Why Does School Name Matter So Much? Forum

[RobertBets]

Serious question. I'm genuinely curious to hear what others think about this. To me, it at first seemed that your school ranking was an indicator to firms of how intelligent/hard working you are (worked really hard in undergrad for good grades and did well on the LSAT), and that was what was attractive to employers. Then I thought about it some more and found some examples that I believe negate this hypothesis.

For example, transfer students. Say someone who finished 1L in the top percent of their class at Emory transferred to a place like Harvard. The firms will obviously know they started at Emory, so they know they didn't have the stuff to get into H the first time around. But now, they are suddenly much more marketable. Why is being an average student at Harvard better than being top 1% at Emory? I would think employers would think you are equally brilliant either way. But I guess that's not the case.

Also, another example is Ruby/Hamilton vs. Yale. General consensus is though it may be a better option to take the scholly, Yale would provide much better career prospects. Why is this? Wouldn't a potential employer see Ruby/Hamilton on the resume and know that they were good enough to get into Yale? So why do HYS grads still get the nod over these scholarship recipients?

The only thing I can think of is there is some belief out there that the actual educational quality of the institution increases as ranking increases-as in, higher-ranked schools actually produce and train better lawyers. It's not my impression that this is actually the case, but I could be wrong. Also, I guess having a list of associates from Harvard and Yale could be impressive to clients, but even then wouldn't that mean Cornell and Georgetown should outrank Chicago and UVA and Harvard should outrank Yale? And the government doesn't really have clients, but still maintains this position it seems.

I'm really curious. Any thoughts?

[RobertBets]

Bump.

[pancakes3]

I think it's impressive how you're able to overthink and underthink at the same time.

[jbagelboy]

It doesn't matter as much as you've indicated here. All of your examples (the emory transfer; the scholarship recipient) are erroneous; its not true that employers draw that line so hard. Where you go to school, like your first employer, is a signaling mechanism, and to a lesser extent, an alumni network. This is how professional signaling works.

[RobertBets]

I think it's impressive how you're able to overthink and underthink at the same time.

You're a troll. I said I was just curious and mentioned that I could be wrong a couple of times.

It doesn't matter as much as you've indicated here. All of your examples (the emory transfer; the scholarship recipient) are erroneous; its not true that employers draw that line so hard. Where you go to school, like your first employer, is a signaling mechanism, and to a lesser extent, an alumni network. This is how professional signaling works.

.

Cool thanks for the reply. So you think a Ruby scholar would have all the same opportunities as a Yale grad? And the main reason school name matters is because of the network? Forgive me, but wouldn't that mean H should outrank Y?

[Serett]

Mixing general trends with individual examples is not a great analytical idea.

[RobertBets]

I think I need to clarify something here. I am completely unconfident in the validity of my examples. I said I could be wrong a couple of times in the original post. I just said those were some things I could think of as a possibility. I don't know. That is why I'm asking. There is no doubt that school ranking matters and I am trying to figure out exactly why. Does anyone else have a plausible reason?

[zot1]

I think you are generalizing a bit here. School name matters to some who are prestige whores (it sounds better for a big law firm to say their associates are from Harvard than Penn State). But there are other variables at play-like people in smaller regional areas prefer to hire people who went to their school than others even if that includes ivy leagues.

Hiring is also a lot more random than people think. Although, sure, some places have GPA cut offs, you can get hired for the most random reasons and maybe never know about it.

[zot1]

I think I need to clarify something here. I am completely unconfident in the validity of my examples. I said I could be wrong a couple of times in the original post. I just said those were some things I could think of as a possibility. I don't know. That is why I'm asking. There is no doubt that school ranking matters and I am trying to figure out exactly why. Does anyone else have a plausible reason?

It depends on the ranking you're talking about. If you mean US News, that only matters to some degree. Just because ASU may be ranked higher than Loyola, it doesn't mean the Loyola grad will get passed on in LA for an ASU grad.

But rankings are a signal to an employer that you hustled enough to get to x school. Sort of like law review on your resume is supposed to signal that you have good writing and attention to detail skills.

