Sorry if this has been asked already. Has anyone here, or anyone you know, been acceptd to a top tier (1-50 rank) law school coming from a for-profit undergrad school (specifically UoP)? [Assuming a 3.75+ GPA and a 160+ LSAT score]
Surge in Law School Applications http://www.calbar.ca.gov/state/calbar/calbar_cbj.jsp?sCategoryPath=/Home/Attorney%20Resources/California%20Bar%20Journal/October2003&sCatHtmlPath=cbj/10_TH_01_Surge-law-apps.html&sCatHtmlTitle=Top%20Headlines There is a surge in law school applications.
From UOP to top Law School A buddy of mine just graduated with his MBA. He had no problem getting accepted into a top law school. I believe he decided to attend St. Louis University law school?
thx hogurt, that seems to be the common repsonse from other boards. many people have taken their uop ug to good law schools, accompanied by a good lsat and ps. so if any uop grads are thinking about ls, i say go for it.
Before you become too tied up in the idea of a so-called "top tier" law school, you might want to look at the ABA web site, www.abanet.org under law student resources. There is a statement by most of the deans of American ABA accredited law schools attacking the published rankings as misleading. Lots of things should go into one's choice of law school besides what some magazine thinks such as area of interest, locale of intended practice and, by NO means the least important, COST. An ABA accredited law degree from MY school, the University of New Mexico, costs noting close to the $75,000-$100,000 most private, "top tier" schools get for tuition alone! Owing huge student loans ties the new lawyer's hands, often making it impossible to pursue his or her professional interests because "public law doesn't pay enough." In general, if at ALL possible, one should attend the STATE law school in one's state of residence. Or be very, very wealthy.
thanks for the advice nosborne. you are correct in pointing out the misleading of rankings as popularized by certain publications. admittedly, i fell victim to the propaganda during my inital research but due dilligence would soon reveal what you stated. sadly, even though we know that LS qualities cannot simply be reduced to [skewed] percentages, the truth is that many major firms still use school rankings when weighing factors for employment. from all of the attorneys i've spoken to, they've all given a similar response when choosing schools..'get into the best school possible'...assuming 'best' equates with ranking. it really depends on what the student is looking for...if their eyes are set on 'biglaw', then rankings would be more important (assuming they are in the top 5%). personally, i've decided that ranking is not the top priority.
Agreed, the rankings are not a great method of evaluating the schools, but numbers don't lie either. Look at salary, job placement, bar pass rates, etc. and you will notice that the "top ranked" schools out shine the rest. Nosborne48 hit the nail on the head - COST. I have friends from top ten schools and friends from bottom ten (Whittier). Guess what, they had the same debt from tuition! Except the Duke grads will have paid theirs off next year (5 years out of school) and the Whittier grad's has turned into a mortgage since he makes less than half the $$$ (55k vs. 130k) of the Duke grads. Go for the best state school you can get into. Oh, and don't worry about a UoP degree - worry about your LSAT and UGPA. If you have those two things and can write a good PS then you have nothing to worry about...well, nothing unusual anyway!
There is no guarantee that a JD from a "top tier" school will translate into a very high paying job. Usually, those Wall Street positions go to the top ten percent of the Ivy League grads; the rest end up competing with people like me. In any competition, flexibility matters. If a job pays $50,000, I can afford to take it and live pretty well where I want to. The Stanford grad who owes $80,000 doesn't have my choices. I can also accept a job that requires 40-45 hours per week. The high paid associate works closer to 60 hours per week. Truth is, if it's money you are after, DON'T go into the law. Business, engineering, computer science, chiropractic, ALL pay better than law.
Well, there is no "guarantee" that anyone will pass the Bar in the future - next year we may have ZERO new lawyers walking the streets. But it is reasonable to expect that many will. Where do you get the "top ten percent?" Sixty-seven percent of USC grads went to private practice in 2001. That Sixty-seven percent had starting salaries of 125k + bonus on average (61% between 120k -140k). Another eight percent had Judicial Clerkships, so they will most likely be added to that above percentage when finished. Those who accept lower paying jobs (Public Interest) will have some of their loans forgiven. Oh, and USC is not even Ivy. UCLA has slightly better numbers and it is pretty cheap. The Stanford grad you spoke of is saying the same thing about you! He might not have the option to work 40 hours per week, but you don't have the option to work for 125K either. I agree, DON'T pay 80k for a JD if you want to work for 50k (see my previous comment about Whittier). How many hundred law firms actively recruited on your campus? Verify your claim that the bottom 90% of Ivy grads are competing for jobs with people like you. I'm not an elitist, but I am not deluded either.
I’m curious where you found these figures. They seem very high compared with numbers published in California legal publications.
Your comments are perfectly fair. Perhaps , to make the comparason a little more accurate, though, we need to consider the effective salary based in part on where the job is. I have classmates who went to Washington DC, San Francisco, New York, and the like; they make a hell of a lot of money, to be sure, but they also pay a great deal more to live where they choose to settle. Your figures are doubtless accurate concerning the placement of USC grads and their starting salaries. I promise you, though, that unless they are willing to live in very expensive parts of the country, they won't draw these monumental salaries. Also, as I said, they work a much longer week than I do, or ever would. Interesting thought about recruitment. In fact, UNM DOES get recruiters from the Rocky Mountain states and the usual governmental entities. I suspect that you are correct that major Eastern and even Californian firms don't look to us for new talent. I don't think it's just a matter of distance, either. I say this because a VERY expensive private law school in Denver receives recruiting visits from major tax and accounting firms for graduates of its LL.M. /M.Tax program. I doubt that their JDs are recruited so assiduously. The thing I find most interesting about your post, though, is that you posit the idea that a state school grad is at a disadvantage in seeking work on, say, Wall Street. Intuitively, I can see that this sounds true, but I honestly don't know how many have tried. Anyway, thak you for a most interesting post.
Top Law Program I am a UoP grad..I have, or should I say had, a friend who also was a UoP grad..he is at Princeton now...draw your own conclusions. If your test scores, gpa and essay for admission are all quite good, I imagine that a UoP degree will get you in anywhere...that may rankle a few brows around here, but I belive that it is true.
USC website: http://lawweb.usc.edu/admissions/carserv/pages/legalempl.html# Top 40 schools are similar according to their own reports.
Of course, you are 100% correct about location. Again, I am advocating the best state school if possible. If I were interested in law school then the UC system would be my first choice - if I wanted to practice in California. How much better would a JD from Cornell be in NM than yours? I suspect, not much. In fact, he would have a few disadvantages (alumi network comes to mind) On these things we agree 100%. [We are assuming that scholarships are out of the equation.] When it comes to "Wall Street" I believe that nearly all schools are at a disadvantage. I do not believe that being a state school has anything to do with it. University of Virginia has as many alumni in the top firms of DC as Georgetown does (percentage wise). In California, the majority of the best jobs go to people from state schools (Boalt, UCLA, etc.). The same goes for Texas and UofT-Austin. I despise the USNews rankings system (it is a joke), but it has made a profound impact on the system - a very sad thing indeed.
I have known several private law school JDs here in New Mexico, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, U of Denver, Gonzaga, etc., some very well known schools, others much less well known. There is a decided advantage to being a UNM grad when it comes to state and local government positions. I do not see any particualr advantage in federal service, indeed, there might be a slight advantage NOT to have come from here. As to the private Bar, the large firms in Albuquerque all recruit at UNM as do major firms in neighboring states. I don't know who else, nor do I know who gets hired. And there's ALWAYS Texas.
