework for choosing the right school given particular financial variables over thousands of individual inputs, stories, and case studies. It's far from perfect--the signaling/prestige complex still does a lot of damage--but it's come a long way over the past few years and I'll be damned if a few lurkers feel they can dismiss it or take it to task to justify whatever personal scheme or agenda they've come here to feel reassured about.

You could be making a strong choice to take on student debt, but be willing to take a hard look at your decision and critique it from multiple angles--why else are you here.

Well said.

[Tls2016]

There's a lot of problematic banter in this thread. When critiquing this forum, you have to consider its history. In many instances, TLS does a poor job of discouraging students from assuming too much debt due to the lingering and powerful undercurrent of signaling-obsession among the demographic of young students that would frequent a site called top law schools. It's taken years of hard work on the part of many regular posters (including myself) and a shrinking applicant pool to turn the tide back from the dangerous recession-era follow the commercial magazine survey with deplorable journalistic ethics to the letter and allow a well-respected, cost-conscious, long-term humane approach to prevail. It's probably the internet-related achievement I'm most proud of. Yet we still lose students every year.

This isn't to say that taking on some debt is always bad. The issue is not some abstract amount of student loans, within reason; it's considering your decision holistically: your inputs, your goals, the employment statistics, the market. The worst decision someone can make is to throw away years of added financial security and emotional well-being for a few ever-shifting slots in for-profit magazine surveys. At the end of the day, each decision is individual, but TLS has developed a rigorous and carefully considered framework for choosing the right school given particular financial variables over thousands of individual inputs, stories, and case studies. It's far from perfect--the signaling/prestige complex still does a lot of damage--but it's come a long way over the past few years and I'll be damned if a few lurkers feel they can dismiss it or take it to task to justify whatever personal scheme or agenda they've come here to feel reassured about.

You could be making a strong choice to take on student debt, but be willing to take a hard look at your decision and critique it from multiple angles--why else are you here.

Great post. I'm certain few current applicants know the the "models and bottles" history of TLS.

[teenagewildlife]

There's a lot of problematic banter in this thread. When critiquing this forum, you have to consider its history. In many instances, TLS does a poor job of discouraging students from assuming too much debt due to the lingering and powerful undercurrent of signaling-obsession among the demographic of young students that would frequent a site called top law schools. It's taken years of hard work on the part of many regular posters (including myself) and a shrinking applicant pool to turn the tide back from the dangerous recession-era follow the commercial magazine survey with deplorable journalistic ethics to the letter and allow a well-respected, cost-conscious, long-term humane approach to prevail. It's probably the internet-related achievement I'm most proud of. Yet we still lose students every year.

This isn't to say that taking on some debt is always bad. The issue is not some abstract amount of student loans, within reason; it's considering your decision holistically: your inputs, your goals, the employment statistics, the market. The worst decision someone can make is to throw away years of added financial security and emotional well-being for a few ever-shifting slots in for-profit magazine surveys. At the end of the day, each decision is individual, but TLS has developed a rigorous and carefully considered framework for choosing the right school given particular financial variables over thousands of individual inputs, stories, and case studies. It's far from perfect--the signaling/prestige complex still does a lot of damage--but it's come a long way over the past few years and I'll be damned if a few lurkers feel they can dismiss it or take it to task to justify whatever personal scheme or agenda they've come here to feel reassured about.

You could be making a strong choice to take on student debt, but be willing to take a hard look at your decision and critique it from multiple angles--why else are you here.

Well said.

I assume this is directed at me so I'll just say this wasn't my intention, even though I made a dumb thread title. I think that encouraging people, particularly recent college grads, to look seriously and critically at the prospect of law school debt, is an obviously good and important thing to do. And that TLS is basically the only place I'm aware of where this is happening on a large enough scale to get people's attention. Maybe the problem here is that, as Clearly pointed out, I should've made this thread more personal, and instead I came at it from an angle that made it seem like my problem was TLS, and not own financial situation. Basically, this

be willing to take a hard look at your decision and critique it from multiple angles--why else are you here.

is why I'm here, and I feel like I got some solid info out of this thread alone, as well as elsewhere on the board. So thanks.

