Top Law Schools

1L at T20. Fall grades came in placing me considerably below median (closer to 25th percentile). I was recently accepted into one of the more selective of these (http://pandawhale.com/post/9699/top-10- ... pt-htmlcss) for the summer. I will have ~20k in debt by the end of the semester, and would graduate with ~80k in debt if I stuck through the remaining 2 years. I am not Biglaw or bust, but I am not willing to work biglaw hours for the same salary I can get taking a programming course. Should I withdraw from law school at the end of the academic year, or should I stick it out?

(A bit of background: I did some coding while working data entry last summer and enjoyed it. I am unsure whether I will enjoy practicing law or not. I enjoy studying law, but it seems as though I am either doing it wrong, or I am not good at it).

Honestly, I say code. You know you enjoy it, and the job prospects are probably a lot better, with less debt. Unless you really really want to be a lawyer because you think it would be enjoyable, I say drop.

take a few days and decide... but since you applied to this second school, that means and tells a lot.... and my vote goes with the drop and run

As a side note, if I drop then decide to come back to law school after a year (school auto-admits withdrawls up to a year), how much of a black mark would it count on my resume?

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The website is just a list of the schools. If you click through to the sites, the "scamminess" of the websites drop down considerably.

Whoever said job prospects as a coder are a lot better clearly knows nothing about the tech industry. Legit rails developers with CS degrees from Berkeley/MIT can no doubt make $125k out of undergrad. That does not describe OP.

Better solution: learn to code concurrent with law school and convince a firm to let you practice IP. I know it can be done because it's exactly what I did.

As someone in the field, you may have heard about devbootcamp. They brag that they placed 90% of their students in 80k jobs within 2 months. Does that sound implausible?

ConsideringChoices wrote:As someone in the field, you may have heard about devbootcamp. They brag that they placed 90% of their students in 80k jobs within 2 months. Does that sound implausible?

Yes.

ConsideringChoices wrote:As someone in the field, you may have heard about devbootcamp. They brag that they placed 90% of their students in 80k jobs within 2 months. Does that sound implausible?

It sounds very unlikely. Mastering rails takes a really long time and, thanks to Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and thousands of overvalued rails-based startups, the market is incredibly saturated. 90% at 80k might be true, but what if those 90% were already well-versed before they got there?

Now, I love coding and you should absolutely find a way to continue it. But nothing is more in line with coding culture than being self-taught. Also, did I mention law firms dig it? PM for more.

FF55 wrote:

ConsideringChoices wrote:As someone in the field, you may have heard about devbootcamp. They brag that they placed 90% of their students in 80k jobs within 2 months. Does that sound implausible?

It sounds very unlikely. Mastering rails takes a really long time and, thanks to Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and thousands of overvalued rails-based startups, the market is incredibly saturated. 90% at 80k might be true, but what if those 90% were already well-versed before they got there?

Now, I love coding and you should absolutely find a way to continue it. But nothing is more in line with coding culture than being self-taught. Also, did I mention law firms dig it? PM for more.

>implying the job market for computer related jobs is saturated

lmao

ConsideringChoices wrote:As someone in the field, you may have heard about devbootcamp. They brag that they placed 90% of their students in 80k jobs within 2 months. Does that sound implausible?

Interesting. I guess there are still people who entered law school without learning about the pervasive misleading overstatements in job statistics. Even while lurking on TLS.

Yes, it sounds suspicious. There are probably fewer than two dozen four year undergrad degree programs of any kind that can legitimately claim employment numbers like that. The notion that a random guy with no tech background could simply drop 12k at one of these places, spend 9 weeks learning how to code without gaining any sort of accreditation, certificate, degree, etc. and then have job prospects like a CalTech grad? Highly implausible.

redgreenpaper wrote:>implying the job market for computer related jobs is saturated

lmao

>Implying that a 9 week class on how to program in one particular language opens the job market for all "computer related jobs."

lmao.

If OP has an EE, CS, or related degree from a reputable school, that's one thing. Given that he was doing "data entry" before school, I'm going to guess he doesn't.

There is demand for certain skills. They are not all interchangeable. Especially without a related bachelors.

