Northwestern AJD taking questions Forum

[angelchild03]

I was admitted to the AJD program and I'm currently researching housing options. I like the convenience of the neighborhood in the immediate vicinity of the school (I think it's called streeterville), but I haven't heard anything about it being family friendly. I have a 10-year-old son who is NOT happy about having to relocate to Chicago. I'm looking for a place that would be comfortable for him and has a good public neighborhood school (I can't afford private school for him AND law school for me )

Are there families with school-age children living in Streeterville? If so, which apartments are "kid friendly"? What is the neighborhood school like?

I've also researched the Lincoln Park area and based on what I've seen it's wonderful for families. How is the commute from that area? Do a lot of students live there? And what about the neighborhood schools?

I should also mention that I have a dog, he's a 5lb chihuahua, so a pet friendly place is a must.

Any insight would greatly be appreciated...thanks!

i actually live in lincoln park. the commute from there would be very easy. the 151 bus goes right down to michigan ave and drops you at chicago and you're a 5 min walk from campus at that point. total trip takes 20 min at most. lincoln park is family friendly and dog friendly. a lot of park area for playing with dog and child. the lincoln park zoo is right there (and is free). To my knowledge, the schools there are good as well.

I don't know much about streeterville.

Thanks for the feedback. Lincoln Park sounds like an ideal location.

[wooblewobble]

.

[angelchild03]

Also, just north of Lincoln Park is Lakeview East. I normally just lurk on here once in a while but your post caught my attention. Since public schools are an important factor in your decision, I'll chime in as well. The neighborhood has (at least based on what I've heard - I don't have children) one of the best elementary schools in the CPS system (http://www.nettelhorst.org/), so I didn't want you and your son to miss out. Also, the campus is a short express bus ride away on the 145/146 buses, and the local 151 bus that fl0w mentioned comes up here as well.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

[fl0w]

edit: meant to post this in the other AJD thread. Heading there now.

[clint4law]

any new news?

I know, that's redundant. News, by definition, is new. But it's fun to say out loud.

Anyhow; acceptances, dings, word about hold? anyone call admissions and ask what's up?

wrong thread buddy

[Dick Whitman]

Any last minute questions before AJD admitted students weekend?

[fl0w]

Any last minute questions before AJD admitted students weekend?

Why couldn't they give me an answer about being on hold before ASW?

[Dick Whitman]

Any last minute questions before AJD admitted students weekend?

Why couldn't they give me an answer about being on hold before ASW?

That I do not know, although I believe that they have already admitted more prospective students than last year.

[mrb40914]

Hi Dick-

I do have a couple of questions, I unfortunately can't make it to ASW with family visiting this week, although I do wish I could make it out.

1. Any thoughts on how the current AJDs' summer plans are working out this year? Is there the sense that OCI and other job applications went well and were similar to the 3 year class or did people feel at a disadvantage due to the novelty of the accelerated program?

2. Have any AJDs joined any of the journals this year via the write-on process?

Thanks!

[Dick Whitman]

Hi Dick-

I do have a couple of questions, I unfortunately can't make it to ASW with family visiting this week, although I do wish I could make it out.

1. Any thoughts on how the current AJDs' summer plans are working out this year? Is there the sense that OCI and other job applications went well and were similar to the 3 year class or did people feel at a disadvantage due to the novelty of the accelerated program?

2. Have any AJDs joined any of the journals this year via the write-on process?

Thanks!

The last numbers I saw (late last semester) had the regular and accelerated students with similar summer job statistics. Not bad, considering that (1) the program is brand new so employers may be a bit leery of it and (2) the AJDs are more biased towards transactional work, which was particularly hard hit by the recession.

We had the opportunity to compete in a writing competitoin for journal spots at the very beginning of the fall semester with the incoming transfers. This replaced the former write-on process that entailed spending an entire semester as a probationary member before finding out whether you got on the journal. Unlike for the spring writing competition, grades were not considered for the fall competition, as transfers were involved. There are several of us on various journals.

[09042014]

Bumping this thread for some questions.

I've got the option of doing the AJD, or staying in the regular class of 2013.

What do you think the pro's and cons of the AJD are compared to the regular JD?

Did you notice any bias at OCI?

Thanks in advance.

[fl0w]

Bumping this thread for some questions.

