Top 5% CCN, top ?% HYS? Forum

[Anonymous User]

If you're top 5% at CCN, in general what level of HYS students will employers equate you with? Top 10%? Top 15%?

[ozymandius]

No meaningful difference.

[NEdelton1987]

If you're top 5% at CCN, in general what level of HYS students will employers equate you with? Top 10%? Top 15%?

Top 20% at HYSCCN are roughly equivalent (i.e., you're a top student at a top school).

[Anonymous User]

Depends on the employer, entirely. I've personally seen it range from being just a tiebreaker to about top 15-20%.

[abl]

If you're top 5% at CCN, in general what level of HYS students will employers equate you with? Top 10%? Top 15%?

Top 20% at HYSCCN are roughly equivalent (i.e., you're a top student at a top school).

This is definitely not true anywhere I've worked.

[bdubs]

What kind of jobs are you asking about? If it's biglaw firms that hire multiple associates, you would be in the running for any of them from the top 5% of CCN.

If you are talking about positions like clerkships where there is a very limited number of slots with any given judge, and they all have their preferences (not just for school, but also for experience, interests, politics, etc..) then there may well be a meaningful difference between top 5% at CCN and top X% at HYS.

In the end it's really going to matter who you are competing against and how your resume and interview stack up against the competition.

[84651846190]

It doesn't matter for the vast majority of jobs.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Was asking mainly about elite firms. Munger, Williams and Connolly, Wachtell KVN etc.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Was asking mainly about elite firms. Munger, Williams and Connolly, Wachtell KVN etc.

At CCN. Also top 5%.

W&C gives out significantly more offers at HLS. Like, four times as many. We're still talking about tiny numbers (4 vs 16, say), but at least for them there seems to be a difference.

[Anonymous User]

I'm at one of the elite firms you listed, and I can confirm that there's a big drop-off between HYS and CCN at those firms; there's also seemingly a big dropoff (at least at this firm) between Y and HS.

[KaNa1986]

OP here. Was asking mainly about elite firms. Munger, Williams and Connolly, Wachtell KVN etc.

I think Williams and Connolly is the only firm where the HYS/CCN distinction might matter. I heard around half or slightly more than half of the graduating 3L's going to Munger/Wachtell are outside of the top 15% at HYS.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Was asking mainly about elite firms. Munger, Williams and Connolly, Wachtell KVN etc.

I think Williams and Connolly is the only firm where the HYS/CCN distinction might matter. I heard around half or slightly more than half of the graduating 3L's going to Munger/Wachtell are outside of the top 15% at HYS.

Whatever the raw numbers may be, MTO and Wachtell will consider a significantly wider range of the class at Yale, and Harvard and Stanford to a lesser extent, than at CCN or any other school. Also, "CCN" as a tier doesn't make much sense for MTO and KVN which both hire from Berkeley at a much greater rate.

[Anonymous User]

Anon above me is not all that well informed about some of the firms about which he or she speaks. I work at one of the selective firms being discussed and you definitely need as strong or better grades coming from Berkeley than from Chicago or CLS (also there are more CCN summers/hires).

It depends on the market and, to a lesser extent, other factors. Top 5% at CCN won't be treated differently from, say, top 10% at Harvard or Stanford for firm purposes. In New York, many firms will apply essentially the same cut off. In DC, it's easier from Harvard, and there's probably some netting out (like 10% at CLS to 15-20% at HLS, but this is very iffy arithmetic). However, as another poster said, at 5%, you're a top student at a top school. You have access to anywhere you want to go, so it stops mattering. For certain judges, this won't hold true - some might prefer the very top student at HS to the very top student at another school.

Yale is a different issue since there's no curve, so you're being evaluated on other metrics - faculty connections, publications, ect. You're still competing with the class but it can't be broken down into "top 10%" or whatnot, especially as a 1L.

[Anonymous User]

Ill also add to the above that at this level, you've made the grade cutoff and that stops mattering as much as personality, fit, interview style. Wachtell, Munger, W&C, ect., each have somewhat unique interview and recruiting mechanisms that will attract and allow success for different candidates. You aren't guaranteed an offer just because you're top of the class at any of HYSCCN. But being at the top of the class at any of them gets you serious consideration.

[rpupkin]

OP here. Was asking mainly about elite firms. Munger, Williams and Connolly, Wachtell KVN etc.

I think Williams and Connolly is the only firm where the HYS/CCN distinction might matter.

Wrong. Very wrong.

This thread is weird. Sure, for NYC big law, it doesn't matter if you're top 5% at CCN or top 5% at HYS. In fact, for most NYC offices, it doesn't matter if you're top 5% at HYS or top 5% at Fordham.

But there's a thin slice of jobs—clerkships, federal government, and, yes, elite lit boutiques—where HYS is a huge boost. I'm not sure why people are asserting otherwise ITT.

[hdunlop]

Pure speculation but I'd think CA self-selection means the absolute number of students in the top 5-10% of Berk is higher than the absolute number of students in the top 10% of any one of CC or N that want to move to LA but maybe that's wrong.

[Anonymous User]

For most firms--even biglaw--top 5% CCN is more than good enough to not only get your foot in the door but get strong consideration. For a firm like that, there might not be a difference between top 5% at CCN and top 5% at HYS: because, regardless, you're well above median. It's like asking how being top 5% at Emory undergrad (with 170 LSATs) compares with being top 5% at Swarthmore for undergrad (with 170 LSATs) if you're applying to University of Wisconsin. Either way, you're probably getting in, and either way, if you don't, it's going to be despite your grades.