KidStuddi wrote: If OP has an EE, CS, or related degree from a reputable school, that's one thing. Given that he was doing "data entry" before school, I'm going to guess he doesn't.

There is demand for certain skills. They are not all interchangeable. Especially without a related bachelors.

This. The more competitive programming jobs almost always require a related bachelors and/or an impressive portfolio. Entry level jobs ( good ones anyways ) are still quite competitive and not having a killer GPA with nice credentials will hurt you. With that said, there are tons of mediocre coding jobs out there and if you're okay with that then by all means go for it. Its a decent salary for a really good lifestyle.

Try http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/t ... m+Overview

If you enjoy those competitions, you'll probably enjoy coding professionally.

I like to encourage everyone to drop out because law school is generally a bad idea. But the answer is never drop out and rush into another education program. It's drop out and get a job. At some point down the line get some other training but at this point you clearly don't know what you want and jumping from one program to another won't make you any more certain or employable or happier.

Just to be clear, these guys are a bit more legit than you are putting them out to be http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-bo ... y-success/. Techcrunch is a pretty reliable independent source.

KidStuddi wrote:

ConsideringChoices wrote:As someone in the field, you may have heard about devbootcamp. They brag that they placed 90% of their students in 80k jobs within 2 months. Does that sound implausible?

Interesting. I guess there are still people who entered law school without learning about the pervasive misleading overstatements in job statistics. Even while lurking on TLS.

Yes, it sounds suspicious. There are probably fewer than two dozen four year undergrad degree programs of any kind that can legitimately claim employment numbers like that. The notion that a random guy with no tech background could simply drop 12k at one of these places, spend 9 weeks learning how to code without gaining any sort of accreditation, certificate, degree, etc. and then have job prospects like a CalTech grad? Highly implausible.

redgreenpaper wrote:>implying the job market for computer related jobs is saturated

lmao

>Implying that a 9 week class on how to program in one particular language opens the job market for all "computer related jobs."

lmao.

If OP has an EE, CS, or related degree from a reputable school, that's one thing. Given that he was doing "data entry" before school, I'm going to guess he doesn't.

There is demand for certain skills. They are not all interchangeable. Especially without a related bachelors.

srs question though, do you beleive that computer related jobs are running out?

ConsideringChoices wrote:Just to be clear, these guys are a bit more legit than you are putting them out to be http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-bo ... y-success/. Techcrunch is a pretty reliable independent source.

Whether they're legit or not is beside the point. I've known people who hop from one grad program to another before. They're never happy, whatever was unsatisfying about the first carries over into the second. WITHOUT EXCEPTION. The people who drop out and are happy are those who find jobs, good or minimum wage or anywhere in between, and focus on finding a life and an identity outside of an academic program.

It's a ten week program. Hardly "Grad School". For someone with an unmarketable bachelor's this seems like the best move for me.

Continuing law-school near the bottom of your class is a bad idea. You probably have a very low chance of being meaningfully employed.

Taking a 10 week programming course, without a related bachelors or significant work experience, is also a bad idea. Here are the purported hiring statistics from one of the co-founders of Dev BootCamp.



Jesse Farmer, Co-founder, Dev Bootcamp

We see no signs of the market for DBC graduates slowing, but I can't say with certainty what it will look like a year from now. What if Groupon goes out of business?

This is why most of what we teach is applicable to any programming language and job. The biggest risk in hiring junior engineers is that they won't learn fast enough, so it will take too much staff time to get them up speed.

This is exactly the risk Dev Bootcamp removes for companies that hire through us, and we work closely with those companies to make sure the skills we teach -- both hard and soft -- remain relevant to them.

We think there will always be jobs for a hungry junior engineer with a proven capability to learn quickly and communicate well. I'd invite you to ask alternatives about their outcomes and compare openly.

Here are ours!

Spring Stats
8 weeks
20 students
17 looking for jobs, 16 hired

Summer Stats
10 weeks
40 students
30 looking for jobs, 29 hired (so far)

Edit: This number was originally 28.

Fall Stats
10 weeks
54 students
The rest TBD

Source http://www.quora.com/Dev-Bootcamp/How-m ... ummer-2012