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Finished my first semester exams on Thursday and rediscovering the joys of sleep. I'm a 1L at NYU and I remember how difficult it was to decide between the full ride at NYU (Vanderbilt Scholarship) and Harvard at sticker (plus whatever need-based aid they would have thrown my way, which was probably not much). Hoping I can help some 0Ls learn from my mistakes and triumphs.

Best of luck to all of you with your applications. Ask anything and everything.

What made you decide to choose the scholarship over Harvard? What are your career goals? How has your 1L year gone so far?

Mmmm, good questions. You'll have to forgive the length of my response because your questions do not lend themselves well to simple answers.

A. Why did I take the scholly?

1. I'm an upper-middle-class white male, so I didn't think HLS was going to offer me a lot of need-based aid, if any at all. (Though if you are faced with the same choice as I was, do try to get your HLS FinAid stuff submitted as quickly as possible so that you can get your HLS need offer before you have to accept or decline the scholly. I wasn't smart enough to do this.)

2. NYU is famous for a having a truly amazing, collegial, non-competitive student body. Most of us are really intense, and we all want to get A's, but we still always help each other out. It's just part of the culture here. Upperclassmen hand out outlines like they're nothing. You will always get notes if you miss a class, often from multiple people—sometimes without even asking for them. Don't get me wrong: HLS has some great people, too. But NYU is something special. Our student body is on the level of Yale for collegiality and (dare I say it?) maybe even better.

3. The scholly is named, and it is not one of the schollies they give out to the PI gunners or to URMs. Unlike all the other schollies, you don't write an essay for this one. They just randomly offered it to me a few weeks after I was accepted. It's basically a full dean's scholly, and it's pretty obvious that the only way to get it is to get cross-admitted at at least one of HYS. It's the bribe they use to buy off the HYS people. Because it's named, I can put it on my résumé. Granted, not everyone knows what it means, but a good deal of people in a position to hire law students understand that this is code speak for, "I got into Harvard but they bought me away." And I've even heard it said by one poster on here (purportedly a hiring partner at a V20 or something) that a full-ride named merit scholly from CCN is more impressive than any of HYS, including Yale. He believed that it is harder to get a full-ride named merit scholly from CCN than it is to get into HYS. According to him, HYS may accept someone for any number of reasons, but they only way to get one of those schollies is to have amazing numbers and an absolutely solid record. He suggested that HYS might take a chance on a "special snowflake" and cut him some slack on GPA, but CCN will not give out $150k without an absolutely compelling reason, and they won't take any risks in doing so. Note that many hiring partners will still think that HYS > CCN $$$$. But apparently not all do, and CCN $$$$ is much cheaper for me than HYS, so it seemed the wiser decision. In this light, any marginal benefit from HYS did not seem worth $150k.

4. One-hundred fifty f***ing thousand dollars. One five zero zero zero zero. Let that sink in for a moment. That's a house in some parts of America, dude.

5. Most of my advisor figures implored me to take the scholly over Harvard. This includes one person who graduate from Harvard. A few people talked about all the extra doors Harvard could open, but I noticed these were often second-tier law school graduates. Sure, T14 opens a lot of doors that T30 doesn't. And Harvard opens doors that NYU doesn't. But maybe the difference between HLS and NYU is not as huge as the difference between NYU and, say, GW (or even Georgetown). Among the people who suggested that I take the scholly were a very recent graduate of Harvard and a much older Yale grad. As a high-ranking partner (Georgetown Law grad) in the law firm where I was working at the time said, "Free's good." When asked if his recommendation would stay the same were I to be accepted at Stanford, he again replied, "Free's good." When asked about Yale, he said, "Don't go to Yale. People go to Yale to be poor."

6. I felt like I would get a lot of attention from the administration here. They really, really care about our success. If you tell them you want to do some odd dual-degree combination, the answer is always, "We'll work with you to find a way to make this happen." The answer is never no. My primary goals include clerking and BigFed, areas in which NYU has not traditionally excelled. They appear committed to pour a lot of resources into changing this (as well as pumping out more academics—I think they're now the #3 school for generating legal academics, behind Harvard and Yale). They have a brand-new clerkship placement office (they used to not have a dedicated clerkship office separate from the Office of Career Services), and the director is amazing and very pragmatic. When I visited for ASW, she invited me in to talk with her for about half an hour, one-on-one, before I'd even accepted NYU's offer. She was very frank and honest. She didn't tell me that I could get any clerkship I wanted from NYU if I graduated at median. She told me exactly how hard it is to get each type of clerkship.

