Harvard Student(s) Answering Your Questions Forum

[mathrev]

I hear your first semester is miserable. I also know of more and more people getting no offered. True?

Oh the person that i know that struck out is amazingly social. In fact, he had people come up to him and tell him that he will be successful. Dont get it. #don'tapplytoharvardLaw

This is pretty pathetic trolling.

Just having fun. But what I say is true. Life at Harvard sounds pretty shitty and now that more and more are getting no offered is quite a bad trend.

[ph14]

I hear your first semester is miserable. I also know of more and more people getting no offered. True?

Oh the person that i know that struck out is amazingly social. In fact, he had people come up to him and tell him that he will be successful. Dont get it. #don'tapplytoharvardLaw

This is pretty pathetic trolling.

Just having fun. But what I say is true. Life at Harvard sounds pretty shitty and now that more and more are getting no offered is quite a bad trend.

(1) Most of the firms HLS people go to are firms that give 90%+ offers, if not 100% offers.
(2) Guess what, firms don't only care that someone "is amazingly social." Firms are a business and generally they care most about grades.
(3) You don't even attend HLS so your opinion that "Life at Harvard sounds pretty shitty" is pretty worthless.
(4) Most of your complaints sound like they're against law school in generally, not HLS in particular, which is probably insulated a bit from the worst parts of law school (the poor economy, competitiveness, etc.).

[AllTheLawz]

I personally know 2 people who struck out and they're nice, good people. So, no.

Ouch, sorry to hear that. Not to pry or anything, but what characteristic(s) (if any) would you say those and others who've struck out share?

Bad luck.

I am going to push back on this a little bit. All the people I know of who struck out (or were at serious risk of striking out) had some combination of more than one of these factors: "unconventional" personality, mediocre grades, a resume that screamed public interest/no understanding or interest in business, bad bidding. One of these factors alone can be easily overcome but when you have more than one things start getting really dicey unless you have something else strongly in your favor.

[AllTheLawz]

I hear your first semester is miserable. I also know of more and more people getting no offered. True?

Oh the person that i know that struck out is amazingly social. In fact, he had people come up to him and tell him that he will be successful. Dont get it. #don'tapplytoharvardLaw

This is pretty pathetic trolling.

Just having fun. But what I say is true. Life at Harvard sounds pretty shitty and now that more and more are getting no offered is quite a bad trend.

Lol life at HLS is whatever you want it to be. I had a relatively gunner-free section and since I was at HLS I felt no real pressure to work on Saturdays. Went out at least twice a week except the 3 or 4 weeks before finals when I cut back. I have no clue what you are even talking about regarding more and more people getting no offered.

[bedefan]

I hear your first semester is miserable. I also know of more and more people getting no offered. True?

Oh the person that i know that struck out is amazingly social. In fact, he had people come up to him and tell him that he will be successful. Dont get it. #don'tapplytoharvardLaw

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but... to be honest I loved my first semester at HLS. Of all my post-secondary education (college, grad school, now law school), 1st semester at HLS was probably the semester I most enjoyed. Or at least it was up there. Just had this great feeling of being where I wanted to be, learning what I most wanted to learn, being on the path to do what I wanted to do. I mostly didn't work on the weekends or after 6 pm, until the last few weeks of the semester that is. (My grades turned out fine.) And Cambridge is gorgeous in the fall.

I don't know... I'm not bitter at all about having come here, or about becoming a lawyer, or anything like that. I'm busy and tired a lot, but also very grateful and very happy.

PS: I came in knowing I didn't want to make much money, and I still don't want to make much money. I think not desiring money will help you be happy wherever you go, HLS included. I know that's heresy here at TLS, but it's true. Pretty sure there's a reason all the major religions warn you about money.

[Blessedassurance]

Just having fun. But what I say is true. Life at Harvard sounds pretty shitty...

Lol at life at Harvard being shitty...you've been watching too much Paper Chase, man. It's pretty great actually.

[bedefan]

P.S: How is a 100k -200k income range be considered to be middle class?? I don't know maybe that's the way it is in NYC?

well basically you need to work backwards. you can roughly afford a house that is 3x ur income. good luck finding a house anywhere close to NYC that costs 300k. this is similar for most metropolitan areas.

by middle class i basically mean living in a suburb of a major metro, having a house with a yard, a car, two kids, a dog, etc. to achieve that in today's society you basically need 100k+.

Don't listen to this. It's crazy law student groupthink about why you must make 100k+ or you won't survive!!!! It's feeds into the panic that drives many people who don't actually match well with BigLaw into BigLaw.

First off, 300k for the burbs is just too high for most metro areas. Maybe if by "most metropolitan areas" you mean only NY, San Fran, Boston, maybe DC, maybe LA. But that isn't most metropolitan areas. Think Texas or the Midwest (Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, Twin Cities, Cleveland) and 250k will get you a nice house. Not just a good house, a nice one.

