Top Law Schools

I've recently been accepted at GW, which was my second choice to Gtown. Got waitlisted at Gtown and have since sent a LOCI (haven't heard anything back). I've gotten a lot of advice about accepting GW and most people seem to think that I should go with the highest ranking school that I get into rather than the program that is most specific to my interests. I really like GW's JD/MA in Development Studies because I can study abroad in Oxford for human rights, keep taking language classes (undergrad degree is Arabic), and focus on gender and conflict studies. I haven't been able to find another school that has this type of program other than Georgetown. I'm waiting to hear back from Chicago and I've been accepted at Michigan Law but I just don't know whether I should go (if accepted obviously) to a higher ranking school just because of that number when the GW program conforms to my interests so well. I'm also thinking I can get a some financial aid and scholarships from GW and I'm not so sure I'll get anything from the other schools. Finally, there is the benefit of being in DC, which is where I ultimately want to live and practice law. I just don't see the networking possibilities being as strong if I'm not in the city. I know I'm really hyping up GW because I like it, but could the advice I'm hearing from other about ranking>program be the right thing to do?

spencer.414 wrote:I've recently been accepted at GW, which was my second choice to Gtown. Got waitlisted at Gtown and have since sent a LOCI (haven't heard anything back). I've gotten a lot of advice about accepting GW and most people seem to think that I should go with the highest ranking school that I get into rather than the program that is most specific to my interests. I really like GW's JD/MA in Development Studies because I can study abroad in Oxford for human rights, keep taking language classes (undergrad degree is Arabic), and focus on gender and conflict studies. I haven't been able to find another school that has this type of program other than Georgetown. I'm waiting to hear back from Chicago and I've been accepted at Michigan Law but I just don't know whether I should go (if accepted obviously) to a higher ranking school just because of that number when the GW program conforms to my interests so well. I'm also thinking I can get a some financial aid and scholarships from GW and I'm not so sure I'll get anything from the other schools. Anyone got any thoughts?

What are your career goals? Do you want to work for the UN? an NGO? International Court?

1) Identify a job you would be happy starting in immediately after LS
2) Determine how people have gotten that job
3) See if that path is still available
4) Determine which LS, if any, you need to go to to get that job
5) Realize that jobs pays nothing, and then realize you need 0 debt
6) Remember that GW is a shithole trap law school
7) Consider retaking

Just my two cents

Seoulless wrote:

spencer.414 wrote:I've recently been accepted at GW, which was my second choice to Gtown. Got waitlisted at Gtown and have since sent a LOCI (haven't heard anything back). I've gotten a lot of advice about accepting GW and most people seem to think that I should go with the highest ranking school that I get into rather than the program that is most specific to my interests. I really like GW's JD/MA in Development Studies because I can study abroad in Oxford for human rights, keep taking language classes (undergrad degree is Arabic), and focus on gender and conflict studies. I haven't been able to find another school that has this type of program other than Georgetown. I'm waiting to hear back from Chicago and I've been accepted at Michigan Law but I just don't know whether I should go (if accepted obviously) to a higher ranking school just because of that number when the GW program conforms to my interests so well. I'm also thinking I can get a some financial aid and scholarships from GW and I'm not so sure I'll get anything from the other schools. Anyone got any thoughts?

What are your career goals? Do you want to work for the UN? an NGO? International Court?

Long term goal is the UN. I've also got the yellow ribbon program, which is going to cover a significant amount of my tuition and living expenses to debt isn't truly an issue for me. I'm looking at careers in public service for the most part so GW's proximity to and relationship with many NGOs and IOs is a big draw for me.

flawschoolkid wrote:1) Identify a job you would be happy starting in immediately after LS
2) Determine how people have gotten that job
3) See if that path is still available
4) Determine which LS, if any, you need to go to to get that job
5) Realize that jobs pays nothing, and then realize you need 0 debt
6) Remember that GW is a shithole trap law school
7) Consider retaking

Just my two cents

I've been doing some preliminary research and at firsthand glance, it appears that most of GW's graduates are employed, a good number of those working in the public service sector. I'm definitely not going to retake the LSAT if that's what you're referring to. I have other offers on the table. My primary dilemma is the suitability of the programs to my career goals and academic interests. According to the US News report on law school rankings, GW is #20, which seems very good to me.

spencer.414 wrote:

flawschoolkid wrote:1) Identify a job you would be happy starting in immediately after LS
2) Determine how people have gotten that job
3) See if that path is still available
4) Determine which LS, if any, you need to go to to get that job
5) Realize that jobs pays nothing, and then realize you need 0 debt
6) Remember that GW is a shithole trap law school
7) Consider retaking

Just my two cents

I've been doing some preliminary research and at firsthand glance, it appears that most of GW's graduates are employed, a good number of those working in the public service sector. I'm definitely not going to retake the LSAT if that's what you're referring to. I have other offers on the table. My primary dilemma is the suitability of the programs to my career goals and academic interests. According to the US News report on law school rankings, GW is #20, which seems very good to me.

