2nd tier law schools

[Rogmok]

what makes a 2nd tier school different from a top tier law school??

other than tuition ;)

[TyroneK(prettypretty)]

Prestige.

Qualifications of faculty

Quality of facilities

All the things that come with an inequity of alumni income and other sources of funding...

[lethal]

More or less, I agree with Judge Kao.

I go to a second tier school. For us, its harder to find a job because of the competition from top tier schools in the area. COnsequently, we don't haev as many alumni in the top firms making it even harder to find a job. Its a self-fulfilling cycle.

It all boils down to reputation...and reputations take years, even decades to change...or many, many millions of dollars.

[sandra]

you also get bumped up for arbitrary reasons. like the size of your library. gifts to the graduating class. etc.

[d-boy]

this will sound very harsh....

when i was thinking of applying to law school, i decided i'd only go to one of the ivy league or a comparable quality school.

because of the DEBT, and the difficulty in finding a high-paying job to repay that debt coming out of a less-prestigious school. if the tuition is not an issue for you, then the equation obviously changes.

also, people graduate from no-name law schools and land great jobs/become huge successes all the time. but it is much more difficult. you have to weigh the risks and the odds.

an ivy law degree pretty much puts the odds in your favor of landing that $125,000/year gig in NY or San Fran or D.C. straight out of school.

law is a very prestige-oriented profession unfortunately. ultimately......you should follow your heart.

[lethal]

zoo, you're of course right. If you want a big firm job in NYC/DC/SF/LA, then the odds greatly increase if you go to a top 15 school...problem with that is they're pretty damn hard to get into.

For me, with my UGPA, it wasn't an option, regardless of what I scored on the LSATs...the closest I got was the wait-list at Penn.

For most people, for various reasons this is the case...so you compromise.

I decided that the best thing for me would be to go to a second tier state school. After gaining in-state residency (which is very easy in NJ), tuition would only be $12K/year, a deal compared to the places that cost twice as much.

I'm doing well and have decent chances at those firm jobs after graduation. Basically, you haev to work harder to perform better at a lower ranked school than you do at a higher ranked one to achieve the same means.

[TyroneK(prettypretty)]

Yeah. I get a lot more slack here at a top 10 school. With my work ethic, it'd definitely be worse if I didn't have the name going for me.

But the top firm jobs still aren't a big certainty. Especially if you're not performing up to curve. Law school is a place where you just keep running into more and more hoops to go through. The competition gets progressively tougher and you sort of self-destruct if you start bottom-dwelling. The firms like to pretend they search for a diversity of backgrounds, so they're only going to hire 1-2 people from each school for each office. It's not a place where you can relax after getting admitted somewhere. You work even harder before graduation and it just ramps up even more afterwards.

But being higher ranked does make life easier.

[sandra]

i know southwestern and university of the pacific (mcgeorge law school) - both 2nd or 3rd tier schools - kick out the bottom third of their first year classes. i've heard horror stories from friends about their colleagues finding notices in their mailboxes after finals. law school's stressful as it is - i don't need any unnecessary stress.

[Rogmok]

for real??

why did they do that? cause the bottom third weren't performing?

[sandra]

Originally posted by Rogmok@Apr 11 2003, 08:34 AM
for real??

why did they do that? cause the bottom third weren't performing?
i think they usually accept more students into their first-year classes with the expectation that the bottom 1/3 is going to drop out. i'm not sure of the exact reason why they do this. perhaps to create a more competitive environment? or to get more money? the first-years that do get kicked out do not receive a tuition refund.

[lethal]

Many schools overadmit their first year class to weed out those who cannot perform. The expectation is if a person cannot finish at least close to the mean, then they probably can't pass the bar exam. Part of it is to raise the school's bar passage rate. Another part is for money. Some schools admit more people into the first year class then they have facilities for with the expectation that a sizable percentage of them will not be back for the second and third year.

Basically, a school's bar passage rate factors into its reputation, so the higher the rate, the higher ranked it may be.

As an aside, US News has started ranking tho top 100 law schools now. Previously, it limited itself to the top 50 and earlier, only the top 25.

A lot of schools that used to be in the unranked second tier are shocked to discover that they are not "at the top of the second tier" as they have been claiming to be. Although, it seemed to me that the entire second tier claimed to be "close to the top," before the ranking of the second tier, I'm not sure why they believed their own propaganda.

[Fireblade]

Did they recieve a notice beforehand that they weren't performing as well as the other students? I would imagine that maybe these guys were slackers and didn't take law school seriously, in which case, they were kicked out.

but I'm almost certain I'm wrong.

[lethal]

Basically, they set the minimum GPA at like 2.10 or so, then put the class on a B-/C+ curve, so half of each class is earning below a 2.5 in every class. If you perform below average in enough classes, then you're gone. First semester grades serve as the warnings.