Top Law Schools

Any help to tip the scale would be appreciated.

Hot weather or cold weather?

How do you feel about being represented by a tree?

Do you like deep shades of red?

Stanford. I hate to go by rankings but it's ranked above Harvard for a reason. My sister goes there for undergrad and the campus is amazing. You have all the advantages that come with going to school on the west coast (nicer weather, nicer people, change of scenery if you're from NY like me) with the flexibility to get a great job anywhere in the country when you graduate.

Do you have a shot at making LR at Stanford? I think you do.

Stanford is smaller. This will help.

Harvard is in a better part of the country (IMO) and will always have better name recognition.

transfer2012 wrote:Stanford. I hate to go by rankings but it's ranked above Harvard for a reason. My sister goes there for undergrad and the campus is amazing. You have all the advantages that come with going to school on the west coast (nicer weather, nicer people, change of scenery if you're from NY like me) with the flexibility to get a great job anywhere in the country when you graduate.

When has Stanford been ranked higher than Harvard?

SuichiKurama wrote:

transfer2012 wrote:Stanford. I hate to go by rankings but it's ranked above Harvard for a reason. My sister goes there for undergrad and the campus is amazing. You have all the advantages that come with going to school on the west coast (nicer weather, nicer people, change of scenery if you're from NY like me) with the flexibility to get a great job anywhere in the country when you graduate.

When has Stanford been ranked higher than Harvard?

More often than not in the last ten years or so. This website has historical rankings:

http://www.prelawhandbook.com/law_schoo ... 00_present

(Though, rankings are among the least important considerations in OP's situation.)

Neither—go to Florida Coastal. I hate to go by rankings but it's ranked above Harvard and Stanford for a reason. My sister goes there for beauty school and the campus is amazing. You have all the advantages that come with going to school in Florida: America's Wang, with the flexibility to get a great job anywhere in the country that grows corn when you graduate.

spondee wrote:

SuichiKurama wrote:

transfer2012 wrote:Stanford. I hate to go by rankings but it's ranked above Harvard for a reason. My sister goes there for undergrad and the campus is amazing. You have all the advantages that come with going to school on the west coast (nicer weather, nicer people, change of scenery if you're from NY like me) with the flexibility to get a great job anywhere in the country when you graduate.

When has Stanford been ranked higher than Harvard?

More often than not in the last ten years or so. This website has historical rankings:

http://www.prelawhandbook.com/law_schoo ... 00_present

(Though, rankings are among the least important considerations in OP's situation.)

But it's lawyer/judge and peer assessment scores have always been the same or lower (also found in US News). Plus Harvard has always done better with clerkships and at elite firm placement.

SuichiKurama wrote:

spondee wrote:

SuichiKurama wrote:

transfer2012 wrote:Stanford. I hate to go by rankings but it's ranked above Harvard for a reason. My sister goes there for undergrad and the campus is amazing. You have all the advantages that come with going to school on the west coast (nicer weather, nicer people, change of scenery if you're from NY like me) with the flexibility to get a great job anywhere in the country when you graduate.

When has Stanford been ranked higher than Harvard?

More often than not in the last ten years or so. This website has historical rankings:

http://www.prelawhandbook.com/law_schoo ... 00_present

(Though, rankings are among the least important considerations in OP's situation.)

But it's lawyer/judge and peer assessment scores have always been the same or lower (also found in US News). Plus Harvard has always done better with clerkships and at elite firm placement.

Oh, are you a Kurama alt?

arstech wrote:Neither—go to Florida Coastal. I hate to go by rankings but it's ranked above Harvard and Stanford for a reason. My sister goes there for beauty school and the campus is amazing. You have all the advantages that come with going to school in Florida: America's Wang, with the flexibility to get a great job anywhere in the country that grows corn when you graduate.

175

Oh, are you a Kurama alt?

We've got a bonafide Sherlock Holmes here.

SuichiKurama wrote:

Oh, are you a Kurama alt?

We've got a bonafide Sherlock Holmes here.

Yeah, didn't read the name the first time. Thought you were someone asking a real question. If I had read it, then of course I would have suspected it was you, looking to start the same dumb argument for the 100th time.

spondee wrote:

SuichiKurama wrote:

Oh, are you a Kurama alt?

We've got a bonafide Sherlock Holmes here.

Yeah, didn't read the name the first time. Thought you were someone asking a real question. If I had read it, then of course I would have suspected it was you, looking to start the same dumb argument for the 100th time.

LOL this website is filled with hilarious people! By the way I believe it was the post that I responded to that claimed one of the schools was stronger than the other HTH.

Stanford, no question. Unless you have family or something near HLS.

if you are going to rely on rankings to make your argument... the latest USNWR rankings go like this:

YH ... SC

OP should be making the decision based on what he wants to do and specific qualities of each school that he prefers.

It might've helped if you had given some sort of preferences as to your career, work environment, etc. I'll just say Stanford for now, given class sizes and chance for LR.