7. The odds of me graduating at below median, while very real, are also remote. TLS common wisdom is to assume median and, given my stats and what the admissions office thought of me, the odds of me graduating above median exceed the odds of me graduating below median. (Before people yell at me, remember I said that it could definitely happen; it's just less likely.) To assume below median would be to bet against myself. If I were to assume below median, the appropriate response is, "Don't go," not, "Go to Hahvahd as 'insurance.'" Median at NYU does fine (not like über-prestigious stuff, but just fine), from what I hear from the upperclassmen. Median at NYU + very little debt > Median at HLS + mucho mucho debt. It seems to me that most of the marginal advantage of HYS over NYU is at the bottom of the class and (to a lesser extent) at the top 10%. Unlike many 0Ls, I actually happen to understand basic statistics, and statistically speaking, NYU $$$$ will likely produce a greater ROI than Harvard. (Btw, if money is your only concern, note that NYU's median mid-career salary is actually higher than Harvard's.)

8. (Not) Location. Many people choose NYU for its admittedly amazing location. I did not. I am not a big-city guy, and I would much prefer Cambridge to New York (and I might well take New Haven over either, lol). Ann Arbor might have been my top choice for location alone. The moral of the story is you're going to spend so much time locked in your room studying that you really shouldn't pay too much attention to the school's location. Ultimately you're going to turn pasty white sitting in front of a computer screen, and it doesn't really matter whether it's in NYC or Topeka, Kansas.

9. (The single most important reason.) I will graduate with a degree from a T6 law school and the freedom to do whatever the hell I want. The scholly is more than money. It's more than a nice line on my résumé. It's freedom. If I want to go be a ski instructor after law school, I can do it, maybe immediately and at the very least after two or three years. If I want to work for a super-low-paying PI job, I can do it. When I make fun of my corporate shill friends and tell them I want to do BigFed, they say, "Yeah, well, easy for you to say. You're not paying tuition!" Sure, people talk about LIPP and COAP and all that jazz. The long and short of it is that LRAP will never make you as free as avoiding the debt in the first place. If I hate my boss, I can tell him to go eat a d*** and I won't have to worry about going broke. You cannot overestimate the value of freedom.

B. Career Goals

1. Federal A3 clerkship, preferably Court of Appeals.

2. BigFed/USAO or something.

3. Revolving door between BigFed and DC BigLaw after a few years in BigFed.

4. First choice of practice area: appellate lit. Second choice: regulatory. Basically I want to do legal research and write briefs all day, and I want to avoid discovery and due diligence work at all costs.

5. Maybe I'd teach law if I had the chance, but the odds of that happening are so remote.

6. Stay away from NYC BigLaw and Wall Street at all costs.

Note that these career goals are not traditionally what people do coming out of NYU. Note also that I definitely do not want to work in NYC (DC is my first choice of locale). But NYU seems committed to changing that, so I think I will receive a lot of individualized attention. And I also have a lot less competition because so few people here want to do clerkships or BigFed.

C. How has my 1L year gone so far?

Amazingly. I had so much fun. Even exams were fun to take, if you don't count the grading pressure, the studying stress, and the all-nighters (more like all-weekers, really). My section is so awesome, and we all really love each other. Everyone here is happy. The professors are brilliant, interesting, funny, and very kind. They all do Socratic questioning to varying degrees, but they're all scrupulously careful not to humiliate anyone in class. They never say, "You're wrong!" They'll always say something like, "Well, is what you're really trying to say perhaps [the exact opposite of what the student just said]?" God help me, I even enjoy the reading. This place is fantastic, and they don't pay me to say so.

Hope this helps! Good luck with your apps, and remember to get them out ASAP. Don't be an idiot like me and submit them 20 minutes before the deadline.

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Study schedule? What study schedule lol? Maybe I didn't take things as seriously as I should have. I read everything the night before. I don't think I ever read a day ahead, unless you count reading on Saturday for Monday. I highly recommend this strategy if you can make it work. Everything was fresh in my mind during lecture. The downside is that if you have one class on Mondays but two on Tuesdays, sometimes the reading load is a little imbalanced.

I probably should have read a few weeks ahead toward the end. I basically didn't do my reading assignments for the last week or two of class.

