Summer Classes of 2022 Edition Forum

[Anonymous User]

I would also question whether choosing CSM or S&C over Cleary really is the smarter play here. I know a handful of classmates who turned down offers from V10 (S&C, STB, DPW) for places like Cleary and Debevoise because they don't want to sweat harder for the same pay and marginally better exit ops (if any).

Not sure about Cleary, but surprising to hear this about Debevoise because all of my friends describe it as a sweatshop.

I'm a Class of 2017. Really surprised that Cleary is now deemed a tier below firms like K&E and Latham by law students. Is it because of Vault? So ridiculous.

What's so ridiculous? Law firms strength is 100% determined by their financials because they exist to make money and to make money only. A firm like Cleary that can't compete on profitability is just bad as a firm. Simple as that. If you think where median NYU students want to work for and quit in 2 years matters more than how much cash a firm brings in each year I don't know what you have been doing for the past 5 years.

If we are talking about associates quality that's a different question but again that doesn't matter as we are doing things that a high schooler can do anyways.

Idiotic K&E bro says what? So many things wrong with this.

Firms may be geared toward making money but that never has, and never will align perfectly with prestige or rankings. Cadwalolader and K&S continue to have much higher PPP than their peer firms, but nobody thinks they are on par with other more prestigious firms. Quibble with whether you care about prestige (that's fine, many don't), but it does matter to some degree. Williams & Connolly is just one example. And don't forget that the median NYU student will be a client someday - their perception at OCI locks in what they think about firms for years to come. Outsized profits are unlikely to sway that view, especially if they know how those profits came about.

Which brings me to my next point: firms like K&E massively inflate their PPEP with large NEP ranks and sweatshop mentalities. K&E has $600k+ more RPL, which I'm sure has nothing to do with higher billing rates (roughly commensurate with value in the market/preftige) and everything to do with longer hours and high-billing NEPs pushing the average up. There are other "cash is king" metrics that are also just as, if not more important than PPP, gross revenue, and total profits. Look no further than plaintiff-side firms with partners raking in cash from contingency fee arrangements to see that point.

I'm not saying K&E's profits aren't impressive compared to Cleary. And I'm not saying K&E is a bad firm. I'm just saying that big PPP numbers for a few years does not don the crown of top preftige. Perceptions matter, and you can't just point to a few financial data points to refute that.

The Knicks are the best team in the NBA because it's in Manhattan. Say what you want but being in Manhattan matters. Doesn't matter when was the last time it was in the playoffs. They still have the most expensive ticket memberships. I like the team. My friends like the team. New Yorkers like the team. Perceptions matter, and you can't just point to game records to refute that.

Change my mind.

[Anonymous User]

I would also question whether choosing CSM or S&C over Cleary really is the smarter play here. I know a handful of classmates who turned down offers from V10 (S&C, STB, DPW) for places like Cleary and Debevoise because they don't want to sweat harder for the same pay and marginally better exit ops (if any).

Not sure about Cleary, but surprising to hear this about Debevoise because all of my friends describe it as a sweatshop.

I'm a Class of 2017. Really surprised that Cleary is now deemed a tier below firms like K&E and Latham by law students. Is it because of Vault? So ridiculous.

What's so ridiculous? Law firms strength is 100% determined by their financials because they exist to make money and to make money only. A firm like Cleary that can't compete on profitability is just bad as a firm. Simple as that. If you think where median NYU students want to work for and quit in 2 years matters more than how much cash a firm brings in each year I don't know what you have been doing for the past 5 years.

If we are talking about associates quality that's a different question but again that doesn't matter as we are doing things that a high schooler can do anyways.

Idiotic K&E bro says what? So many things wrong with this.

Firms may be geared toward making money but that never has, and never will align perfectly with prestige or rankings. Cadwalolader and K&S continue to have much higher PPP than their peer firms, but nobody thinks they are on par with other more prestigious firms. Quibble with whether you care about prestige (that's fine, many don't), but it does matter to some degree. Williams & Connolly is just one example. And don't forget that the median NYU student will be a client someday - their perception at OCI locks in what they think about firms for years to come. Outsized profits are unlikely to sway that view, especially if they know how those profits came about.

