Indiana University - Bloomington students taking questions Forum

[Spoonmanners]

Isn't UCI still giving out half rides?

So the question is IU fully scholly vs. Irvine half? Or is it something else?

The non-accredited thing I wouldn't think would be an issue from a practical standpoint...

Not an issue from a practical standpoint?

Yes, I would have no issue studying for 3 years and paying out big money only to have the accreditation come up short. I guess I would be able to wipe my ass with the degree.

[Veritas]

Isn't UCI still giving out half rides?

So the question is IU fully scholly vs. Irvine half? Or is it something else?

The non-accredited thing I wouldn't think would be an issue from a practical standpoint...

ya, this is the question.

Even with a half ride, UCI is still $120k for three years. I'm visiting both before I make a final decision, though.

[Bankhead]

Isn't UCI still giving out half rides?

So the question is IU fully scholly vs. Irvine half? Or is it something else?

The non-accredited thing I wouldn't think would be an issue from a practical standpoint...

Not an issue from a practical standpoint?

Yes, I would have no issue studying for 3 years and paying out big money only to have the accreditation come up short. I guess I would be able to wipe my ass with the degree.

If you know anything about UCI you know that becoming accredited will not be a problem.

[Bankhead]

Isn't UCI still giving out half rides?

So the question is IU fully scholly vs. Irvine half? Or is it something else?

The non-accredited thing I wouldn't think would be an issue from a practical standpoint...

ya, this is the question.

Even with a half ride, UCI is still $120k for three years. I'm visiting both before I make a final decision, though.

And IU is the one you are leaning towards?

[Spoonmanners]

If you know anything about UCI you know that becoming accredited will not be a problem.

It's not even provisionally accredited as of yet. That's a hell of a risk to take. I'm not saying they won't get accredited, but if they hit any speed bumps onto accreditation, your law degree could be worthless for months or years. There's no lack of schools to apply to, so I didn't bother to even apply to schools that weren't accredited.

[Bankhead]

If you know anything about UCI you know that becoming accredited will not be a problem.

It's not even provisionally accredited as of yet. That's a hell of a risk to take. I'm not saying they won't get accredited, but if they hit any speed bumps onto accreditation, your law degree could be worthless for months or years. There's no lack of schools to apply to, so I didn't bother to even apply to schools that weren't accredited.

The other side of that argument is that UCI is essentially a loophole to gain admittance and tuition break into what is for all intents and purposes a T14 caliber (faculty and job prospects) education in a paridisal (don't you dare try to look that up in the dictionary) location.

One could argue then, that the risk of the school not gaining immediate accredation is less than the risk of going to a lesser quality school and coming out un-or-under employed.

[Spoonmanners]

If you know anything about UCI you know that becoming accredited will not be a problem.

It's not even provisionally accredited as of yet. That's a hell of a risk to take. I'm not saying they won't get accredited, but if they hit any speed bumps onto accreditation, your law degree could be worthless for months or years. There's no lack of schools to apply to, so I didn't bother to even apply to schools that weren't accredited.

The other side of that argument is that UCI is essentially a loophole to gain admittance and tuition break into what is for all intents and purposes a T14 caliber (faculty and job prospects) education in a paridisal (don't you dare try to look that up in the dictionary) location.

One could argue then, that the risk of the school not gaining immediate accredation is less than the risk of going to a lesser quality school and coming out un-or-under employed.

I disagree. It could theoretically be a top 14 school, based on a very limited number of factors that apply to the 60 students that have attended the school. Faculty includes Dean (The Big Chem) and everyone else who works there, which seems like it includes anyone who does anything. It's a good student to faculty ratio, considering there is only one year of students in there, but I'd have issue with dealing with general growing pains in new schools. Some, if not most, of these teachers have never taught before. Who knows if their career development people have any clue as to what they are doing or what works. Maybe their LRW department is as terrible as ours.

I don't see how anyone knows what their job prospects are, considering the only people who have gotten a job through UCI law is the faculty. Job prospects could be good, or it could take 5-10 years for them to set up a base level of alums through California who can get in a good word for UCI law students.

I would guess you could argue that it would be paradisal to pay $45K+ a year to eventually get a job in an over-saturated and economically depressed California market only to pay the ridiculous cost of living. COL would be worth it, if you could afford it.