I didn't work through hypos throughout the year except the ones my CivPro TA gave us. I probably will next semester because they were helpful and I wish I'd done more of them. Heck, I outlined half-assedly starting in mid-November, but didn't really start in earnest until maybe a week before my first exam. Not the best way to do it, but I think my outlines turned out pretty well, actually. I took maybe one practice exam per class. Probably should have done more, but I still had an idea of what was coming.

I had plenty of free time during September and October, a little less during November, and none after Thanksgiving break. All in all, it wasn't too bad. But we'll have to see how I did on exams. If I had to guess, I'd say I got an A (top 10%), an A- (top 30%), and a B+ (median). I'd rather not get the B+, but I can live with that and I may actually try to apply myself more next semester.

One comment about my study style: as with any study style, it will not work for everybody. But this is especially true of mine because I tend to understand things very quickly, and I have something close to a photographic memory. So I don't really need to brief my cases because I remember them all anyway.

I would not recommend briefing cases because it wastes time which could be spent more productively. Generally you don't need to remember a bunch of minute details about the cases for the exam. On my outlines I just wrote the case citation, the rule(s), and (sometimes) a one-sentence squib to jog my memory about the facts. Next semester I might try writing the squibs as I read them, not waiting until the last week. Remember again that I have a near-photographic memory, so I don't need to put as much info about the cases as everyone else.

I did not do 0L prep other than reading part of Getting to Maybe, which I highly recommend. I do not under any circumstances recommend studying substantive law as a 0L, because you don't need to learn Torts, you need to learn Professor Smith's conception of Torts. Learning about the basic court structure, basic mechanics of litigation, and how to read a case might be helpful. I already knew because I had studied these things extensively during undergrad and I paralegaled for two years. If you don't have that kind of background, it might be worthwhile to read a few opinions from SCOTUS, the US Courts of Appeals, and one or two state high courts (New York Court of Appeals, Wisconsin Supreme Court, etc.; except don't read the California Supreme Court because those dudes are HIGH as s***). Also get your typing speed up for exams.

I was kind of a purist. I didn't use supplements. I referred to an E&E maybe once. Remember that I already knew how to read cases, and the case decisions usually count as pleasure reading for me. Others may need supplements more than I did, but don't rely on them too much—they don't give you the full picture, and you don't learn how to analyze a court opinion if you use the supplement as a crutch. Next semester I think I'm going to get some E&E's and use them to work through practice problems. But I'm still going to do most of my learning through reading the casebooks and vigorous class participation.

That's another thing: you need to participate in class. Not only does it make the class more lively if everyone participates, but it also forces you to wrestle with the material yourself.

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Of course. Care to share your wisdom? Always happy to learn from someone else's experience.

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Trooooooollllll in the forum! Troll in the forum! Thought you ought to know...

Yeah man, you should go to xoxoth and take your vitriol with you. If you don't like what I'm writing, then don't read it. It's that easy! I'm trying to do something nice to give back to the community that helped me last year, and this is what I get?

You just stated you're a 0L, so I fail to see how you are qualified to judge the veracity of my statements.

TLS common wisdom is to assume median. Some of my TA's used supplements; some didn't. They all got A's or A+'s. Use them if it fits your study style, don't use them if they don't. I didn't use them and several of my classmates still came to me with questions about the material because they knew I understood it. The long and short of it is that they're great if that's your learning style (but don't rely on them over the casebook) but you don't need them if you don't want them. Christopher Columbus Langdell wasn't a fool.

What I heard about the worth of the scholly came from successful practicing attorneys. One thing that's interesting to note is that practicing attorneys and 0Ls with work experience (and current law students) tend to say to take the money and run. K-JD 0Ls seem to be the most strident HYS pushers.

So if this is what you need to tell yourself to make yourself feel better about not getting the scholly you wanted, or to convince yourself that you can work your way to an A even if you're not born with an innate talent for legal analysis (you can't), fine. But why not let the people who actually would like their questions answered ask them?

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How? I'm trying to be nice and help people out. How am I the pompous jerk and not Dwight Schrute over here? People asked me legit questions, and I gave then legit answers to the best of my ability. I never said I'd received grades, and I stated up front that I'm a 1L. That'll teach me to be nice to someone.

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Btw I would like to add that the notion that scholly recipients have no better chance than anyone else is simply untrue. Scholly recipients can indeed finish at the bottom of their class, but I don't know why people keep insisting that this happens with significant frequency. I don't know about the scholly I received because it's relatively new, but I can tell you that something like 90% of our SCOTUS clerks in past years have been Furman Scholars (our scholarship for really smart people who want to be legal academics). I think most of the rest have been RTKs (the PI scholly). So let's put this little myth to rest and stop saying schollies don't correlate with grades, beside they clearly do. Yes, scholly recipients can and do get bad grades, but not with the same frequency as people paying sticker.

brotherdarkness wrote: A purist? JFC.