Next off, you can arrive at an affordable mortgage by taking your monthly payment and multiplying it by 4 -- the result being the income you'd need to comfortably pay off the mortgage. Let's do some back of the envelopes here and take a 250k mortgage. Set the interest rate at 6% for 30 yrs -- a little high in today's market. Monthly payments will be about $1499, meaning you'd need to make $5996/mo. to pay that mortgage off comfortably. And stretched over a year, that comes to about a $72k annual salary.

Seventy-two thousand dollars! That's midlaw.

This is not the bottles and models lifestyle, but the comment above was about a middle class lifestyle -- 2 kids, a dog, a yard, a house in the burbs, a car. If you're living in the great majority of the country, 72k will get you there comfortably.

So, relax. You do not need to do BigLaw to have a middle class lifestyle (unless I suppose you're dead set on living in one of the three or four most expensive cities in America). And as somebody pointed out, this is assuming a single income... Which will not be most families.

[094320]

..

[mathrev]

I personally know 2 people who struck out and they're nice, good people. So, no.

Ouch, sorry to hear that. Not to pry or anything, but what characteristic(s) (if any) would you say those and others who've struck out share?

I don't know enough of the details of people's EIP cycles and large enough sample sizes to really say.


Also, pretty sure we recovered from the crash better than most schools. So it's not more and more people getting no-offered...it's less and less, but not back to pre-crash levels.

Y'all can speak for yourself.

I'm in this for the models & bottles, hookers & blow.

What??

What did you tell JR when he asked you the "why law school?" question?

What do you say in OCI when they ask you "why law"? (Especially if you're motivation is mainly about money and stability?)

I gave them a serious answer. I don't repeat it here, though, cuz it'd out me.

Models and bottles in law? Since when? Maybe if you work for Wachtell...

Go into business. That's where you have a shot at the real models & bottles and you don't have to kiss a banker's ass every time you are involved in a transaction. Do PE, HF, or banking. If you want to torment yourself, go into consulting. But for the love of gawd, don't do law for models & bottles lol.

[mathrev]

.

[mathrev]

.

[094320]

..

[bedefan]

mathrev,

Comments like yours almost make me question the altogether positive impression I have of YLS students. But... Nah. Yale's a great school and YLS has plenty of great people. And you're probably just having a bad day.

But if you find yourself doing this kind of stuff a lot--trolling etc--you might want to stop and consider why you want to make others feel bad about themselves or about their choices. It's not a healthy thing to spend your time doing.

[Doorkeeper]

mathrev goes to YLS?

LOL

[Blessedassurance]

Yup, just YLS nerd rage, nothing more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBeAjISBb2U

[unc0mm0n1]

mathrev goes to YLS?

LOL

I still don't understand why so many people are feeding him. It was clear he was a troll in his first 2 posts. Check out his post history, he's nothing but a s**t-starter.

[mathrev]

mathrev,

Comments like yours almost make me question the altogether positive impression I have of YLS students. But... Nah. Yale's a great school and YLS has plenty of great people. And you're probably just having a bad day.

But if you find yourself doing this kind of stuff a lot--trolling etc--you might want to stop and consider why you want to make others feel bad about themselves or about their choices. It's not a healthy thing to spend your time doing.

I was kidding around. I said in my previous post that it's all in fun. I redacted the posts which you might have found offensive. For the record, I chose SLS.

[roranoa]

Did any of you have trouble studying at 1L after a long hiatus of NOT studying? (I'm asking assuming there are a lot of students here with WE)

And is there anyone who had trouble studying during 1L because it was just plain hard? For example, having a hard time understanding the text (material), taking too long to do assignments and things like that.

Any experiences you can share would be very helpful!

[delusional]

Did any of you have trouble studying at 1L after a long hiatus of NOT studying? (I'm asking assuming there are a lot of students here with WE)

And is there anyone who had trouble studying during 1L because it was just plain hard? For example, having a hard time understanding the text (material), taking too long to do assignments and things like that.

Any experiences you can share would be very helpful!

I came in 1L without having studied anything in a long time, except for the LSAT. I was very concerned about it, but I don't think putting in the hours or whatever was a problem. The most important thing to remember is that you're not studying to get the information - you're studying to apply the information. So until you've taken the doctrines that you're learning and tried them out on a few hypos, you won't really know what they are. And I don't think anyone will have experience studying that, except perhaps LLMs.

[chickenalfredo]

looking for some advice on 1l electives. PM me if you dont mind answering a few questions

[Blessedassurance]

looking for some advice on 1l electives. PM me if you dont mind answering a few questions

Can anyone recommend useful classes?

[ph14]

looking for some advice on 1l electives. PM me if you dont mind answering a few questions

Can anyone recommend useful classes?

Seminars, so you can get to know a professor and have someone you that can be a reference or write letters of recommendation. Classes with professors you want to be in a class with.

[PriOSky]

.

[delusional]

What are some easy (i.e. high proportion of H's, no LP given, no cold-calling, etc.) spring electives that people would recommend?

I wouldn't recommend choosing a course on that basis. You should choose one that interests you because that will seem easier to you and you'll also get more out of it.
That said, my impression is that the Law and <soft sciences> courses, as well as the Law and <progressive causes> courses are probably easiest.

[Mista Bojangles]

Any thoughts on the Negotiation Workshop elective with Bordone?