Which brings me to my next point: firms like K&E massively inflate their PPEP with large NEP ranks and sweatshop mentalities. K&E has $600k+ more RPL, which I'm sure has nothing to do with higher billing rates (roughly commensurate with value in the market/preftige) and everything to do with longer hours and high-billing NEPs pushing the average up. There are other "cash is king" metrics that are also just as, if not more important than PPP, gross revenue, and total profits. Look no further than plaintiff-side firms with partners raking in cash from contingency fee arrangements to see that point.

I'm not saying K&E's profits aren't impressive compared to Cleary. And I'm not saying K&E is a bad firm. I'm just saying that big PPP numbers for a few years does not don the crown of top preftige. Perceptions matter, and you can't just point to a few financial data points to refute that.

Even if prestige did matter it's not like Cleary gets to share the perks. As someone who worked in finance before law school, I've heard of firms like Skadden, DPW, Kirkland, Cravath, Latham etc., and until OCI I thought Cleary was a pokemon, one that potentially evolves into Clefairy.

[Anonymous User]

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Compared to firms who also heavily draw from their target schools they are. How many candidates do you think would pick Cleary over CSM/S&C/DPW. Top students go to wachtell/DC lit or clerk, good students go to a top ranked white shoe, and firms like cleary are left with a flock of median students at HLS/CLS/NYU who are indistinguishable from their T50 median peers.

Not sure where you are getting this low quality information from. Cleary mostly draws from above median even from CLS and NYU.

Why do you think HLS median students are indistinguishable from T50 median? Literally no biglaw firms agree with you. and given that Florida State or Indiana medians largely don’t really work in major market biglaw, what’s your frame of reference there?

Sounds like you’re overestimating the importance of grades and may be detached from reality. Raw intellectual horsepower + effort + common sense is what drives performance in my practice group. Sometimes top performers were CLS Kent or HLS magna, but most of the time they’re people who didn’t like law school as much as you probably did.

Another anon here. HLS median students are obviously distinguishable from T50 median. That being said, I can't comment anything about Cleary drawing above median folks from CLS and NYU. Do you have access to data?

Because all number driven schools admit people based on ugpa+lsat only and they don't mean shit. Is an ASU 4.0 dance major HLS student smarter than a 3.3 MIT physics major?

As an HLS grad, I confirm there most likely isn't anyone at HLS that majored in dance at a state university. Never seen anybody similar. Most people majored in econ, math, finance, government, philosophy, etc. Even if there is such an individual, to the extent such person had the right credentials to get admitted to HLS, we cannot know for sure that the MIT physics major is necessarily smarter either.

What credentials? college GPA or LSAT as if that's not the only thing HLS cares about? As an HLS student who studied quant finance at a top college, HLS students are at least a notch or two dumber overall than my college classmates. Some of the most mediocre students from my hometown in Ohio make it into HLS. This is not to say that HLS doesn't have some smart people at the top but as a whole student body it is an insult to MIT and I hope you are trolling to compare HLS to MIT physics.

Yes I'm totally sure the "most mediocre students" from your hometown make it into HLS. That seems likely.

[Anonymous User]

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Compared to firms who also heavily draw from their target schools they are. How many candidates do you think would pick Cleary over CSM/S&C/DPW. Top students go to wachtell/DC lit or clerk, good students go to a top ranked white shoe, and firms like cleary are left with a flock of median students at HLS/CLS/NYU who are indistinguishable from their T50 median peers.

Not sure where you are getting this low quality information from. Cleary mostly draws from above median even from CLS and NYU.

Why do you think HLS median students are indistinguishable from T50 median? Literally no biglaw firms agree with you. and given that Florida State or Indiana medians largely don’t really work in major market biglaw, what’s your frame of reference there?

Sounds like you’re overestimating the importance of grades and may be detached from reality. Raw intellectual horsepower + effort + common sense is what drives performance in my practice group. Sometimes top performers were CLS Kent or HLS magna, but most of the time they’re people who didn’t like law school as much as you probably did.

Another anon here. HLS median students are obviously distinguishable from T50 median. That being said, I can't comment anything about Cleary drawing above median folks from CLS and NYU. Do you have access to data?

Because all number driven schools admit people based on ugpa+lsat only and they don't mean shit. Is an ASU 4.0 dance major HLS student smarter than a 3.3 MIT physics major?