[DoveBodyWash]

Clients feel better paying these kinds of fees for a Harvard grad than for a SUNY grad. If I was picking between a Harvard educated doctor and a BU educated one and I knew nothing else about them then I'd feel more comfortable taking my sick child to the Harvard grad.

[A. Nony Mouse]

It doesn't matter as much as you've indicated here. All of your examples (the emory transfer; the scholarship recipient) are erroneous; its not true that employers draw that line so hard. Where you go to school, like your first employer, is a signaling mechanism, and to a lesser extent, an alumni network. This is how professional signaling works.

Yeah, I agree that your (OP's) examples are off. Based on information shared here, transfers actually often get treated in OCI as if they were applying from their old school; things may be different down the road, but they can leave their first school off their resume eventually. And a Ruby or Hamilton is going to have just as many opportunities as an average Yale student.

As to your "why doesn't Harvard outstrip Yale because of the network," I don't think any of this is as rational or scientific as you're trying to make it. Harvard is bigger, it has arguably a stronger network because more alumni, it's an amazing school. But there is some evidence/a general belief that Yale is qualitatively different, if only to a very slight degree, with regard to access to a small number of extremely prestigious non-firm jobs.

Yale is also slightly harder to get into, and has smaller classes. That's going to go back to signaling again. Scarcity tends to make something more valued. There is almost no measurable difference between a top Harvard student and a top Yale student, but some employers will pick the Yalie because of a perception that it is at the very very top. Other employers might choose the Harvard student because they think Yale is full of ivory tower types. Yet another employer might pick a OSU student over both because they went to OSU.

School name shouldn't matter to applicants; employment statistics and cost should matter. To the extent employers care about school name, it's based in a whole lot of unscientific factors, but the prestige obsession in this profession is real. (though I don't entirely agree with the distinction cuse is drawing, because I wouldn't care which of those two schools my kid's prospective doctor went to, mostly because med school admissions and medical training are totally different from law school.)

[RobertBets]

I think you are generalizing a bit here. School name matters to some who are prestige whores (it sounds better for a big law firm to say their associates are from Harvard than Penn State). But there are other variables at play-like people in smaller regional areas prefer to hire people who went to their school than others even if that includes ivy leagues.

Hiring is also a lot more random than people think. Although, sure, some places have GPA cut offs, you can get hired for the most random reasons and maybe never know about it.

I guess I'm talking about BigLaw and prestigious government positions, as well as academia.

I think I need to clarify something here. I am completely unconfident in the validity of my examples. I said I could be wrong a couple of times in the original post. I just said those were some things I could think of as a possibility. I don't know. That is why I'm asking. There is no doubt that school ranking matters and I am trying to figure out exactly why. Does anyone else have a plausible reason?

It depends on the ranking you're talking about. If you mean US News, that only matters to some degree. Just because ASU may be ranked higher than Loyola, it doesn't mean the Loyola grad will get passed on in LA for an ASU grad.

But rankings are a signal to an employer that you hustled enough to get to x school. Sort of like law review on your resume is supposed to signal that you have good writing and attention to detail skills.

Makes sense. I guess to respond to this I go back to my example of the transfer student, though. Didn't get into H first time around, so they didn't hustle to get into that great school. But, they hustled 1L year to do well enough to get into H. Why is transferring and being average or maybe above average at H better than being top 1% at Emory? It just doesn't compute to me. But another poster said that example was erroneous, and I can accept that. But I would like to know why it's erroneous.

Clients feel better paying these kinds of fees for a Harvard grad than for a SUNY grad. If I was picking between a Harvard educated doctor and a BU educated one and I knew nothing else about them then I'd feel more comfortable taking my sick child to the Harvard grad.

I get that. But then shouldn't GULC be more marketable than Chicago? And Harvard more than Yale? And Cornell more than UVA?

[RobertBets]

It doesn't matter as much as you've indicated here. All of your examples (the emory transfer; the scholarship recipient) are erroneous; its not true that employers draw that line so hard. Where you go to school, like your first employer, is a signaling mechanism, and to a lesser extent, an alumni network. This is how professional signaling works.

