Penn Students Taking Questions Forum

PennBull · Post by **PennBull** » Sat Feb 14, 2015 12:35 pm

narwhalsrfun wrote:Hi guys, this thread is great. Does anyone know how difficult it is to get a federal clerkship at Penn or how many SCOTUS clerks Penn has sent? I love Penn because of a huge Philly connection and work experience there but am worried that it seems to send fewer clerks than the other CCN and MVP schools I've been admitted to.

a little bit of it is self-selection since a lot of folks just go straight into the private sector but it's still in the same competitive tier as the other schools

picking the "right" school is like 2% of the battle in getting a fed clerkship; you're going to need to do a lot of the work once you actually, you know, go to school

also if you're caring about SCOTUS clerks in making a school choice then bully for you but that probably shouldn't be on your radar; if you're aiming for a SCOTUS clerkship then you might want to aim higher

Penn sent a guy like a couple years ago to SCOTUS tho so yay good for us

PennBull · Post by **PennBull** » Sat Feb 14, 2015 12:35 pm

Redynsje wrote:Sure thing. I am 7 years out of undergrad. I started a family first (coming into 1L with three small kids) and now I'm diving into my career. I am very committed to returning to MN after school and have a tentative plan of focusing on business or tax law.

shit my bad dude I totally forgot you responded to this; I'll write a bit more in response to you later

notgreat · Post by **notgreat** » Sat Feb 14, 2015 12:46 pm

Like Pennbull said we sent a couple of bros to SCOTUS in the last few years. Your chances of a SCOTUS clerkship are really slim no matter where you go, so picking a school based on that factor probably is a mistake. But, like PB said, if you really do care you probably should aim higher. My guess is that you would have to be at the very top of your class here (like top 1-2%?), which is never something you can count on or even have confidence in.

But we do pretty well with clerkships in general. I think we have sent from around 8-12% to A3 clerkships over the last few years. And my guess is that at least half the class has no interest in clerking. Plus, we routinely send people to the Delaware Chancery and Delaware Supreme Court, which are both legit.

You should come here, regardless, because other than the weather, it is an awesome school and a fun town. And the weather sucks everywhere other than S and B anyway.

Edit: We also have a third bro that is a Bristow Fellow, which is a just a notch below a SCOTUS clerkship in my understanding. And IIRC can be a feeder to SCOTUS clerkships.

Lions1913 · Post by **Lions1913** » Sat Feb 14, 2015 2:40 pm

ymmv · Post by **ymmv** » Sat Feb 14, 2015 2:43 pm

Lions1913 wrote:The Wharton certificate programs seem great. Can someone speak to the difficulty of the classes, especially for those without a business background?

Pretty trivial until the very last segment of the course. Which is also probably the only part of the course you'll have to do any studying for.

Penn16 · Post by **Penn16** » Sat Feb 14, 2015 6:37 pm

ymmv wrote:
Lions1913 wrote:The Wharton certificate programs seem great. Can someone speak to the difficulty of the classes, especially for those without a business background?
Pretty trivial until the very last segment of the course. Which is also probably the only part of the course you'll have to do any studying for.

ymmv's response refers to the Wharton cert in management, which as he said, is pretty basic. The end part of the course is accounting and slightly more technical, which is where people may have more trouble, but it's not worth worrying much. One thing to be aware of, though, is that the class counts as two of the 4 you're allowed to take outside the law school that still count towards your JD. So if you wanted to max out taking 4 classes outside the law school, don't do the mgmt. cert as it'll limit you to only 2 more classes. Otherwise, it's by far the easiest way to get something legit-sounding from Wharton on your resume.

There is also a Wharton cert in business econ and public policy which takes up all 4 courses outside the law school that still count towards your JD. I'm not doing it so I can't speak to the quality of the classes offered, but from what I understand it's difficult because you don't get that much choice for what you take. Basically, Wharton tells the law school what classes have open seats after the MBAs all register and which ones among those they're willing to count for the cert, and then you get to choose among those. Ive also heard that they tend to be fairly quantitative classes, so if you're not a math person, that may not be the right path, but I'm not entirely sure how true that is.

DiniMae · Post by **DiniMae** » Sun Feb 15, 2015 9:22 am

Thanks for taking questions. Would anyone soeak to the likelihood of being accepted into the 3 year JD/MBA as a 1L? I know it's a small cohort and I assume that most interested people apply as a 0L. Is it safe to assume that for the 3 or 4 year program, it helps already being at Penn Law eventhough you won't have grades yet (deadline is Oct)?

ymmv · Post by **ymmv** » Sun Feb 15, 2015 10:37 am

DiniMae wrote:Thanks for taking questions. Would anyone soeak to the likelihood of being accepted into the 3 year JD/MBA as a 1L? I know it's a small cohort and I assume that most interested people apply as a 0L. Is it safe to assume that for the 3 or 4 year program, it helps already being at Penn Law eventhough you won't have grades yet (deadline is Oct)?