This thread is going places though.

43% of people who get accepted to Stanford go there.
67% of people who get accepted to Harvard go there.

Empirically, most people who have to make the call probably go with Harvard.
Edit: source: http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com/

Salted5 wrote:43% of people who get accepted to Stanford go there.
67% of people who get accepted to Harvard go there.

Empirically, most people who have to make the call probably go with Harvard.
Edit: source: http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com/

Hardly a representative sample. Plus, how do scholarships factor in to those decisions? Finally, that's for the initial entry to lawl skool, not transferring.

Salted5 wrote:43% of people who get accepted to Stanford go there.
67% of people who get accepted to Harvard go there.

Empirically, most people who have to make the call probably go with Harvard.
Edit: source: http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com/

This is a terrible statistic, given the difference in class sizes between Harvard and Stanford (and the elephant in the room, which is Yale, which has much higher yield rates and probably gets an equal number of people from Stanford and Harvard - skewing the numbers badly.)

Haribo wrote:

Salted5 wrote:43% of people who get accepted to Stanford go there.
67% of people who get accepted to Harvard go there.

Empirically, most people who have to make the call probably go with Harvard.
Edit: source: http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com/

This is a terrible statistic, given the difference in class sizes between Harvard and Stanford (and the elephant in the room, which is Yale, which has much higher yield rates and probably gets an equal number of people from Stanford and Harvard - skewing the numbers badly.)

I wish disco_barred was still handing out "Dumbest Comment of the Day" awards. Math fail.

arstech wrote:

Haribo wrote:

Salted5 wrote:43% of people who get accepted to Stanford go there.
67% of people who get accepted to Harvard go there.

Empirically, most people who have to make the call probably go with Harvard.
Edit: source: http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com/

This is a terrible statistic, given the difference in class sizes between Harvard and Stanford (and the elephant in the room, which is Yale, which has much higher yield rates and probably gets an equal number of people from Stanford and Harvard - skewing the numbers badly.)

I wish disco_barred was still handing out "Dumbest Comment of the Day" awards. Math fail.

Don't think they were supposed to add up to 100% arstech. They're two different pools. Unless the statistic is referring to candidates who were accepted into both schools of course...

Machine Spirit wrote:

arstech wrote:

Haribo wrote:

Salted5 wrote:43% of people who get accepted to Stanford go there.
67% of people who get accepted to Harvard go there.

Empirically, most people who have to make the call probably go with Harvard.
Edit: source: http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com/

This is a terrible statistic, given the difference in class sizes between Harvard and Stanford (and the elephant in the room, which is Yale, which has much higher yield rates and probably gets an equal number of people from Stanford and Harvard - skewing the numbers badly.)

I wish disco_barred was still handing out "Dumbest Comment of the Day" awards. Math fail.

Don't think they were supposed to add up to 100% arstech. They're two different pools. Unless the statistic is referring to candidates who were accepted into both schools of course...

its 110%....

Machine Spirit wrote:

arstech wrote:

Haribo wrote:

Salted5 wrote:43% of people who get accepted to Stanford go there.
67% of people who get accepted to Harvard go there.

Empirically, most people who have to make the call probably go with Harvard.
Edit: source: http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com/

This is a terrible statistic, given the difference in class sizes between Harvard and Stanford (and the elephant in the room, which is Yale, which has much higher yield rates and probably gets an equal number of people from Stanford and Harvard - skewing the numbers badly.)

I wish disco_barred was still handing out "Dumbest Comment of the Day" awards. Math fail.

Don't think they were supposed to add up to 100% arstech. They're two different pools. Unless the statistic is referring to candidates who were accepted into both schools of course...

I don't think that's the right kritik either, Machine Spirit.

The statistics quoted above are the yield percentages from each school. 43% of people who were accepted to Stanford matriculated at Stanford. 67% of people who were accepted at Harvard matriculated at Harvard. On the assumption that Salted didn't actually go through the entire database of lawschool numbers--compiling a list of those who were accepted at both Stanford and Harvard, and then crunching the numbers to see what percentages chose which of those two schools (In that case, major math-fail Salted.)--all Salted has proven is that Harvard has a higher yield than Stanford. This number doesn't help Sparkie at all.

Sparkie: have you visited both schools? If not, do you have the means/opportunity to do so? I often hear on these boards that "you'll know" whether you're a Harvard or Stanford person when you visit. Just a thought...

That said, there's absolutely no way you can fuck this one up. What a great decision to be agonizing over. Congrats!

Oh no, I was not criticizing the initial post. It is completely valid to note that Harvard has a higher yield. Moreover, most of the people who apply to one, apply to the other. It follows that Stanford is less desired. I agree with Salted's implications.

Yield for 1Ls is not really relevant. You're a transfer. You probably can't find yield information for transfers, but you should be looking at the opportunities to excel as a transfer at either school. From what I can tell, for the reasons I mentioned (small class size, LR shot), Stanford is better for transfers.