Why won't you retake? You have a very high gpa. Your goals seem pretty lofty, I would have a solid backup plan.

Have you considered asking GW to put you in touch with alum who are currently doing what you want to do?

I would have to really downgrade my schedule in order to study sufficiently for the LSAT again (if I did it again, I'd only take it with a few months of studying and some really solid prep test scores). I was getting 175s on my prep tests, but standardized testing has always been a huge weakness of mine. My GPA and work experience is my strongest point.

I'm planning to visit GW and Georgetown over winter break to take a look at the campuses and I'm going to talk to some alumni before I accept an offer. I'm still hoping for GULC so I'm doing the whole LOCI, campus visit, etc. even though my hopes aren't high. What drew me to GW as a second choice is the dual degree program with the Elliot School of International Affairs. I'd be doing the Master's International Development Studies with my JD. I really like this program because of the language component, study abroad in Oxford, and capstone projects. I know that other schools offer these but I haven't found any that offer them all in the same program. I'm not interested in BigLaw at all and GW does put a lot of students into public service and international law from what I've seen.

I speak Arabic, French, and Spanish, have military service (thank god for the Yellow Ribbon Program) and have a pretty hefty scholarship offer from them as well so finances are looking decent for the DC area which is crazy expensive. I've been perusing the other forums and GW seems to be hated by the majority of tls posters. With a JD/MA, multiple languages, and military (honestly my fallback plan), I think going to GW can't be a horrible choice if a GULC acceptance isn't in my future.

Retake

If you have a high GPA and can't get into Georgetown, I think your chances of snagging a tough to get job are very low. You're going to need good grades and a good school and if your standardized testing problems are insurmountable then you need to acquire more modest career goals or not go, IMO. Your classmates will eat your lunch.

Also, it sounds like you're chasing unicorn jobs, and those are almost certainly not attainable by GW grads. Not very likely for Georgetown grads either. I think you need to set your sights higher. I would also think long and hard about what the backup plan is in the likely scenario you can't bag a unicorn.

People don't hate GW. They simply recognize that the cost of GW is very high and that the job prospects are weak. A substantial minority of GW students will never find legal work. Many will work in "public service" but there are a lot of different types of public service. The type of public service you're talking about is an incredibly difficult part to break into - you're arguably looking at the most competitive legal jobs in the world. Even with your language skills it would be unlikely for you to get the kind of job you want from Georgetown, even if you're in the top quarter of your class. You really need to be shooting for Harvard, Yale, or Stanford; and maybe Columbia, NYU, or Chicago. GW is simply a terrible fit for your career goals.

Let's break this down:

You've been accepted to Michigan BUT "the GW program conforms to my interests so well."

The evidence you use to make this claim is the following:

I really like GW's JD/MA in Development Studies because I can study abroad in Oxford for human rights, keep taking language classes (undergrad degree is Arabic), and focus on gender and conflict studies.

Yet Michigan offers two joint degree programs of interest to you: JD/MA in Middle Eastern Studies and JD/MA in World Politics. The former has a substantial language requirement (ie you get to take a ton of language courses). If you have maxed out on Arabic, you can also learn Hebrew, Armenian, Persian or Turkish.

http://www.law.umich.edu/curriculum/dua ... grams.aspx

U Michigan also gives students the opportunity to study abroad, and you can arrange to study at any credible foreign university that you wish:

http://www.law.umich.edu/curriculum/stu ... fault.aspx

You maintain that: "I really like this program because of the language component, study abroad in Oxford, and capstone projects. I know that other schools offer these but I haven't found any that offer them all in the same program."

This is a matter of mere semantics. All of the options available to you at GW are available to you at Michigan. The only difference is that Michigan hasn't grouped all of these options together and explicitly called it "The XXXXX Program"

I think you need to tell us (and yourself!!) in detail what it is that you can do at GW that you cannot do at Michigan.

