Chelios wrote:'ve visited UF and UMiami in the past two weeks, and I was actually quite a bit more impressed with Miami. I think that it's a school on the rise, and the students seemed to be both more relaxed and better prepared than in the class I observed at Florida. Neither professor would win a teaching award, but the professor at Miami seemed to be more knowledgeable and more engaging than his counterpart.
I'll visit both schools again before I reach a decision. I think that you could do a lot worse than UM though, and I'd certainly choose it over Stetson, if doing so is financially viable.
I like that you actually visited both schools, but I wonder how much thought you have put into the objective, less touchy-feely matters that should really be at the center of a proper analysis of which law school would be the best investment of your time, money, and effort. As I pointed out in one of the other threads, you can't let quality of life in whatever form you're looking at it cloud your vision here - at most you can allow it to come into sight on the very periphery, no more. The choice of law school is an investment decision - you are sacrificing now to gain later. Throw a wrench into that and you've got problems. UM is great - tropical paradise, looks like a resort, South Beach minutes away, Fairchild Gardens even closer. UF is practically in Georgia. So you give UM some big points there. Then you decide that the students seem happier - "more relaxed and better prepared" even - in UM's tropical environment. Your enthusiasm extends to your impression of the professor. After your day at UM, you decide you want your three years in the sun, and you're willing to take that pitchwoman's word that it's "a school on the rise" in order to justify it.
I'm not going to restate here the many reasons why UM < UF, even for those who wish to work in South Florida - for those you can look to the other threads that I previously listed - but they are sound and objective. The few reasons why UM might be a better choice than UF apply only for those with a life expectancy of three years beyond the present day, or those who have the ability to make things go exactly the way they want them to.
Oh, and by the way - should you be right about those students at UM being better prepared, Chelios, and should you choose to go to UM, you'll be competing with relatively well-prepared students. Given that their numbers (LSAT and GPA) are lower than UF students', you'll probably then be going against harder-working students. And so, you'll likely be needing to work harder at UM than at UF to achieve the same class rank, which is doubly painful since UM generally doesn't place graduates of equal rank as well as UF.
rad law wrote:
Lomax man you and I have been all over these FL threads today. There was a thread partly about Stetson recently that I thought you were gonna be all over, too.
Seriously. You'd think people would learn how to use the search function and save us the trouble. I consider this my one great public service project. Save some people from shooting themselves in the foot. Of course, neither of us is any expert, but we can act the part well enough, can't we?
That's scary stuff. I can't even imagine the situation at the billion third and fourth tier FL schools (Nova, Barry, FIU, FAMU, Coastal, the list goes on). UMiami has such a strong reputation down here. 