But there are a number of firms and employment outcomes--elite lit boutiques and clerkships, for example--where top 5% CCN isn't good enough to make you a "shoo in" or a "so long as she doesn't lose it on the interview" sort of an applicant. How much of a difference CCN vs HYS makes for even tippy top students is going to depend on the firm, the judge, or whatever other elite organization you're applying to. I can at least vouch for the two judges for whom I have clerked and the four elite organizations in which I've been at least somewhat involved in hiring. In my experience, there's a fairly big difference between HYS and CCN in evaluating top students. Moreover, like others here have mentioned, Yale tends to get separate consideration--not necessarily because folks prefer Yalies to Stanford kids, but because Yale's grading system is wack and therefore (for better or for worse) Yale candidates tend to get evaluated a bit more holistically.

In my somewhat limited experiences (which were geographically located in the west, the midwest, and asia, and consisted of two fed clerkships, two elite PI positions, and a lit boutique), I saw that Stanford seemed to consistently get the slightest bump over Harvard, and Chicago and Columbia seemed to consistently get the slightest bump over NYU. I also saw that the difference between HYS and CCN tended to be far more significant than the difference between CCN and the rest of the T14. This may be confirmation bias, but my intuitions about these things do seem consistent with the various elite hiring outcomes that are publicly available: Skaddens, clerkships, etc.

tl;dr: In my experience, Yale kids get separate but not necessarily better-than-HS consideration; S > H >>>> Chicago/Columbia > NYU >> rest of the T14.

[tiltedwindmill]

This is a stupid question. How is knowing whether one is better than the other helpful? Either you are top 5 or top 15 or you're not. You can't be at both schools at once (so comparing does not matter) and you can't plan on being in such a position before you enter law school

[Anonymous User]

I think something that muddles the analysis in regard to elite lit boutiques is that none of them are in NYC (with the exception of a small Susman office). If you don't have ties to DC, LA, SF you're gonna have a harder time coming out of a NYC school because there's a perception out there that you might bail early. Moving to a new city with no ties that might be pretty underwhelming compared to NYC is pretty rough.

Now, Wachtell might be a better firm to try to analyze to figure out the equivalent class ranks, but I think CLS and NYU students probably desire Wachtell more so than HS students.

I agree that Y should be left out of the comparison all together. Stanford also has a super small class size, so I don't think comparing percentages in terms of placement is really gonna be very helpful. Raw numbers matter as well.

Fed clerkships are also hard to compare. The Second Circuit is very popular. As is SDNY. This makes it harder for CLS and NYU to capitalize on their home market clerkships.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Interesting reply. To tilted above, I am not pre law. I am already north of the top 5% at CCN (probably top 2-3%) and I just wanted to get a sense of which HYS kids I'm competing with.

[jbagelboy]

OP here. Interesting reply. To tilted above, I am not pre law. I am already north of the top 5% at CCN (probably top 2-3%) and I just wanted to get a sense of which HYS kids I'm competing with.

Competing for what? You could be in the applicant pool with half the class or only top 10% of the class. It's not like every student at a T6 goes to the most "selective" firm they get an offer from in cascading order by grade - nor should they. People with grades lower than you at CCN are at Kellogg Huber, Munger Tolles, Wachtell, Susman, whereas the very top student in last year's class summered at a V10 that a median student at HLS could safely snag an offer from. For the most selective positions, I'd ballpark top 10% from HS would be your "competition", but this is not a useful perspective

[wons]

OP here. Interesting reply. To tilted above, I am not pre law. I am already north of the top 5% at CCN (probably top 2-3%) and I just wanted to get a sense of which HYS kids I'm competing with.

Competing for what? You could be in the applicant pool with half the class or only top 10% of the class. It's not like every student at a T6 goes to the most "selective" firm they get an offer from in cascading order by grade - nor should they. People with grades lower than you at CCN are at Kellogg Huber, Munger Tolles, Wachtell, Susman, whereas the very top student in last year's class summered at a V10 that a median student at HLS could safely snag an offer from. For the most selective positions, I'd ballpark top 10% from HS would be your "competition", but this is not a useful perspective

Seconding this. I was similarly situated to you, and I wanted transactional work, so I was basically overqualified for every job I applied for other than Wachtell. The goal of finding a job isn't to find a job that signals your academic prestige as emphatically as possible, it's to find the best job for what you want out of your career.

[abl]

I think something that muddles the analysis in regard to elite lit boutiques is that none of them are in NYC (with the exception of a small Susman office). If you don't have ties to DC, LA, SF you're gonna have a harder time coming out of a NYC school because there's a perception out there that you might bail early. Moving to a new city with no ties that might be pretty underwhelming compared to NYC is pretty rough.

Now, Wachtell might be a better firm to try to analyze to figure out the equivalent class ranks, but I think CLS and NYU students probably desire Wachtell more so than HS students.

I agree that Y should be left out of the comparison all together. Stanford also has a super small class size, so I don't think comparing percentages in terms of placement is really gonna be very helpful. Raw numbers matter as well.

Fed clerkships are also hard to compare. The Second Circuit is very popular. As is SDNY. This makes it harder for CLS and NYU to capitalize on their home market clerkships.

Why do raw numbers matter at all?

I agree with you re Wachtell. I know they've hired at least one person close to median at HYS in recent years.

[Anonymous User]

As I said before, I'm mostly interested in litigation boutiques, which is why I wanted to get a sense. I'm well aware that the considerations are vastly different for clerkships etc.

[Anonymous User]

If that's what you're interested in, your clerkship is going to be determinative.