I think you are making a lot of assumptions that don't necessarily have any basis to be true.

[kings84_wr]

Orange county is a big market, and OC firms love UCI already, I bet they place pretty well in So Cal particularly in Irvine/Newport/Costa Mesa

And their Career Dev. was a pretty impressive lady, I don't remember exactly who she was, but she had an impressive resume. Their faculty beyond Chem is even more impressive, the poached a lot of big names.

[Veritas]

yes, I'm leaning towards IUB.

[Bankhead]

Orange county is a big market, and OC firms love UCI already, I bet they place pretty well in So Cal particularly in Irvine/Newport/Costa Mesa

And their Career Dev. was a pretty impressive lady, I don't remember exactly who she was, but she had an impressive resume. Their faculty beyond Chem is even more impressive, the poached a lot of big names.

This. People are already getting biglaw and impressive PI opportunities. There is no wait and see period.

To analogize, tell me Spoon, if you had a friend who told you about this great opportunity, the books were balanced and checked out, you had the money on hand, you did a cost benefit analysis and chances are it would work out great... are you that risk adverse that you would turn it down and go back to your 9-5 job because there might be a small chance of failure?

Nothing in life is a sure fire shot. But I'd put my money behind UCI a hell of a lot faster than 95% of other law schools out there -- accredited or not. This includes IU.

[Bankhead]

yes, I'm leaning towards IUB.

That might be painful when you are taking Con Law in the 5 degree weather, and reading out of the Chemerinsky supp...

[Veritas]

yes, I'm leaning towards IUB.

That might be painful when you are taking Con Law in the 5 degree weather, and reading out of the Chemerinsky supp...

is UCI worth $100k more than IU?

[jrobby6]

sorry if this has been answered already but can iu-b's degree take me to the new york/boston area? I received a significant scholarship and really have no desire to work in indy or the midwest. I'm still waiting on a few schools (fordham in particular and a BC waitlist). If those do not work out, would it be wise to retake and apply next cycle?

Are you looking for Big Law in Boston/NY? It would be pretty tough to get that from IUB.

For the most part, yes. As I said I have no desire to live in the midwest for the rest of my life and would much rather live in the ny/bos area. I'd hate to deny iu-b's offer of 90k but if I don't have much assurance of coming back to the east then I think retaking and applying next cycle is credited. Thoughts?

[Bankhead]

yes, I'm leaning towards IUB.

That might be painful when you are taking Con Law in the 5 degree weather, and reading out of the Chemerinsky supp...

is UCI worth $100k more than IU?

What are you looking to do with your law degree?

[kings84_wr]

yes, I'm leaning towards IUB.

That might be painful when you are taking Con Law in the 5 degree weather, and reading out of the Chemerinsky supp...

is UCI worth $100k more than IU?

That is a good question. I think it depends on priorities. If you are worried about debt, then IUB is probably the better choice. If you are about maximizing so cal opportunities UCI probably is better.

[Veritas]

yes, I'm leaning towards IUB.

That might be painful when you are taking Con Law in the 5 degree weather, and reading out of the Chemerinsky supp...

is UCI worth $100k more than IU?

That is a good question. I think it depends on priorities. If you are worried about debt, then IUB is probably the better choice. If you are about maximizing so cal opportunities UCI probably is better.

I would say I'm more concerned about debt. I'm not sure what I want to do specifically with my degree, so the freedom of greatly reduced debt will allow me the ability to survey options better and with less stress.

[Bankhead]

I had a great and well written post but it got deleted right as I was about to send so fuck here it is in bullet points.

- Better faculty at Irvine
- Great rep in CA already, will allow more opportunities be it biglaw, gov't, high end public interest, or academia (I would imagine we will see some profs made from UCI given the strength of its faculty)
- Higher quality of students, which will push you more.
- Faculty, while great at IU, is amazing at UCI. I am more than content with the quality of profs at IU but would kill to take classes with some of the faculty at Irvine.
- You can still rely either on a high paying job if you go that route or federal LRAP. I think you'd be fine financial coming from UCI.
- Location in your desired market.
- The weather.
- Job prospects at IU are -- and I know my harping on this pisses my fellow classmates off -- less than stellar. I don't care to debate this point with anyone.