I've got the option doing doing the AJD, or staying in the regular class of 2013.

What do you think the pro's and cons of the AJD are compared to the regular JD?

Did you notice any bias at OCI?

Thanks in advance.

stay regular JD so I can have the AJD spot? thx, being on AJD hold is killing me!

To your question (i think people have hinted at answers) AJDs dont seem to be at a disadvantage for OCI in any other sense aside from the fact that they are a little "rushed" to get ready for it considering how much work they have to do leading into it. I've heard AJDs say that employers were curious about the program but didn't seem to have a bias against it.

I'll let an actual AJD answer for real though. Just what I've had people tell me.

[Dick Whitman]

Bumping this thread for some questions.
I've got the option of doing the AJD, or staying in the regular class of 2013.
What do you think the pro's and cons of the AJD are compared to the regular JD?
Did you notice any bias at OCI?
Thanks in advance.

I asked a friend of mine why she didn't apply to the AJD program the other day, and her response was that she wanted two summers to work because she didn't know what she wanted to do after graduation, she wanted to be in a larger cohort, and she didn't want to be an experiment. Those are all valid reasons, but I chose to do the AJD program for largely the opposite reasons: I had a decent idea of what I wanted to do, I considered the small program size a selling point, and I am more than willing to jump feet first into something new if I think it has merit. The biggest advantage of the AJD program is obvious -- you get back into the workforce a year earlier. The compressed schedule can be a disadvantage, though, if you either don't know what you want to do and could use the time to explore or do know what you want to do and it will be difficult to do in just two calendar years.

I don't think there was a bias at OCI. Generally interviewers asked about the program (except one out-of-Chicago local firm that strangely didn't mention it through the entire callback process), but then I heard that was common for the regular JDs, so at least I had first hand experience with it. My understanding is our employment figures are similar to the regular JD 2Ls. I think (based purely on anecdotal evidence) that employers slightly discout our GPAs (only from one semester at OCI) and give slightly more weight to our work experience (which could hurt you if you've only worked a couple years).

[Drew2010]

Just wanted to double check two things regarding the AJD program:

1.) I would imagine that transferring is impossible from the AJD because you have no real clear end of first year.

2.) I would also guess that you can't decide to apply for the JD/MBA your first year.

Am I right on both of these?

also, would you mind talking about how much of a break you had between the end of the summer semester and OCI?

Thanks mucho

[Dick Whitman]

Just wanted to double check two things regarding the AJD program:

1.) I would imagine that transferring is impossible from the AJD because you have no real clear end of first year.

2.) I would also guess that you can't decide to apply for the JD/MBA your first year.

Am I right on both of these?

also, would you mind talking about how much of a break you had between the end of the summer semester and OCI?

Thanks mucho

1) I don't know if that is true. For one it depends on how the school you are trying to transfer to views the program. There is a very free flow of transfers between law schools in large part because of how standardized the 1L year is. So the AJD program introduces some uncertainty to that. A bigger problem is that transferring would probably force you to delay graduation by a year, and there isn't anywhere worth tacking on another year to graduate from at that point, in my opinion.

2) I’m not sure but probably not. You could probably apply directly to the MBA program, but it would still be difficult to finish both degrees in three years total.

Our last final for the summer was on a Wednesday. OCI started the next Monday.

[Drew2010]

Interesting.. thank you for the responses.. so you only have a few days between the last day of classes and OCI. Does that mean you bid on your interviews without even knowing your grades? Do you even get all your grades by that monday? I would imagine you would at least have the grade from that mid summer exam (I believe I read there are two five week classes, one that ends mid summer and one that ends at the end)

Also, are there any social events during that summer, such as bar review, or were you all so busy there was no time for such shenanigans?

[Dick Whitman]

Interesting.. thank you for the responses.. so you only have a few days between the last day of classes and OCI. Does that mean you bid on your interviews without even knowing your grades? Do you even get all your grades by that monday? I would imagine you would at least have the grade from that mid summer exam (I believe I read there are two five week classes, one that ends mid summer and one that ends at the end)

Also, are there any social events during that summer, such as bar review, or were you all so busy there was no time for such shenanigans?

