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How does one outwardly look pretty gay? You mean, you are a prototypical twink or something?

Law school grading is all blind. That's all I've got to help you. Nashville is rad though!

Will not affect you at UT any more than it would affect you at another top-ish school*

* Can’t speak to hiring at Dallas/Houston firms, which is your likely landing spot if you want biglaw

ETA: I only spent like half a week in Nashville to tour Vandy but I would not say I observed it to be a "rad blue" city. Voting patterns favor dems but it's pretty Southern in feel. You wouldn't feel out of place in like the Gulch and some downtown neighborhoods, but the Tennessean dems seem pretty boll weevily. Vandy's (undergrad) campus seems to be quite conservative, at any rate. It has also had a few pretty bad homophobic incidents recently that garnered national press (believe the campus made the top 10 unfriendly to gays list a year or two back as well). This is all pretty anecdotal though and based off a short visit, maybe a shitlib from Vandy can chime in.

I've lived for two months now in Austin, and, while it may not be as blue-feeling as it is made out to be, I don't think, if I were a flamboyantly gay person, that I would feel uncomfortable or out of place anywhere in the city limits. That said, I've spent the majority of my adult life in one of the nation's most liberal cities, so take my analysis w/ a grain of salt.

i'm sure both these schools have active outlaws groups and you'll have lots of recruiting opportunities. academia is universally pretty socially liberal. Honestly, I wouldn't make this a basis for your choice of school beyond raw geography. i.e., obviously your dating life will be especially bland compared to NY/DC/LA/SF, but that's hardly an academic problem

Outlaw at UT is great
Austin LGBT Bar Association is great
Profs don't seem to GAF, at least none of mine do
LGBT people are very well accepted at UT

Can't speak for Vandy.

Also I come from a very conservative town and I think Austin is pretty heavily blue in comparison.

I go to UT

I don't know if I would describe Austin as "especially bland" when it comes to anything.

Law school grading is blind, can't imagine that would be an issue. I don't know if any of this matters but as far as I can tell all of my professors 1L year seemed to be liberal (it's academia after all) and the openly gay students whose job situations I know of (which is admittedly a small sample size) have big law lined up.

Odds they notice: 30 percent

Odds they care if they notice: 10 percent

Odds they care and care enough to think about your sexuality outside of class: 1 in 50,000

Odds they would be offended you thought they would ding you for being gay: 100 percent

Vandy kid here.

No one will care. I'm pretty sure we have gay profs.

There aren't as many conservative profs as one might think. Most of mine have been libs.

Also, you can't judge the law school based on the main campus. I literally only go somewhere other than the law school to buy football tickets.

Nashville is a pretty progressive city. Not NYC obviously, but more left leaning than a lot of southern cities.

arklaw13 wrote:Vandy kid here.

No one will care. I'm pretty sure we have gay profs.

There aren't as many conservative profs as one might think. Most of mine have been libs.

Also, you can't judge the law school based on the main campus. I literally only go somewhere other than the law school to buy football tickets.

Nashville is a pretty progressive city. Not NYC obviously, but more left leaning than a lot of southern cities.

Also, even if the city was bigoted, academia tends to be more tolerant. It's exceedingly unlikely anyone would risk their tenure and reputation to discriminate against you. The people teaching you aren't going to be hillbillies.

Even for the conservative professors, there's a big difference between being anti-gay marriage and giving a student a lower grade/less attention, because they are gay. This is a bigger deal than rejecting someone because they're gay (the damage is more significant given there are 16 schools better than Vanderbilt and you get one shot at 1L).

I understand you've probably encountered some mistreatment because of your sexual orientation, but you should understand the significance of what you're implying.