IDK if there's any data available on this, but anecdotally it might actually be easier to get into the MBA if you're already a 1L.

Why do you want both degrees though? That's an incredible amount of extra money without any clear benefit. If you're interested in finance or ibanking or whatever, why not just skip the JD and grab the MBA?

samoby · Post by **samoby** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 8:32 pm

ymmv wrote:
DiniMae wrote:Thanks for taking questions. Would anyone soeak to the likelihood of being accepted into the 3 year JD/MBA as a 1L? I know it's a small cohort and I assume that most interested people apply as a 0L. Is it safe to assume that for the 3 or 4 year program, it helps already being at Penn Law eventhough you won't have grades yet (deadline is Oct)?
IDK if there's any data available on this, but anecdotally it might actually be easier to get into the MBA if you're already a 1L.

Why do you want both degrees though? That's an incredible amount of extra money without any clear benefit. If you're interested in finance or ibanking or whatever, why not just skip the JD and grab the MBA?

Yeah, I don't know anything about how much easier it might be. At an info session, they definitely pushed work experience. I know of 2 (for sure) that got in from the 1L class this year, but I'm not sure how many applied. There may be more.

Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 2:32 am

Roughly what percentage of the class do you think could land NYC biglaw? I know the ABA stats, just wondering how far down in the class one can go without being too worried

Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 2:40 am

Also how common is it for people to do consulting/non legal stuff straight out of school

schmelling · Post by **schmelling** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 2:42 am

Post removed.

Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 3:49 am

schmelling wrote:
Mack.Hambleton wrote:Roughly what percentage of the class do you think could land NYC biglaw? I know the ABA stats, just wondering how far down in the class one can go without being too worried
can someone link these ABA stats too? sorry to hijack, just also curious about this.

https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/30 ... tisticspdf

BL+FC
Penn: 59.8 + 9.3 = 69.1%

schmelling · Post by **schmelling** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 3:55 am

Post removed.

Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 4:01 am

schmelling wrote:
Mack.Hambleton wrote:
schmelling wrote:
Mack.Hambleton wrote:Roughly what percentage of the class do you think could land NYC biglaw? I know the ABA stats, just wondering how far down in the class one can go without being too worried
can someone link these ABA stats too? sorry to hijack, just also curious about this.
https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/30 ... tisticspdf

BL+FC
Penn: 59.8 + 9.3 = 69.1%
thanks, mack.

https://www.law.upenn.edu/careers/emplo ... istics.php

this is good too, mostly same data as ABA but includes median salaries

Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 3:09 am

Bump

Anyone have penns oci success data

Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 3:14 am

Also recommendations for highrises with 1brs in the 1500-2k range (will be splitting rent)

do most 1Ls live in university city area?

Worth bringing my car?

Clearly · Post by **Clearly** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 3:34 am

Mack.Hambleton wrote:Also recommendations for highrises with 1brs in the 1500-2k range (will be splitting rent)

do most 1Ls live in university city area?

Worth bringing my car?

I'd leave the car home personally. Yeah I'd say the majority are in university city, but not by a wide margin, center city is quite popular too. If you want a highrise you're looking at center city. I'm not the expert on highrises, but check out 2400 chestnut, and Evo.

Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 4:05 am

Anyone know how successful penn is with Chicago and TX markets? According to penns website only about 2% of students end up in both of those markets lol.

No13baby · Post by **No13baby** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 11:49 am

Mack.Hambleton wrote:Anyone know how successful penn is with Chicago and TX markets? According to penns website only about 2% of students end up in both of those markets lol.

Penn does well in TX. Everyone I know in my class (3L) who wanted TX got it, including one who had never been there before. I think the low number is due to self-selection, not lack of employability.

Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 12:41 pm

Yeah I figured it was self selection for the most part

Trig · Post by **Trig** » Mon Apr 06, 2015 9:01 am

Does anyone have any outlines, no matter how old, for Abrams Law and Econ course?

Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Wed Apr 08, 2015 12:24 am

anyone who knows a lot about housing pls pm me

Flokkness · Post by **Flokkness** » Mon Apr 13, 2015 12:50 pm

Mack.Hambleton wrote:anyone who knows a lot about housing pls pm me

Would like to piggyback on this as well.