As an HLS grad, I confirm there most likely isn't anyone at HLS that majored in dance at a state university. Never seen anybody similar. Most people majored in econ, math, finance, government, philosophy, etc. Even if there is such an individual, to the extent such person had the right credentials to get admitted to HLS, we cannot know for sure that the MIT physics major is necessarily smarter either.

What credentials? college GPA or LSAT as if that's not the only thing HLS cares about? As an HLS student who studied quant finance at a top college, HLS students are at least a notch or two dumber overall than my college classmates. Some of the most mediocre students from my hometown in Ohio make it into HLS. This is not to say that HLS doesn't have some smart people at the top but as a whole student body it is an insult to MIT and I hope you are trolling to compare HLS to MIT physics.

It looks like you peaked in high school when your friends from your hometown did better in college.

According to all of your previous posts, it also looks like you have a personal grudge against the school, HLS. Maybe you got rejected from HLS at some point.

[Anonymous User]

Thanks to everyone for ruining a perfectly good thread.

[Anonymous User]

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[Anonymous User]

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[Anonymous User]

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Compared to firms who also heavily draw from their target schools they are. How many candidates do you think would pick Cleary over CSM/S&C/DPW. Top students go to wachtell/DC lit or clerk, good students go to a top ranked white shoe, and firms like cleary are left with a flock of median students at HLS/CLS/NYU who are indistinguishable from their T50 median peers.

Not sure where you are getting this low quality information from. Cleary mostly draws from above median even from CLS and NYU.

Why do you think HLS median students are indistinguishable from T50 median? Literally no biglaw firms agree with you. and given that Florida State or Indiana medians largely don’t really work in major market biglaw, what’s your frame of reference there?

Sounds like you’re overestimating the importance of grades and may be detached from reality. Raw intellectual horsepower + effort + common sense is what drives performance in my practice group. Sometimes top performers were CLS Kent or HLS magna, but most of the time they’re people who didn’t like law school as much as you probably did.

Another anon here. HLS median students are obviously distinguishable from T50 median. That being said, I can't comment anything about Cleary drawing above median folks from CLS and NYU. Do you have access to data?

Because all number driven schools admit people based on ugpa+lsat only and they don't mean shit. Is an ASU 4.0 dance major HLS student smarter than a 3.3 MIT physics major?

As an HLS grad, I confirm there most likely isn't anyone at HLS that majored in dance at a state university. Never seen anybody similar. Most people majored in econ, math, finance, government, philosophy, etc. Even if there is such an individual, to the extent such person had the right credentials to get admitted to HLS, we cannot know for sure that the MIT physics major is necessarily smarter either.

What credentials? college GPA or LSAT as if that's not the only thing HLS cares about? As an HLS student who studied quant finance at a top college, HLS students are at least a notch or two dumber overall than my college classmates. Some of the most mediocre students from my hometown in Ohio make it into HLS. This is not to say that HLS doesn't have some smart people at the top but as a whole student body it is an insult to MIT and I hope you are trolling to compare HLS to MIT physics.

It looks like you peaked in high school when your friends from your hometown did better in college.

According to all of your previous posts, it also looks like you have a personal grudge against the school, HLS. Maybe you got rejected from HLS at some point.

I wonder why people don't have personal grudges against YS?

[Anonymous User]

.
Compared to firms who also heavily draw from their target schools they are. How many candidates do you think would pick Cleary over CSM/S&C/DPW. Top students go to wachtell/DC lit or clerk, good students go to a top ranked white shoe, and firms like cleary are left with a flock of median students at HLS/CLS/NYU who are indistinguishable from their T50 median peers.

Not sure where you are getting this low quality information from. Cleary mostly draws from above median even from CLS and NYU.

Why do you think HLS median students are indistinguishable from T50 median? Literally no biglaw firms agree with you. and given that Florida State or Indiana medians largely don’t really work in major market biglaw, what’s your frame of reference there?

Sounds like you’re overestimating the importance of grades and may be detached from reality. Raw intellectual horsepower + effort + common sense is what drives performance in my practice group. Sometimes top performers were CLS Kent or HLS magna, but most of the time they’re people who didn’t like law school as much as you probably did.