That all being said, you could do a lot worse than a full scholarship at a top 25. However, had I been accepted to UCI last year (even pretending the then full scholarship was a half) there is no chance I would have gone to IU.

Best of luck. I personally would not find it a hard decision, but I understand how it would be for others.

[danquayle]

Isn't UCI still giving out half rides?

So the question is IU fully scholly vs. Irvine half? Or is it something else?

The non-accredited thing I wouldn't think would be an issue from a practical standpoint...

Yes, the biggest issue is the lack of alumni. I think the unaccredited thing is used to point at the uncertainty existing all around the school -its very existence is still in question. I mean clearly its going to get accredited, but if its not even accredited yet, how can you predict things such as placement, prestige, etc...

The best comparison to UC-I is UNLV. UNLV's undergraduate program isn't nearly as good as UC-I's, but I would argue that the market is equally strong and, more importantly, there is far less competition. UNLV pretty much controls the Las Vegas market... theres not another law school in all of Nevada. As I recall, their initial medians were pretty high initially as well, not to mention they were also very selective at the beginning. They've since settled in the the lower T2. If you want to go back further in time, you could even compare it to Cardozo, which is attached to an undergrad with a similar reputation to UC-I and a far larger endowment in an equally saturated market. Sure, UCI could, eventually end up like George Mason, but you have to look at similar new schools for comparison. It'll end up somewhere between George Mason, Dozo, UNLV and Georgia State.

So, would you take a half-ride at UNLV, George Mason or Cardozo over a full ride at IUB? That's the more fair comparison.

[danquayle]

I had a great and well written post but it got deleted right as I was about to send so fuck here it is in bullet points.

- Better faculty at Irvine
- Great rep in CA already, will allow more opportunities be it biglaw, gov't, high end public interest, or academia (I would imagine we will see some profs made from UCI given the strength of its faculty)
- Higher quality of students, which will push you more.
- Faculty, while great at IU, is amazing at UCI. I am more than content with the quality of profs at IU but would kill to take classes with some of the faculty at Irvine.
- You can still rely either on a high paying job if you go that route or federal LRAP. I think you'd be fine financial coming from UCI.
- Location in your desired market.
- The weather.
- Job prospects at IU are -- and I know my harping on this pisses my fellow classmates off -- less than stellar. I don't care to debate this point with anyone.

That all being said, you could do a lot worse than a full scholarship at a top 25. However, had I been accepted to UCI last year (even pretending the then full scholarship was a half) there is no chance I would have gone to IU.

Best of luck. I personally would not find it a hard decision, but I understand how it would be for others.

All the points except the weather and location are highly, highly speculative. It's impossible to determine how things will settle in UCI. I still think best case scenario is low T1 initially. Could it rise higher? Maybe? If it were a full ride, I'd be more prone to say screw it and gamble on the unknown. But you're talking about passing up a full ride at a bona fide T1? That's hard to swallow.

And Bankhead, the job prospects most places are less than stellar. I know full well the struggles of getting a job with an IU degree, I just did it, but its not like its raining jobs in Southern California.

I'm not risk averse at all, but gambling on yourself to do well at a difficult school is entirely different on gambling on an institution to live up to the incredible hype surrounding it.

[agentcom]

I think a lot of people are open on this thread are open to a wide variety of career prospects and school locations, so I will try to briefly summarize the rough decision metric that I used to guide me in deciding on a law school. This is from memory because I don't have my spreadsheet on this computer, but I think it gets the general idea across.

I took a variety of factors that were important to me. I then color coded my spreadsheet (green, yellow, red). 2 points for green, 1 for yellow, 0 for red. When there was a spectrum (like cost or ranking) I roughly divided into thirds using larger "jumps" to mark the barriers between categories. When the values were more discrete (like location), I used a more qualitative barrier. When I totaled up the points, it was actually a pretty accurate assessment of what my preferred schools were. At that point, I let my school visits and other "intangibles" guide my decision among my top schools.

I think this was a very helpful thought experiment that really forced me to consider what the strengths of each school were. I've listed some of the criteria below.

