Top Law Schools

Fuck, so much for that splitter love. Look for NU to drastically change their admissions criteria, and possibly this year!

O.o

Either flame or holy shit.

This is what happens when you let in DF.

Not flame. What's DF?

http://abovethelaw.com/2010/08/david-va ... thwestern/

Shame.

testmachine45 wrote:Fuck, so much for that splitter love. Look for NU to drastically change their admissions criteria, and possibly this year!

He's still staying until end of this year though, so I doubt that this year's admissions criteria will change.

It is a shame though

I mean admissions people just won't be beholden to his rubric(work experience, business-oriented, etc)

testmachine45 wrote:I mean admissions people just won't be beholden to his rubric(work experience, business-oriented, etc)

lol no. stop being dumb.

IAFG wrote:

testmachine45 wrote:I mean admissions people just won't be beholden to his rubric(work experience, business-oriented, etc)

lol no. stop being dumb.

It's been pretty damn successful for them so far. I don't think they'll change it.

..

ppl hate it, i think they will

Hannibal wrote: It's been pretty damn successful for them so far. I don't think they'll change it.

This. I doubt they'll change it until a new dean comes in with a drastically different viewpoint.

testmachine45 wrote:ppl hate it, i think they will

who hates it? the profs who disliked his changes most already left and law schools in general are moving towards valuing WE, especially as WE has proven to be a significant advantage ITE. they might tweak curriculum a bit to pander to academics they want to seduce, but not admissions.

They better not fucking change it, I've been spending the last year tailoring my app for Northwestern.

IAFG wrote:

testmachine45 wrote:ppl hate it, i think they will

who hates it?

My question too. Like Hannibal says, it seems to have worked for them pretty well.

Edit: clarifying who the question was directed at.

naterj wrote:They better not fucking change it, I've been spending the last year tailoring my app for Northwestern.

I hope you meant tailoring your WE to translate into an app. If you spent a year on a LS app, you're not efficient enough to survive LS.

The Dean is certainly leaving on a high note after taking Northwestern's law school to the top ranking in the National Law Journal's annual biglaw placement survey & causing a few higher ranked law schools to rethink how they approach their missions.

This is a ridiculous flame. Northwestern is widely considered to be among the top schools in the country and has created comparative advantage in placing its graduates precisely because it focuses upon work experience / recruiting engineers / business-oriented curriculum /etc.

They're not going to up and change the formula after having had it in place for this amount of time.

Ragged wrote:This is what happens when you let in DF.

Lol.

IAFG wrote:

testmachine45 wrote:ppl hate it, i think they will

who hates it? the profs who disliked his changes most already left and law schools in general are moving towards valuing WE, especially as WE has proven to be a significant advantage ITE. they might tweak curriculum a bit to pander to academics they want to seduce, but not admissions.

umm.. I dont think there is any evidence at all of this. Deans at non-HYS schools focus a lot on USNWR rankings.. UVA a few years ago even explicitly set one of their goals to move up in the rankings. They just want the numbers, they dont care about the WE.

miamiman wrote:This is a ridiculous flame. Northwestern is widely considered to be among the top schools in the country and has created comparative advantage in placing its graduates precisely because it focuses upon work experience / recruiting engineers / business-oriented curriculum /etc.

They're not going to up and change the formula after having had it in place for this amount of time.

BooJS and I actually talked to Dean Van Zandt about this very topic. He thinks the culture at the school will more or less continue, especially if they hire from within. VZ had a long time to put in place people below him. Though he acknowledged that a new Dean could make drastic changes, but that the Northwestern University as a whole had been supporting of Dean VZ's moves, so he doubts they'd put a new Dean in charge who would.

booboo wrote:

Ragged wrote:This is what happens when you let in DF.

Lol.

I got the email the first minute of my first class.

DF did it

QED

It is hard to predict. Last year Northwestern's undergraduate university hired a new president due to the retirement of President Bienen (whose wife continues as a law school professor at NU). The new undergraduate president is Dr. Shapiro, former president (he resigned to take over as president of NU & was widely courted by many universities) of number one ranked LAC Williams College. Maybe the law school will follow suit & seek someone who can move Northwestern well into the USNews top ten ranked law schools. I suspect that there is more to this move than has been shared publicly. Many believe that NU deserves higher rankings than #11 law school & #12 undergraduate national university. Dr. Shapiro has pledged to raise the university to #8 in the USNews National University rankings which would be in line with its endowment funds (#7, I think) & most of its admissions numbers.

Battleships like NU Law don't turn on a dime. I'm a splitter with WE and an engineering degree, and I am not sweating this one bit from an admissions standpoint. If I wasn't going to get into NU this year, it wasn't going to happen no matter who the dean was.

But he does sound loved and effective, and so from that perspective it seems like a loss from NU.

CanadianWolf wrote:Last year Northwestern's undergraduate university hired a new president due to the retirement of President Bienen (whose wife continues as a law school professor at NU). The new undergraduate president is Dr. Shapiro, former president (he resigned to take over as president of NU & was widely courted by many universities).

Shapiro is President of the ENTIRE University.

He will be directly involved in naming a new Dean for NU Law.