Another anon here. HLS median students are obviously distinguishable from T50 median. That being said, I can't comment anything about Cleary drawing above median folks from CLS and NYU. Do you have access to data?

Because all number driven schools admit people based on ugpa+lsat only and they don't mean shit. Is an ASU 4.0 dance major HLS student smarter than a 3.3 MIT physics major?

As an HLS grad, I confirm there most likely isn't anyone at HLS that majored in dance at a state university. Never seen anybody similar. Most people majored in econ, math, finance, government, philosophy, etc. Even if there is such an individual, to the extent such person had the right credentials to get admitted to HLS, we cannot know for sure that the MIT physics major is necessarily smarter either.

What credentials? college GPA or LSAT as if that's not the only thing HLS cares about? As an HLS student who studied quant finance at a top college, HLS students are at least a notch or two dumber overall than my college classmates. Some of the most mediocre students from my hometown in Ohio make it into HLS. This is not to say that HLS doesn't have some smart people at the top but as a whole student body it is an insult to MIT and I hope you are trolling to compare HLS to MIT physics.

Yes I'm totally sure the "most mediocre students" from your hometown make it into HLS. That seems likely.

Are you living in a world where HLS is harder to get into than top colleges? Like the one in Suits?

[Anonymous User]

I wonder why people don't have personal grudges against YS?

Because HLS has a rep (fair or not) of being the most numbers-focused, so people in-range for YS who get rejected can always say they just didn't strike the right chord with admissions; people take their HLS rejections much more personally because they think they "earned" a spot by having a high GPA/LSAT combo

[Anonymous User]

I wonder why people don't have personal grudges against YS?

Because HLS has a rep (fair or not) of being the most numbers-focused, so people in-range for YS who get rejected can always say they just didn't strike the right chord with admissions; people take their HLS rejections much more personally because they think they "earned" a spot by having a high GPA/LSAT combo

Doesn't that already mean HLS is not that selective, at least perception-wise? How often do you see people get mad for not getting into Harvard for college or Yale for law. It's something that you throw a hail mary for and no hard feelings if it doesn't work out. Part of the reason HLS gets shit talked so much is that everyone knows it's not top level selective and the only difference between HLS and NYU students is the marginal negligible difference on the GPA/LSAT. But once some kids get in, they immediately bundle themselves with Harvard prestige and YS, trying to fake exclusivity and separate themselves from the rest.

Not just law students, I personally know Harvard undergrads who are very bothered by the swarm of HLS grads who say they went to "Harvard", but never mention it's just "HLS".

[Anonymous User]

[UPDATED]

GDC DC - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287#p10513932
MTO - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287#p10513999
PW - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287#p10514116
STB NY - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287#p10514163
KE Bay Area - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287#p10514211
Williams & Connolly - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287#p10514251
Skadden NY - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=25#p10514401
Sidley DC - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=25#p10514412
Quinn - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=25#p10514413
KE Chicago - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=75#p10514598
Fenwick - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=75#p10514644
Cleary - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=75#p10514650
GDC LA - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=100#p10515078
JD Cleveland - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=100#p10515207
Morgan Lewis - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=100#p10517065
DPW - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=125#p10517582
Crowell & Moring - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=312287&start=175#p10517912

[Anonymous User]

Are you living in a world where HLS is harder to get into than top colleges? Like the one in Suits?

I mean yeah, it is. Plenty of people from undergrads like Yale, Columbia, UCBerkeley do not get admitted to HLS.

[Anonymous User]

I think probably most class lists are out now. Anyone want to share?

[Anonymous User]

Are you living in a world where HLS is harder to get into than top colleges? Like the one in Suits?

I mean yeah, it is. Plenty of people from undergrads like Yale, Columbia, UCBerkeley do not get admitted to HLS.

Hahahahahahahaha plenty of undergrads from Harvard don’t get in GULC I guess GULC is better than Harvard College too then.

What about plenty of state school kids who do get in HLS?

The fact you list berkeley with yale and Columbia shows you didn’t go to a top undergrad.

[Anonymous User]

Are you living in a world where HLS is harder to get into than top colleges? Like the one in Suits?

I mean yeah, it is. Plenty of people from undergrads like Yale, Columbia, UCBerkeley do not get admitted to HLS.