What? I came to law school because I genuinely enjoy the academic study of law and I actually thought it would be fun. And you know what? It's been f***ing awesome!

So I guess with that perspective perhaps I have a little bit of (perhaps unwarranted) disdain for those who attend simply to get a job. I wish they'd just go to b-school, honestly, and leave the law to those who love it.

Besides eidetic memory and "innate talent for legal analysis," what else makes you more awesome than the proles who go to law school simply to get a job?

Magnacromion wrote:

brotherdarkness wrote: A purist? JFC.

What? I came to law school because I genuinely enjoy the academic study of law and I actually thought it would be fun. And you know what? It's been f***ing awesome!

So I guess with that perspective perhaps I have a little bit of (perhaps unwarranted) disdain for those who attend simply to get a job. I wish they'd just go to b-school, honestly, and leave the law to those who love it.

Make sure you come back after grades come out, you make it through next semester, and stick your face in the meat grinder that is the DC legal market next summer to tell us more about how much you love the academic study of law.

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No, not flame. Didn't I say to use supplements if it fits your style? Nothing wrong with them; like I said, I plan to use E&E's next semester. I just think that you need to read the cases first, get most of your understanding from the cases alone, then read the supplement if you want to. But I have friends who just read the supplement and ignore the casebook. That's like reading the Cliffs Notes for Shakespeare: you'll get maybe the gist, but you won't really experience the beauty of The Bard's writing.

what section are you? wouldn't want you ruining my curve..


Most of what he said about the culture at NYU is spot on though. People are shockingly open about most things here as far as notes/outlines but more or less, everyone is smart and it will be super-competitive.
I definitely don't feel comfortable with finishing above median...but maybe I just have a prole application

Fit and location, imo, are definitely underrated reasons to pick within the margins of the schools you are accepted at and I think this is definitely a boost for NYU.

Location is important...there is ungodly amount of time to go out in lawschool from August-Nov10th or so...I mean 2-4 nights a week out to 4-6 am time...location is important. (and this was as a 1L first semester...)


supplements are more or less overrated. They can help but they aren't anything at all necessary..PTs and old outlines are the core of what is necessary to do well in lawschool imo...though of course, it depends on your style and only your style. There is no one way to do law school

Oohh boy...(gets popcorn and sits back to watch...)

Do you have aspergers? (that would explain a lot of the shit you posted above)

Magnacromion wrote:Btw I would like to add that the notion that scholly recipients have no better chance than anyone else is simply untrue. Scholly recipients can indeed finish at the bottom of their class, but I don't know why people keep insisting that this happens with significant frequency. I don't know about the scholly I received because it's relatively new, but I can tell you that something like 90% of our SCOTUS clerks in past years have been Furman Scholars (our scholarship for really smart people who want to be legal academics). I think most of the rest have been RTKs (the PI scholly). So let's put this little myth to rest and stop saying schollies don't correlate with grades, beside they clearly do. Yes, scholly recipients can and do get bad grades, but not with the same frequency as people paying sticker.

Says the 1L that hasn't gotten his grades back yet. But seriously whatever helps you sleep at night. Are you going to come back and start a "Median-Pawned at NYU - Taking Questions" thread or should I just PM you my ridicule?

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daryldixon wrote:Do you have aspergers? (that would explain a lot of the shit you posted above)

or maybe he is just a pompous douche. OP, I do not want to say that you are a pompous douche, but I can totally see how one can think you are a douche based on what you wrote. Seriously, go ahead and read all what you have written. just read this para once again- "The single most important reason.) I will graduate with a degree from a T6 law school and the freedom to do whatever the hell I want. The scholly is more than money. It's more than a nice line on my résumé. It's freedom. If I want to go be a ski instructor after law school, I can do it, maybe immediately and at the very least after two or three years. If I want to work for a super-low-paying PI job, I can do it. When I make fun of my corporate shill friends and tell them I want to do BigFed, they say, "Yeah, well, easy for you to say. You're not paying tuition!" Sure, people talk about LIPP and COAP and all that jazz. The long and short of it is that LRAP will never make you as free as avoiding the debt in the first place. If I hate my boss, I can tell him to go eat a d*** and I won't have to worry about going broke. You cannot overestimate the value of freedom"