Yeah, I agree that your (OP's) examples are off. Based on information shared here, transfers actually often get treated in OCI as if they were applying from their old school; things may be different down the road, but they can leave their first school off their resume eventually. And a Ruby or Hamilton is going to have just as many opportunities as an average Yale student.

Ah, I see. I did not know that. I was under the impression that if you transferred to HYS it was as if you got in the first time. And there were several other Ruby/Hamilton vs. Yale threads and everyone was like it may just be better to take the money, but Yale Yale Yale! for career opportunities. The people saying that could just be a bunch of 0L's like myself who don't know anything, though.

[RobertBets]

What would be the purpose of transferring, then? If you are going to be treated as if you are applying from your first school, why go through the hassle of transferring?

[Clemenceau]

What would be the purpose of transferring, then? If you are going to be treated as if you are applying from your first school, why go through the hassle of transferring?

To participate in your new school's oci, which will give you the opportunity to interview with firms that don't recruit from your original school.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I think often it is the 0Ls saying Yale! Yale! Yale!; I think most grads who have jobs and debt say, take the $ and run.

But it's also possible that Yale is a worthwhile option if someone has a really really focused career goal in one of the few areas where Yale is seen to have an advantage - something like academia or working for an international human rights NGO or the like. I would say a Ruby/Hamilton would still have as good a shot at those jobs, but I can see why some people might argue for Yale in such a case, especially depending on the aid they're getting from Yale. Mostly, though, I than a lot of these distinctions are overblown and don't really account for what these candidates bring to the table before they even get to law school.

(Not that I know anything about Yale/Ruby/Hamilton jobs from experience, but based on reading way too many discussions here.)

Re: transferring, I mentioned a couple of things - access to more employers (the sheer number of employers who show up at top schools compared to lower ones is sort of amazing); maybe going from a preselect system to a lottery system (possibly debatable); after OCI when you have grades from the new school, you can present yourself fully as a Harvard grad instead of as an Emory grad; access to the bigger wider network. It's only OCI, when you don't yet have grades from the new school, where transferring is an issue - but OCI is a big reason to transfer. So it's a bit of a dilemma, and why sometimes students who are at the very top after 1L are told that transferring won't help them.

[Tiago Splitter]

What would be the purpose of transferring, then? If you are going to be treated as if you are applying from your first school, why go through the hassle of transferring?

One of the big ones is that you can get in front of more employers. I know someone who transferred from a TT to Columbia. She was in the top 5 people in her class at her old school but only got four OCI interviews there, while she had access to dozens at CLS. Same person, same grades, same everything, but a much higher chance of getting a job when you can get in front of so many more firms. Transferring from a school where you have access to lots of firms in your preferred market obviously makes less sense.

As to the Ruby vs. Yale thing, the Ruby guy still has to assume he'll be median at Chicago and median at Chicago isn't as good as median at Yale. So you do give up a little by taking the Ruby, but you gain back a hell of a lot in straight cash. And not everyone who gets a Ruby gets in to Yale.

[UnicornHunter]

Think of it from a large employer's perspective. They're not really interested in getting the best individual associate possible, they're interested in year in and year out getting classes of associates that can handle the work, at least for a few years. Filling up on associates from the same schools is a safe bet from them: they know that the application process and 1l have filtered out a lot of the people who can't hack it. They'll have years to sort out the wheat from the chaff before they make anyone partner, but at the start of the process they don't need (or want) everyone to make partner. They just want a bunch of cogs for their machine.

[RobertBets]

It doesn't matter as much as you've indicated here. All of your examples (the emory transfer; the scholarship recipient) are erroneous; its not true that employers draw that line so hard. Where you go to school, like your first employer, is a signaling mechanism, and to a lesser extent, an alumni network. This is how professional signaling works.

Yeah, I agree that your (OP's) examples are off. Based on information shared here, transfers actually often get treated in OCI as if they were applying from their old school; things may be different down the road, but they can leave their first school off their resume eventually. And a Ruby or Hamilton is going to have just as many opportunities as an average Yale student.