This ignorance is just cute

[Anonymous User]

I would also question whether choosing CSM or S&C over Cleary really is the smarter play here. I know a handful of classmates who turned down offers from V10 (S&C, STB, DPW) for places like Cleary and Debevoise because they don't want to sweat harder for the same pay and marginally better exit ops (if any).

Not sure about Cleary, but surprising to hear this about Debevoise because all of my friends describe it as a sweatshop.

I'm a Class of 2017. Really surprised that Cleary is now deemed a tier below firms like K&E and Latham by law students. Is it because of Vault? So ridiculous.

What's so ridiculous? Law firms strength is 100% determined by their financials because they exist to make money and to make money only. A firm like Cleary that can't compete on profitability is just bad as a firm. Simple as that. If you think where median NYU students want to work for and quit in 2 years matters more than how much cash a firm brings in each year I don't know what you have been doing for the past 5 years.

If we are talking about associates quality that's a different question but again that doesn't matter as we are doing things that a high schooler can do anyways.

Idiotic K&E bro says what? So many things wrong with this.

Firms may be geared toward making money but that never has, and never will align perfectly with prestige or rankings. Cadwalolader and K&S continue to have much higher PPP than their peer firms, but nobody thinks they are on par with other more prestigious firms. Quibble with whether you care about prestige (that's fine, many don't), but it does matter to some degree. Williams & Connolly is just one example. And don't forget that the median NYU student will be a client someday - their perception at OCI locks in what they think about firms for years to come. Outsized profits are unlikely to sway that view, especially if they know how those profits came about.

Which brings me to my next point: firms like K&E massively inflate their PPEP with large NEP ranks and sweatshop mentalities. K&E has $600k+ more RPL, which I'm sure has nothing to do with higher billing rates (roughly commensurate with value in the market/preftige) and everything to do with longer hours and high-billing NEPs pushing the average up. There are other "cash is king" metrics that are also just as, if not more important than PPP, gross revenue, and total profits. Look no further than plaintiff-side firms with partners raking in cash from contingency fee arrangements to see that point.

I'm not saying K&E's profits aren't impressive compared to Cleary. And I'm not saying K&E is a bad firm. I'm just saying that big PPP numbers for a few years does not don the crown of top preftige. Perceptions matter, and you can't just point to a few financial data points to refute that.

Even if prestige did matter it's not like Cleary gets to share the perks. As someone who worked in finance before law school, I've heard of firms like Skadden, DPW, Kirkland, Cravath, Latham etc., and until OCI I thought Cleary was a pokemon, one that potentially evolves into Clefairy.

I mean, I have heard of Goldman and JP Morgan and Blackrock but none of the hedge funds that my friends in finance seem to think are the best. The perception of the outsider is bound to be skewed and ultimately not that helpful because the people at the finance shops making decisions about who to hire likely are more sophisticated about how to select a firm than your average trader or VP. Although now that I say that out loud, they're probably just as dumb....

[Anonymous User]

I think probably most class lists are out now. Anyone want to share?

My firm released info by office, and I'm in an office with less than 10 SAs, so I wouldn't. I figure many of us are in this boat.

[Anonymous User]

I think probably most class lists are out now. Anyone want to share?

My firm released info by office, and I'm in an office with less than 10 SAs, so I wouldn't. I figure many of us are in this boat.

You are anonymous

[Anonymous User]

I think probably most class lists are out now. Anyone want to share?

My firm released info by office, and I'm in an office with less than 10 SAs, so I wouldn't. I figure many of us are in this boat.

You are anonymous

I'm also easily spooked.

[Anonymous User]

I would also question whether choosing CSM or S&C over Cleary really is the smarter play here. I know a handful of classmates who turned down offers from V10 (S&C, STB, DPW) for places like Cleary and Debevoise because they don't want to sweat harder for the same pay and marginally better exit ops (if any).

Not sure about Cleary, but surprising to hear this about Debevoise because all of my friends describe it as a sweatshop.

I'm a Class of 2017. Really surprised that Cleary is now deemed a tier below firms like K&E and Latham by law students. Is it because of Vault? So ridiculous.

