First off, Chicago generally has higher LSAT medians than Stanford.

Secondly, according to Leiter, Chicago has a better faculty than Stanford. (Chicago: 4.7 Mean / 5.0 Median, same as Harvard. Stanford: 4.5 Mean / 4.5 Median, only a little better than Columbia.)

Thirdly, Chicago places far more SCOTUS Clerks than Stanford (50 vs. 29 from 1991-2001.) This is better than Harvard on a per-capita basis, and kicks the crap out of Stanford, given that they have comparable class-size.

And, of course, Chicago is far more national, ranking in the top 3 in both major placement surveys. (Stanford is 6 and 9.)

In terms of overall reputation, both currently get a 4.7 rating from lawyers and judges in USNews. The peer rating is also usually within a point.

The only areas where Stanford has an edge are in GPA (meaningless) and academic placement, where it does somewhat (but not terribly) better.

NYU and Columbia have comparable student numbers to Chicago, but are so far behind in all other categories it's not even funny. NYU, despite being far larger, has less than one-fifth as many SCOTUS clerks. On a per-capita basis, Chicago places over 1200% better in this area. Columbia's not much closer. Chicago is also superior in national placement, academic placement, overall reputation, and faculty quality.

If anything indicates a diconnect between USNews and reality, it's the relative ranking of these schools, especially Chicago vs. Columbia & NYU.

As far as Stanford goes, I have to think that its reputation is artificially boosted by the strength of its undergrad program, along with the fact it's the dominant regional school on the West Coast. That, and the nice weather, are probably the main reasons it's ranked in the top 5. In most categories, it's certainly not top 3, aside from maybe weather.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2845907)

l

First, there is no doubt that Columbia has objectively "better" students than Chicago, even if the difference is slight. Higher LSAT numbers, higher GPA's, higher percentage of cross-admits choose to attend, and higher yied rate.

Second, although Chicago has an excellent faculty, its strength is really focused on law and economics. So if that's what you're interested in, then you should simply go there. But if your interdisciplinary interests are in something else -- for example philosophy like I am --- then Columbia is clearly better.

Third, if Chicago has more national placement, I am sure it is largely because of choice. I know that Columbia places extraordinarily well in California (see for, example, GTO's employment study), and what could be more national than that? Michigan probably has a more national placement than Columbia because it's in the middle of the country. And obviously Columbia is better.

Fourth, the reputation ratings between Columbi and Chicago are nearly identitical. I believe the judges give Chicago .1 advantage, while the peers give Columbia a .1 advantage. I am not sure why you put so much emphasis on the judges score, especially since they have like a 20% response rate.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2846291)

Ned Block, Kit Fine, Peter Unger, Sydney Shoemaker, Jerry Fodor, Derek Parfit....damn.

Chicago has Nussbaum (although leiter says she has an offer on the table from harvard) and Columbia has Raz and Waldron but IMHO NYU is the superior choice.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3017363)

And, of course, I agree with you that Law and Econ is not Chicago's only strong area. I guess because Chicago is so strongly associated with Law and Econ, it is easy to leap to that assumption (or to want to leap to that assumption).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019364)

The student numbers between Chicago and Columbia are essentially identical.

Rep ratings are also close, but Chicago usually has a better rating among lawyers and judges.

The reason I put emphasis on the lawyer/judge rating is because they do the actual hiring. (The response rate is actually around 30%, which is a a pretty good response rate for any survey.)

Finally, Chicago is clearly superior in SCOTUS and academia. This, coupled with it's smaller class, indicates it probably places better pretty much everywhere.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848480)

In the Ciolli national placement rankings, Chicago is higher.

In the Letier elite-firm national placement rankings, Chicago is higher.

In the SCOTUS ranking, Chicago is much higher.

In the academic placement ranking, Chicago is higher.

In the lawyer/judge reputation rankings, Chicago is higher.

In the faculty quality rankings, Chicago is much higher.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848521)

The Ciolli and Leiter national placement studies are comprehensive, objective placement studies. So are the SCOTUS and academic placement studies. The reputation surveys are the most worthwhile and important part of the USNews rankings, which is why they recieve the greatest weight in the ranking.

Taken together, they represent far better data than the overall USNews rankings, which are esentially cat piss.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848651)

Second, as far as Leiter's faculty rankings go, even he admits that Chicago's very strong performance is largely or mostly due to law and economics. So as I said before, if you are interested in law and econ, there is no better place for you than Chicago. But if you are interested in other stuff (i.e. corporations or internatoinal or law and philosophy) then there is no point in taking Leiter's faculty rankings literally.