I see no substantially appealing reasons why you should choose GW over Michigan. I have pretty much the same career goals as you do and speak Arabic, Chinese and French as well. Seoulless has made it quite clear: there are two really good dual-degree programs Michigan offers. For me, I am going to pursue the JD/MA in World Politics. Trust me, when it comes to public interest, school prestige and your personal commitment are way more important than the program you took. Even your language skills will play a more important role when you are seeking jobs after law school than the "conforms to my interests so well" program. You should definitely be shooting for YHS, CCN. If not, Michigan seems like a better and more rational choice than GW to me.

I'd say wait and see about scholarship money before considering either option seriously... Both of these schools are mad money.

smiles123 wrote:I'd say wait and see about scholarship money before considering either option seriously... Both of these schools are mad money.

Already accounted for. OP will receive funding from the GI Bill. Money does not appear to be a real concern.

.

Because I don't think anyone has expressly mentioned it, I will say that the USNWR of a school is not really what you need to be considering. The rankings are based on a variety of factors that don't really affect a student's potential for success coming out of the school. It's more important to consider employment outcomes and costs and ability to meet your long-term goals than to get caught up in a number on the USNWR ranking.

Even if you go to Yale, I'm not sure I'd waste years of my life in school chasing a job that doesn't really exist. Do you have any realistic career goals? Would you be fulfilled if the extent of your career involved working at a firm or doing regular, domestic public interest work? I feel like you don't really even need a law degree to do what you want to do.

Take this from a current GW student who got a BigLaw job. Don't come here unless you have external networks who can get you the job you want after law school. You say that GW places well in the public sector in DC, and while this is true, you are only seeing the success stories. Most people who do well from GW either come in with existing contacts, making the law degree more of a formality, or get extremely good grades to gain access to the school's resources, which allows them to do well. Given the school's large class size, it's pretty well established that only the top 20-30% of the class does well through internships and OCI because of their grades, which is largely why GW is considered a trap school. Unless you're in that category, you're just another one of 500 students who doesn't have a distinguishable attribute to successfully create opportunities for themselves without OCI.

It also seems like you may not understand how hiring and recruitment within the legal profession works. Whether its recruitment for BigLaw or the public sector, the primary driver is still the school you went to and the grades you obtained while you were there. It might be great that you get the opportunity to pursue unique experiences while in school through GW's joint degree program, but ultimately it comes down to pedigree. Therefore, a Michigan grad will always have an advantage over a GW grad UNLESS the GW grad has other substantial credentials to differentiate himself/herself (class ranking, Law Review, prior relevant experience). Therefore, by going to GW over Michigan for something trivial as access to unique classes, you're taking a gamble on whether you can actually gain the credentials at GW to make you as marketable as you would have been if you went to Michigan.


You also seem to think that since you're not interested in BigLaw that rankings and BigLaw placement are largely irrelevant to your decision. However, regardless of what sector you are targeting, the BigLaw placements of law schools speak towards the relative strengths in creating opportunities for their students overall. Therefore, you could make the argument that while 20-30% of the GW class gets BigLaw, the same percentage (if not lower) could have pursued other prestigious opportunities (ex. clerkships, PI fellowships, BigFed positons), but you cannot make the same argument for the other 70-80% of GW's class who didn't have the grades to distinguish themselves from the other 300 students.

The descriptions of the joint-degree programs on the school's website are largely to attract students like yourself to make an uninformed decision to attend the program thinking it would be a great idea to pursue it. However, the website do not speak towards the marketability of those classes and/or experiences nor do they inform you whether they would help you reach your goals. If they did, they would have listed statistics on the website for graduate outcomes (but of course, they probably don't).

If you are especially interested in elite organizations like the UN, you should be concerned with pedigree beyond anything else. Why? Because while BigLaw jobs offer high salaries to attract many candidates, prestigious government and other unicorn jobs do not pay well and so they only attract the best candidates who not only have the credentials and pedigree and are also interested in these jobs not because of the salary. Even if GW is located near a lot of the organizations you seek to work at, it doesn't necessarily mean your chances at getting a job there are greater than someone from a better school. Admittedly, this sounds like GW's marketing pitch to get students to think their location makes them more marketable to employers.