What's so ridiculous? Law firms strength is 100% determined by their financials because they exist to make money and to make money only. A firm like Cleary that can't compete on profitability is just bad as a firm. Simple as that. If you think where median NYU students want to work for and quit in 2 years matters more than how much cash a firm brings in each year I don't know what you have been doing for the past 5 years.

If we are talking about associates quality that's a different question but again that doesn't matter as we are doing things that a high schooler can do anyways.

Idiotic K&E bro says what? So many things wrong with this.

Firms may be geared toward making money but that never has, and never will align perfectly with prestige or rankings. Cadwalolader and K&S continue to have much higher PPP than their peer firms, but nobody thinks they are on par with other more prestigious firms. Quibble with whether you care about prestige (that's fine, many don't), but it does matter to some degree. Williams & Connolly is just one example. And don't forget that the median NYU student will be a client someday - their perception at OCI locks in what they think about firms for years to come. Outsized profits are unlikely to sway that view, especially if they know how those profits came about.

Which brings me to my next point: firms like K&E massively inflate their PPEP with large NEP ranks and sweatshop mentalities. K&E has $600k+ more RPL, which I'm sure has nothing to do with higher billing rates (roughly commensurate with value in the market/preftige) and everything to do with longer hours and high-billing NEPs pushing the average up. There are other "cash is king" metrics that are also just as, if not more important than PPP, gross revenue, and total profits. Look no further than plaintiff-side firms with partners raking in cash from contingency fee arrangements to see that point.

I'm not saying K&E's profits aren't impressive compared to Cleary. And I'm not saying K&E is a bad firm. I'm just saying that big PPP numbers for a few years does not don the crown of top preftige. Perceptions matter, and you can't just point to a few financial data points to refute that.

Even if prestige did matter it's not like Cleary gets to share the perks. As someone who worked in finance before law school, I've heard of firms like Skadden, DPW, Kirkland, Cravath, Latham etc., and until OCI I thought Cleary was a pokemon, one that potentially evolves into Clefairy.

I mean, I have heard of Goldman and JP Morgan and Blackrock but none of the hedge funds that my friends in finance seem to think are the best. The perception of the outsider is bound to be skewed and ultimately not that helpful because the people at the finance shops making decisions about who to hire likely are more sophisticated about how to select a firm than your average trader or VP. Although now that I say that out loud, they're probably just as dumb....

All of your arguments would be plausible if the boomer firms were actually profitable.

[Anonymous User]

.
Compared to firms who also heavily draw from their target schools they are. How many candidates do you think would pick Cleary over CSM/S&C/DPW. Top students go to wachtell/DC lit or clerk, good students go to a top ranked white shoe, and firms like cleary are left with a flock of median students at HLS/CLS/NYU who are indistinguishable from their T50 median peers.

Not sure where you are getting this low quality information from. Cleary mostly draws from above median even from CLS and NYU.

Why do you think HLS median students are indistinguishable from T50 median? Literally no biglaw firms agree with you. and given that Florida State or Indiana medians largely don’t really work in major market biglaw, what’s your frame of reference there?

Sounds like you’re overestimating the importance of grades and may be detached from reality. Raw intellectual horsepower + effort + common sense is what drives performance in my practice group. Sometimes top performers were CLS Kent or HLS magna, but most of the time they’re people who didn’t like law school as much as you probably did.

Another anon here. HLS median students are obviously distinguishable from T50 median. That being said, I can't comment anything about Cleary drawing above median folks from CLS and NYU. Do you have access to data?

Because all number driven schools admit people based on ugpa+lsat only and they don't mean shit. Is an ASU 4.0 dance major HLS student smarter than a 3.3 MIT physics major?

As an HLS grad, I confirm there most likely isn't anyone at HLS that majored in dance at a state university. Never seen anybody similar. Most people majored in econ, math, finance, government, philosophy, etc. Even if there is such an individual, to the extent such person had the right credentials to get admitted to HLS, we cannot know for sure that the MIT physics major is necessarily smarter either.

What credentials? college GPA or LSAT as if that's not the only thing HLS cares about? As an HLS student who studied quant finance at a top college, HLS students are at least a notch or two dumber overall than my college classmates. Some of the most mediocre students from my hometown in Ohio make it into HLS. This is not to say that HLS doesn't have some smart people at the top but as a whole student body it is an insult to MIT and I hope you are trolling to compare HLS to MIT physics.