For me those were:

"Spectrum" variables:

Total cost of living (tuition - scholarship + estimated COL) per year
Median starting salary upon graduation (over 100k "green")
Rank (I think top 40 were "green", up to 60 "yellow")

Discrete variables:

Location of school (for me I liked preferred big legal markets on the coast, so NYC, DC, LA got "green"; Boston, Chi got "yellow", midwest, south got "red")
Whether the schools had a ranked economics program (since I was considering dual law/econ degree) (unranked econ programs that were still part of university got "yellow")
Same thing w/ enviro. studies in areas of interest to me.
This was tempered by some sort of category of whether or not they allowed dual degrees.
I also used some other rankings systems that ranked top XX schools in certain areas that I thought I was interested in.

I think that this model can be helpful, and it is also infinitely adaptable to individual situations (e.g. interested in big law would have more categories on average salary, Vault rankings; gov't / pub. interest folks could rate LRAP, job placement, pub. sector salaries; academics could use clerkships, academic placements; ppl who think they'll be in the top of their class could use transferability, 75th percentile salaries; etc.)

I know a lot of you have probably already moved beyond the point where this would be helpful (Veritas is obviously looking for more detailed info than such a rough analysis could provide). And there were some definite veto factors: though UGA came up high on my rankings, it really only places ppl in GA's market, so that was out.

Hope that helps someone.

[agentcom]

I think it's really cool that this is such an active topic. I hope it bodes well for the next class at IU. More importantly, I hope that everyone here makes the best decision for them on what law school to choose. As indicated above, this is a personal choice judged largely by variables that are unique to the individual. Even the decision metrics above were formulated because they helped me in my individual choice and may not do anything for some other applicants.

Sorry that my posts don't tend to answer specific questions, but I think the others on this site have done a really good job of handling that. Props to those 1Ls and beyond who are still active on this site and answering IUs questions.

On a related note, VISIT the law schools that you are interested in. Interaction with people at a school is a very good way to get information that won't show up "in the numbers" or from an approach like mine, above.

<steps down from soap box>

[Spoonmanners]

All the points except the weather and location are highly, highly speculative. It's impossible to determine how things will settle in UCI. I still think best case scenario is low T1 initially. Could it rise higher? Maybe? If it were a full ride, I'd be more prone to say screw it and gamble on the unknown. But you're talking about passing up a full ride at a bona fide T1? That's hard to swallow.

And Bankhead, the job prospects most places are less than stellar. I know full well the struggles of getting a job with an IU degree, I just did it, but its not like its raining jobs in Southern California.

I'm not risk averse at all, but gambling on yourself to do well at a difficult school is entirely different on gambling on an institution to live up to the incredible hype surrounding it.

Exactly what I was trying to say. I'm surprised to see someone deem UCI a top 14 school based off of 6 months of operation with only 60 students. I think there may be a lot of thinking that the grass is greener at other schools. UCI will probably end up being a good law school, but it's ridiculous to see someone say it's already far superior to IU.

[BiteyTLS]

Bank,

Can you name a new, post-1970 law school that has made it into the T14? How about T30 for that matter?

One of the major reasons this doesn't happen is because such schools have zero in the heavily weighted attorney/judge assessment scores. UCI undergrad rep isn't that wonderful either- it is easily behind in-state schools like Stanford, Berekely, UCLA, USC, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, USC, CalTech and Cal Poly san louis obispo. That's like the 10th best in-state school, so it isn't like this is a new Ivy law school with a large, prestigious undergrad institution to back up the law school product.

Once the cuteness factor wanes- the massive tuition burden (45k in-state, 55k out-of-state- just the tip of the iceberg as far as increases) and the extreme saturation of southern California market is going to make it a rank under Hastings or Davis.

[Spoonmanners]

Bankhead doesn't work off data or facts, he works off baseless assumptions. The only thing true he said was the weather is better. I agree. If you were unaware of this, you probably have bigger problems than the weather. Somethings could certainly end up being true, but to say that you would have your choice of Biglaw or high level public interest coming out of UCI is ridiculous.

[BiteyTLS]

Bankhead doesn't work off data or facts, he works off baseless assumptions. The only thing true he said was the weather is better. I agree. If you were unaware of this, you probably have bigger problems than the weather. Somethings could certainly end up being true, but to say that you would have your choice of Biglaw or high level public interest coming out of UCI is ridiculous.

I like bankhead and think he gives fair assessments on the inherent problems with law schools most of the time. But for some bizarre reason, he has made UCI his golden calf.