1) The above is 100% spot on, as a GW 2L

2) You still haven't identified an entry level job you would be happy obtaining & stated how a law degree is going to get you there. Your aspirations sound nice, but they're basically a pipe dream until you have a plan to get there with concrete evidence showing some likelihood (or at least possibility) of success. If you show up here saying "I like human rights and stuff" and don't have a plan, you're going to be just as fucked as about 2/3rds of the class is.

scottidsntknow wrote:Even if you go to Yale, I'm not sure I'd waste years of my life in school chasing a job that doesn't really exist. Do you have any realistic career goals? Would you be fulfilled if the extent of your career involved working at a firm or doing regular, domestic public interest work? I feel like you don't really even need a law degree to do what you want to do.

This

flawschoolkid wrote:1) The above is 100% spot on, as a GW 2L

2) You still haven't identified an entry level job you would be happy obtaining & stated how a law degree is going to get you there. Your aspirations sound nice, but they're basically a pipe dream until you have a plan to get there with concrete evidence showing some likelihood (or at least possibility) of success. If you show up here saying "I like human rights and stuff" and don't have a plan, you're going to be just as fucked as about 2/3rds of the class is.

For entry level I would be happy doing domestic public interest. I'm definitely no expert on the type of jobs that exist right out of law school. No one I know has been to law school or even wants to go. I've been emailing with the admissions department at Michigan and they're putting me in contact with a student there who is doing the program I've applied for (JD/MA in Law and Politics). I've also initiated contact with some GW alumni to get insight into what they're doing with their degrees. I've only just started this though. The first thing on my mind was actually getting into a school but you're right I do need to develop a more concrete plan.

downbeat14 wrote:"I would have to really downgrade my schedule"

OP: I always find this kind of reasoning incredibly strange. You need to suck it up, scale back on work and/or add LSAT to your life and deal with less free time, and re-take. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but you really need to believe us here. Saying you would really need to do X to achieve Y makes it seem like it's at least possible for you... you need to get to work on a re-take right now.

With your interesting background and solid GPA, a few more points on the LSAT will literally change the course of the rest of your life. If you hit 170 you are looking at major $$$ from T14s rather than decent offers from schools you shouldn't be attending in the first place.

GW is a terrible option (for your abilities) based on their employment data. Look, they have an employment rating of 77.4% of graduating students finding a job of any kind after school. No one thinks they'll be in the bottom ~25%, but ~25% always end up there. You are taking a major risk here. To make matters worse, 14.6% of that number are in positions funded by the school: low paying crap positions the school pays for so they can pump their crappy employment numbers up. You are basically flipping a coin (at best) at finding a meaningful job. With your fairly lofty goals, you're odds of achieving those are going to be much lower coming from GW.

These are REALLY terrible odds considering you could put in 100 hours of studying over the next month and most likely get a much better outcome. I don't think you can really say that you suck at standardized exams because of one score lower than your practice scores (which is still a pretty good score!), a lot of people did significantly worse in Sept (I'm assuming that's what you took?). Just doing the test again will likely bring your score way up just from experience, if you were really PTing in the 175 range consistently.

I really hope you retake. Either way, good luck!

I have gotten into Michigan already so I know that I necessarily need to retest. I'm waiting to hear back from Chicago and UVA (both obviously reach schools) but Michigan is ranked #10 and has a very good program. Based on what I'm reading GW sounds like it's great at advertizing and not so great at delivering the results promised. I'm only starting my research on Michigan but it looks like a solid option so far.

Food for thought: retake in February to get off waitlists.

Seoulless wrote:Food for thought: retake in February to get off waitlists.

This is probably what I'll do if I don't get any other acceptances.

spencer.414 wrote:

flawschoolkid wrote:1) The above is 100% spot on, as a GW 2L

2) You still haven't identified an entry level job you would be happy obtaining & stated how a law degree is going to get you there. Your aspirations sound nice, but they're basically a pipe dream until you have a plan to get there with concrete evidence showing some likelihood (or at least possibility) of success. If you show up here saying "I like human rights and stuff" and don't have a plan, you're going to be just as fucked as about 2/3rds of the class is.

For entry level I would be happy doing domestic public interest. I'm definitely no expert on the type of jobs that exist right out of law school. No one I know has been to law school or even wants to go. I've been emailing with the admissions department at Michigan and they're putting me in contact with a student there who is doing the program I've applied for (JD/MA in Law and Politics). I've also initiated contact with some GW alumni to get insight into what they're doing with their degrees. I've only just started this though. The first thing on my mind was actually getting into a school but you're right I do need to develop a more concrete plan.

This is great then. Make sure you don't listen too much to School Admissions. They're sales people at this point. Find alumni that have been in these jobs. Only reliable information source.