Yes I'm totally sure the "most mediocre students" from your hometown make it into HLS. That seems likely.

Ehh… 2/3 of the HLS students are those who couldn’t come close to sniffing an ivy for undergrad or any other grad program for that matter. It’s certainly not Harvard extension but it’s particularly a selective or prestigious school, either.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure where you are getting this low quality information from. Cleary mostly draws from above median even from CLS and NYU.

Why do you think HLS median students are indistinguishable from T50 median? Literally no biglaw firms agree with you. and given that Florida State or Indiana medians largely don’t really work in major market biglaw, what’s your frame of reference there?

Sounds like you’re overestimating the importance of grades and may be detached from reality. Raw intellectual horsepower + effort + common sense is what drives performance in my practice group. Sometimes top performers were CLS Kent or HLS magna, but most of the time they’re people who didn’t like law school as much as you probably did.

Another anon here. HLS median students are obviously distinguishable from T50 median. That being said, I can't comment anything about Cleary drawing above median folks from CLS and NYU. Do you have access to data?

Because all number driven schools admit people based on ugpa+lsat only and they don't mean shit. Is an ASU 4.0 dance major HLS student smarter than a 3.3 MIT physics major?

As an HLS grad, I confirm there most likely isn't anyone at HLS that majored in dance at a state university. Never seen anybody similar. Most people majored in econ, math, finance, government, philosophy, etc. Even if there is such an individual, to the extent such person had the right credentials to get admitted to HLS, we cannot know for sure that the MIT physics major is necessarily smarter either.

What credentials? college GPA or LSAT as if that's not the only thing HLS cares about? As an HLS student who studied quant finance at a top college, HLS students are at least a notch or two dumber overall than my college classmates. Some of the most mediocre students from my hometown in Ohio make it into HLS. This is not to say that HLS doesn't have some smart people at the top but as a whole student body it is an insult to MIT and I hope you are trolling to compare HLS to MIT physics.

Yes I'm totally sure the "most mediocre students" from your hometown make it into HLS. That seems likely.

Ehh… 2/3 of the HLS students are those who couldn’t come close to sniffing an ivy for undergrad or any other grad program for that matter. It’s certainly not Harvard extension but it’s particularly a selective or prestigious school, either.

but what about a whole bunch of those who went to Ivy schools for undergrad or prestigious grad programs but couldn't come close to sniffing HLS?? Are they supposed to be smart or dumb?

[Res Ipsa Loquitter]

A lot of these posts are really, really off base. They purport to reflect elite perspectives but clearly are written by folks who are anything but.

Most HLS students could not have obtained admission to an Ivy undergrad. At the same time, most Harvard College students couldn’t swing a 173 or 174 if their lives depended on it, even if daddy hired an army of tutors. Apples and oranges.

As for the kid saying he never heard of certain firms while he was a banking analyst — who cares? Law firms operate in a highly discreet manner. They don’t make front page news for crashing the economy or stealing from Stormy Daniels. It totally makes sense that 22 year old kids — yes, even our highly sophisticated 22 year old friends in financial services — would not have heard of most top biglaw firms.

As for what is elite or not elite, all we can say for sure is that most TLS posters are not. For the wealthiest Americans, Michigan is a top school. Why? Not totally clear, it’s just a network effect. I think Michigan sucks. But it has an important place in elite American culture. As does Penn — which is perhaps the undergrad of choice for America’s ultra rich.

[Anonymous User]

Most HLS students could not have obtained admission to an Ivy undergrad. At the same time, most Harvard College students couldn’t swing a 173 or 174 if their lives depended on it, even if daddy hired an army of tutors. Apples and oranges.

I don't intend to get into this immature debate in this thread about undergrad prestige, law firm prestige and all that bull shit. But I just want to point out your error. Quite a huge chunk (probably around 1/3) of HLS students went to elite colleges (ivy and Stanford, MIT, etc) for undergrad. They were more represented than any other types of colleges (lac, private, state, overseas). Nobody honestly cares about the prestige of your undergrad once you are in law school because people realize that law school grades have nothing to do with where you went for undergrad.