Iowa 1L taking Q's Forum

[daddymike]

Fire away.

[Carlisle]

how is iowa?
what is the campus community like?
Where do you plan on practicing?
Are people from all over or just all over the midwest?
How easy is it to gain residence and how much does it save you?

[daddymike]

how is iowa?

I am a city kid, so my perspective is based on this, but I really, really like Iowa City. It's a collegiate town with plenty of character. It's clean, the crime rate is next to nil, and the people seem really friendly compared to the east coast. Hawkeyes football is king here. It doesn't mean that you have to like football to come here, but it helps. I am not a football fan but I have to be honest and say that the tailgating is a lot of fun.

what is the campus community like?

Interesting question. U Iowa seems to draw a fine line between its undergrads and graduate students. The Tippie Business school ranks really well for MBA, and the MD programs are top notch too. The law school is also well ranked, of course. This brings a high level of professionalism amongst graduate students. The undergrads are a different matter altogether as the program is not terribly selective. The Big 10 football atmosphere and Greek house affiliations are abundant in the undergrad sectors. They never get too out of control, but it's nice that their campus is on the other side of the river, far away from the professional schools.

Where do you plan on practicing?

I plan on entering Public Service. JAG, DOD, or DOS. I might be content with Policy Analysis right out of law school. I will most likely be pursuing a dual degree (MA in International Relations) and I am in talks with the administration at the moment to see how many extra credits are required of me. It seems that I might be able to get away with 3.5 years of school for both degrees, but nothing has been finalized yet. If anyone is interested they can PM me.

Are people from all over or just all over the midwest?

I would say that 40% are from Iowa. It is a state school, after all. There is a BIG presence from Chicago, about 20%, another 20% coming from "surrounding" states like NE, WI, etc., and I'd guess the remaining 20% is made up of people from NY, MA, CA, DC, TX, etc.

How easy is it to gain residence and how much does it save you?

There was a significant tuition increase last year, for both in-state and OOS. The new numbers are 42k OOS and 21K in-state. Supposedly, in-state tuition is easy to get after first year as long as you pick up an RA position. After speaking with some 2L's and 3L's, this does not seem to pose a problem. Aside from the tuition break, one also gets subsidized healthcare to the tune of about 65% less than what an OOS student pays. This is a big plus, especially if you have dependents.

[tarheel87]

Despite your bias try and compare Iowa Law to Indiana Law. I got fee waivers from both and I want to apply to one school outside the south. Anyone else feel free to chime in.

[The Zeppelin]

If you have fee waivers, apply to both.

[daddymike]

Despite your bias try and compare Iowa Law to Indiana Law. I got fee waivers from both and I want to apply to one school outside the south. Anyone else feel free to chime in.

That's a good question because I applied to both schools. Believe it or not, I did not get a waiver from Iowa, and I did get a waiver from Maurer. Funny enough, it was Maurer that rejected me and Iowa that accepted me. My acceptance to Iowa had a really quick turnaround. Maybe 2 weeks after I submitted. Maurer in turn took about 4 months to reject me.

While I got accepted to other top tier schools, I was basically waiting on an acceptance from Maurer and so I was weighing it against Iowa for quite some time. In the end, I liked Maurer's 1L setup where students go through some "hand holding" with TA's leading study groups, etc. in the first year, although I could see how this would be unappealing to some. A point of consolation is that Iowa 1L's are not that competitive against each other, which is nice.

I did not visit Maurer, but I hear the Bloomington campus is incredible. In this respect I would say that it's probably more "pretty" than U Iowa's campus, but that is not to say that U Iowa is not a good looking campus in itself.

As far as USNWR rankings, I remember speaking to one of the admission officers at Maurer to find out my status and remember congratulating her on the school's ranking climb. It went from 35 to 23, which was an enormous jump. Her response was "Thanks, but I doubt we'll be able to maintain it as a lot of that had to do with a giant infusion of money that went towards the school by Mr. Maurer."
This is important if all you care about is rankings. I personally would look at many other factors besides the rankings when comparing state schools in the top tier, but I know others who just care about rankings and I would look at Maurer as ranked in the #27-29 range in terms of long term USNWR rankings.

While I did not have to make the choice between the two schools, I think there are enough similarities between the two that for me, the difference would be negligible.

[Panther7]

jw since you are at iowa, and got rejected from indiana, what were your numbers?

Just curious since Iowa is one of my goal schools, but I have a sub 3.0 gpa.

[daddymike]

I don't think my numbers will help you because my application package is highly unusual, but let's just say my LSAT score was pretty weak and that my UGPA was considerably high. While I was rejected from Indiana, it was not until the very end of the cycle (around mid-June). I don't think that Indiana was out of reach for me if I had applied early in the cycle, around November. In my case, I submitted my application package to Indiana in late February.

It is well known that schools adjust their admissions data towards the end of the cycle based on applicants' LSAT scores and GPA, so I guess that they were looking for that high LSAT score that I just didn't have. All that said, if you have a sub 3.0 (2.9?) GPA, you might get lucky with a substantially high LSAT (165+) at Indiana or Iowa. One caveat, however, is that the two schools seem to have a very different approach to acceptances: Indiana, like most other schools, will primarily look at the hard numbers. Iowa's application is similar to that of Vanderbilt and a few others where it looks at the "whole person" when viewing apps.

Iowa obviously does not have a national reputation like Vandy, but you have to remember that the higher ranked the law school is, the greater the number of people who are very capable in legal studies are going to attend. Meaning that Iowa, based on its whole person approach, might lead a student who would otherwise land in the top 50% of the class at Vandy to be able to achieve top 25% at Iowa. This based simply on the fact that the atmosphere is less competitive because of the demographic makeup of the student body.

Other examples would probably be Fordham or U Connecticut, where their geographic presence next to big cities creates a student body that is made up of people who (for the most part, aside from scholarships) could not get into Harvard, NYU or Columbia. That said, I don't know where U Indiana falls in this respect, but I would assume their student body is slightly more competitive than Iowa. This is one big thing that Iowa has going for it, that if one graduates in the top 25% they are more likely to get a much better biglaw job due to class rank, versus the same grades at a more competitive school where they would land in the 50th perecentile and therefore not be able to get a good job based on grades alone.

That said, this analogy gets thrown at the window if we are comparing a student in the top 25% at Iowa vs. a student in the bottom 25% at Columbia or U Chicago. Obviously, the name recognition of a T10 school would far outweigh any class standing at Iowa unless we are talking about someone graduating in the top 5% or so.

[MoS]

What does the summer internship picture look like?

[daddymike]

Not sure yet. Like 1L's at all ABA approved law schools, we're not allowed to discuss summer internships until November (6th?).
From my own perspective, it doesn't look like we're in any worse a position when comparing ourselves with other T20's and T30's.
From what I've been reading, even the most prestigious law schools are suffering but who knows for how long? To be honest, I am not too worried about 1L summer internships because I am optimistic about my 2L summer. I am planning to go into public service anyway and so the 1L internship would most likely be unpaid anyhow...

[robin600]

PMed you daddymike!

How competitive are the RA positions?

[dt22]

1. Do many students take summer jobs outside of the city and/or outside of the state?
2. How popular/appreciated are the study abroad programs?
3. What's the common practice on choosing whether to spend more time on hornbooks/E&Es/casebooks?
4. Apartments - anything and all.

THANKS!

[tsub]

Is the London Law Consortium relatively competitive? I noticed that there is a cap on the enrollment. How is this program viewed at Iowa? Is it fairly credible, or one of those "go abroad and get some credit opportunities" that are often offered in the summer, but extended for an entire semester?