[timbs4339]

There's a lot of problematic banter in this thread. When critiquing this forum, you have to consider its history. In many instances, TLS does a poor job of discouraging students from assuming too much debt due to the lingering and powerful undercurrent of signaling-obsession among the demographic of young students that would frequent a site called top law schools. It's taken years of hard work on the part of many regular posters (including myself) and a shrinking applicant pool to turn the tide back from the dangerous recession-era follow the commercial magazine survey with deplorable journalistic ethics to the letter and allow a well-respected, cost-conscious, long-term humane approach to prevail. It's probably the internet-related achievement I'm most proud of. Yet we still lose students every year.

This isn't to say that taking on some debt is always bad. The issue is not some abstract amount of student loans, within reason; it's considering your decision holistically: your inputs, your goals, the employment statistics, the market. The worst decision someone can make is to throw away years of added financial security and emotional well-being for a few ever-shifting slots in for-profit magazine surveys. At the end of the day, each decision is individual, but TLS has developed a rigorous and carefully considered framework for choosing the right school given particular financial variables over thousands of individual inputs, stories, and case studies. It's far from perfect--the signaling/prestige complex still does a lot of damage--but it's come a long way over the past few years and I'll be damned if a few lurkers feel they can dismiss it or take it to task to justify whatever personal scheme or agenda they've come here to feel reassured about.

You could be making a strong choice to take on student debt, but be willing to take a hard look at your decision and critique it from multiple angles--why else are you here.

It's always an uphill battle because every year there is a new crop of idiots - and I was one - who go into this process without doing more than rudimentary due diligence. And it is really tough to shake people out of preconceived ideas of what law school can do for them and what their life is actually going to look like in three years with a certain kind of job and a certain level of debt, especially if they have just never dealt with anything like that or seen anyone deal with anything like that up close. And then another year goes by and there's a new crop of people who have the same biases and misconceptions and you have to have the same conversations over again.

Part of what worries me is that TLS has become too successful, in the sense that people looking for immediate validation of their decisions don't even bother to engage because they've heard that the advice will be the same, and they just want someone to tell them that it's going to be alright and that 200K of debt's a good investment. If the advice seems formulaic and repetitive it's only because the (largely) 21-23 year old who applies to law school while taking the LSAT once and getting a mediocre score is making a stupid decision. I'm still (after 8 years on this site with various monikers) concerned that the % of retakers is so low - to me that means that an overwhelming amount of people still aren't doing due diligence before they make a selection.

[bpolley0]

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[cheaptilts]

tbf 158/4.0s come from private schools/Ivys all the time so I don't understand the need for shitting on state school bros

[bpolley0]

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[A. Nony Mouse]

bpolley0 isn't shitting on state schools so much as he's shitting on what he considers worthless majors.

[bpolley0]

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[A. Nony Mouse]

bpolley0 isn't shitting on state schools so much as he's shitting on what he considers worthless majors.

I don't believe I stated anything about someone's major in the above response.

learning information that is common sense presented as overly complex.

But that was probably a little undeservedly snarky of me, so for that, I apologize.

[bpolley0]

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[A. Nony Mouse]

So what does that refer to, then?

[bpolley0]

.

[tomdotcom22]

Mod edit: the Navy Seal copypasta meme is not appropriate for the on-topics.

[teenagewildlife]

update to this thread/op:

Been thinking it over the past few days and, based on my own experience and aversion to debt, plus some of the posts people made here, I'm not going going to be doing the ~50% scholarship thing. Decided that it makes sense for me to only go through with law school on a full ride or near full ride, so I've set the minimum for myself at an 80% scholarship. This means I'll probably definitely need to score significantly higher on the LSAT to make this happen (I'm thinking 175+), and that I'll likely be looking at a T20 or T30 rather than a T14 in the end. All of which I'm cool with. Thanks again for the input.