As to your "why doesn't Harvard outstrip Yale because of the network," I don't think any of this is as rational or scientific as you're trying to make it. Harvard is bigger, it has arguably a stronger network because more alumni, it's an amazing school. But there is some evidence/a general belief that Yale is qualitatively different, if only to a very slight degree, with regard to access to a small number of extremely prestigious non-firm jobs.

Yale is also slightly harder to get into, and has smaller classes. That's going to go back to signaling again. Scarcity tends to make something more valued. There is almost no measurable difference between a top Harvard student and a top Yale student, but some employers will pick the Yalie because of a perception that it is at the very very top. Other employers might choose the Harvard student because they think Yale is full of ivory tower types. Yet another employer might pick a OSU student over both because they went to OSU.

School name shouldn't matter to applicants; employment statistics and cost should matter. To the extent employers care about school name, it's based in a whole lot of unscientific factors, but the prestige obsession in this profession is real. (though I don't entirely agree with the distinction cuse is drawing, because I wouldn't care which of those two schools my kid's prospective doctor went to, mostly because med school admissions and medical training are totally different from law school.)

Credited. Things make more sense if there is a qualitative difference. There really is a lot to this whole selecting a law school process. I come from a background where a lawyer is a lawyer, aka public high school in a small town, non-prestigious public undergrad, parents are blue-collar folks. My whole life, I thought there was no difference between lawyers in my home town in solo shops and BigLaw. I thought any student from any school had an equal chance at any job. Now, since I have done my research in the past couple of years, that is laughable. There are still so many people out there like me, though. I have many friends from undergrad who had the numbers to get t14 with $, but chose Florida State or whatever (albeit with a full ride) because it's close to home or they like the campus or they have this "top-ranked specialty program," which we all know means nothing. This would be fine if their career goals were different, but they want to go work at a huge firm in NYC or be a law professor. They should have done their research. I also know people (these are even more ignorant) who just think all lawyers make at least low six figures, and that a lawyer is a lawyer and a law school is just a law school. They don't have the numbers for t14 at all and end up paying sticker at a place like Mercer. They are in for a rude awakening.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Yeah, there are still a lot of people who don't understand this weird system. It probably doesn't help that for medicine (or vet school) I think "a med school is a med school" is much closer to the truth, and some people tend to lump law/medicine together as "professional" fields.

[RobertBets]

Yeah, there are still a lot of people who don't understand this weird system. It probably doesn't help that for medicine (or vet school) I think "a med school is a med school" is much closer to the truth, and some people tend to lump law/medicine together as "professional" fields.

Yes "a med school is a med school" is much closer to the truth. Really the only times rankings matter in med is if you want to work at an academic institution. They are more snobby. But if you just want private practice and make $$$$, any American MD program will do. I actually went through the med school admissions process and didn't get in, but that was several years ago. Hard sciences are, well, just freaking hard. If I didn't try to do med initially, I would have the numbers for HYS. Those classes ruined my GPA. I have a 4.0 outside of hard science, but a 2.0 hard science GPA. Seriously, chemistry is a kick in the balls.

I think the reason med is doing better than law is there are just so many freaking law schools. Anybody can get into Cooley.

[banjo]

Employers also save money by recruiting at a select few schools. Recruiting is extremely expensive. Big firms donate thousands of dollars to student orgs, journals, and diversity initiatives at top law schools. They spend thousands more on cocktail receptions, lunches, and OCI costs (including hospitality suites and interview rooms). Given the high fixed costs of recruiting at a given school, it makes sense to get as many students as possible from each of those schools.

[84651846190]

Is this really that hard to understand? You cull the herd based on four years of academic performance and the LSAT, which is an adequate measure of ability when it comes to reading and thinking quickly and accurately (probably the most important skills for any attorney). The better schools with better GPAs/LSATs generally have harding working and smarter people attending. Firms want more from the better schools because they want harder working and smarter associates. I don't really see what the mystery is here.