We only had our grade from the mid-summer exam at the time we bid on OCI. We had also finished legal writing at that point, but our professor had not turned in grades. I think just that bit of information is significant, and I don't remember hearing of anyone who got screwed in the bidding process (e.g. bidding heavily on top firms that typically only give callbacks out to A- students based on one good grade then doing poorly in the remaining classes). Grades were due for our remaining classes the Friday before OCI (so professors had to grade our exams in the same period of time as normal, less the 40 day procrastination period).

There was only one official SBA bar review over the summer, but we threw AJD bar reviews every week, which were very well attended.

[Drew2010]

Interesting.. thank you for the responses.. so you only have a few days between the last day of classes and OCI. Does that mean you bid on your interviews without even knowing your grades? Do you even get all your grades by that monday? I would imagine you would at least have the grade from that mid summer exam (I believe I read there are two five week classes, one that ends mid summer and one that ends at the end)

Also, are there any social events during that summer, such as bar review, or were you all so busy there was no time for such shenanigans?

We only had our grade from the mid-summer exam at the time we bid on OCI. We had also finished legal writing at that point, but our professor had not turned in grades. I think just that bit of information is significant, and I don't remember hearing of anyone who got screwed in the bidding process (e.g. bidding heavily on top firms that typically only give callbacks out to A- students based on one good grade then doing poorly in the remaining classes). Grades were due for our remaining classes the Friday before OCI (so professors had to grade our exams in the same period of time as normal, less the 40 day procrastination period).

There was only one official SBA bar review over the summer, but we threw AJD bar reviews every week, which were very well attended.

Awesome.. Just got an e-mail about 30 min ago offering me admission to the AJD program (had already been accepted to the 3-year). Extremely excited, can't wait to get up there in May. When in May do the classes actually start?

[Dick Whitman]

Classes started on May 18th last year. There would be advantages to starting earlier, but because some people this year came straight from other graduate programs, I doubt they will move it up.

Just out of curiosity, did you apply to both programs? Did you indicate a preference when you did?

[Drew2010]

No, I only applied to the regular JD program, and was admitted back in January. I e-mailed last Thursday to see if I could be considered to switch over to the AJD, and they e-mailed today letting me know they approved. I'm extremely excited.. I think me and my wife will probably be flying up either this weekend or next to check out Chicago and look into some different living arrangements.

Would you mind going into more detail about the summer semester? Just how intense is it? The pre-may online thing doesn't count as an actual class does it?

[Dick Whitman]

This year the online stuff was advance coursework for two classes -- Communication and Legal Reasoning (i.e. legal writing) and Introduction to Law and Lawyering. This allowed us to finish those course after eight weeks instead of eleven, allowing more time to prepare for the finals in our two remaining doctrinal courses.

The summer semester is pretty intense, for a couple reasons:
1) It's 17 hours (6 classes) instead of the 14 hours (5 classes) normal 1Ls take.
2) It's 11 weeks long rather than the standard 13 weeks (to allow for OCI).
These are significantly mitigated, however, by structuring the schedule to ease the pressure of exams as much as possible.

[Drew2010]

Interesting.. It's interesting that the online stuff is actually meaningful, I'm not sure what I expected. Since the AJD program (at least last year) was less than 40 students how did they go about doing the curve? Was it still curved pretty similar to the mandatory curve on the website?

[Dick Whitman]

The hard curve only applies to classes at NU with enrollments above 40. The first-year AJD courses follow the tacit curve used in 1L legal writing. The grade distribution is roughly the same, but professors have more discretion over individual grades.

[Drew2010]

Sir Whitman,

Is the Career Services Office open/staffed during the summer to help the AJD students plan prior to OCI? Also, do you know of any AJD students interested in clerking, and does the AJD program affect that at all? Also, I didn’t see an average age in the AJD class profile, could you make a guess about what it is?

Thanks a ton for this thread and answering all these questions. Given the new nature of the program it is a really amazing resource to be able to talk to a current student.

[Dick Whitman]

The AJD program is open and staffed all summer. They did a truncated series of workshops over the summer based on the year-long series of workshops for 1Ls.

There are AJD students interested in clerkships. I'm sure that a somewhat lower proportion of us are interested than for the regular program, but I'm don't know by how much. There is nothing that directly prevents us from clerking, but it remains to be seen how judges view the program.

The median for years of work experience is six and 2/3 of the class has a graduate degree, so I would estimate the average age at close to 30. There is a pretty big range though.