Finally, you keep referring to the USNews reputation ratings, but I still don't show how that is a something in Chicago's favor. To me, they are essentially equivalent (and perhaps something in Columbia favor if we give the peer ratings more weight because they have a higher response rate).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848781)

If you want something we suck at, consider Critical Theories.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848999)

there is no doubt that this is the case. if one looks at the faculty ranking breakdown in leiter's appendix, one sees that chicago is noticeably stronger than columbia only in law and economics, and then in all of the other categories they are neck and neck (except critical theories where columbia destroys chicago). strip chicago's strength in l&e and chicago would lose a significant part of its faculty strength.

all else said chicago is very strong (business law, con law, crim law, admin law, l&e of course and legal history).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3018715)

The more global problem is that Leiter's rankings represent only one possible (and incomplete) division of legal academia into subparts. It is a little odd, for example, to lump all of "Business Law" into a single category. And as far as I can tell, Tax isn't anywhere in his rankings (unless it falls into the Business Law catch-all--or maybe L&E?).

So, it doesn't make much sense to use Leiter's rankings to count areas in which one school or another does well, because there are many different ways one could equally-well partition legal academia, and the resulting count could vary as a result.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019471)

at the end of the day, i think it is more than reasonable to claim that chicago's real strength (ie. what put them in second place) is their strength in law and economics. take away that dominance and i think the difference between chicago and say nyu, becomes marginal at best.

edit: look at the scores for individual scholastic areas. chicago's dominance in law and economics is extreme (4.8), compared to the schools ranked second, yale/harvard (4.5). on leiter's scale, that is quite a difference.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019584)

And thus Tax really need not have been considered somewhere in the specialty rankings. Instead, Tax people were considered however the respondents wanted in the overall rankings, and potentially not at all for the specialty rankings if they did not fit into any of the speciality categories as the respondents interpreted them. The same is true, by the way, for Torts, Contracts, Property ... they have no clear place in Leiter's specialty rankings, and yet scholars in those areas could be considered for the overall rankings.

Anyway, of course I agree that L&E is Chicago's most notable area of strength. But I think your counterfactual is a bit problematic. What exactly would it mean to take away Chicago's strength in that area? Do you mean taking away all the professors who do L&E? Because those same professors also do lots of "Business Law" and various public law as well. So that really would destroy Chicago's faculty, but not just because they would no longer be teaching L&E.

In that sense, L&E is not exactly discrete in the same way that something like Criminal Law is discrete, because L&E crosses many other disciplines. And in general, what makes the overall faculty at Chicago strong is not a bunch of specialists in L&E, but rather a bunch of very good legal scholars, many of whom do L&E as one of many things that they do.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019722)

1)the difference between chicago and say columbia wrt faculty is imo chicago's almost monopolistic dominance in l&e. simply put

2)your current trolling is very un-sexpert'ish

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019757)

But I'll give you a simple example of my point. We were discussing Lisa Bernstein on another thread. Professor Bernstein is on the L&E faculty. She is also one of the top young scholars in Private Commercial Law.

So, I'm sure Professor Bernstein contributes to Chicago's reputation in L&E. But is that distinct from her contribution to Chicago's reputation in Business Law? Does it even make sense to treat those as discrete areas?

By the way, it is not true that Chicago has anything close to a monopoly in L&E. It is undoubtedly the strongest single faculty in this area, but there are many people at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale doing L&E stuff, plus a decent number at many other schools.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019822)

But for the most part, I think people know all this, and in that sense I think the exact details of something like USNWR do not matter too much.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2846303)

I therefore can't imagine that Columbia and NYU are much more "selective" by any reasonable definition, especially since Chicago has a smaller class.

(How does Chiashu come out on this? I think it's easier to get into NYU with the right LSAT score.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848490)

Instead, I'm simply an objective observer noting objective facts. The fact that Chicago is ranked below schools that don't place as well indicates some severe weaknesses in the USNews methodology.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848660)

My recollection is that you could get the highest or the lowest odds for any of CCN with the right combination of GPA and LSAT.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849035)

You've got your logic backwards here. The fact that Chicago's class is half the size of Columbia's and NYU's should make it easier for them to be more selective (EDIT: think of Yale vs. Harvard). If C/N shrank their class sizes to the size of Chicago's, the gap in selectivity would be even greater... hell, if Penn or Virginia cut their classes to that size, they'd probably have higher medians than Chicago too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2850311)

I've heard Sexpert say this over and over again, but quite frankly, I find it hard to believe. I think the desirability of location as a deciding factor is grossly overexaggerated. A lot of us who apply to the top law schools try to go to the best possible school we can --- and that is by far the most important consideration. Compared to everything else like reputation of the school or financial packages, location is a very minor thing (for example, I haven't heard very many good things about New Haven, but look at Yale's yield rate).

Plus it isn't like Chicago is some kind of awful place. True, it isn't NYC, but at the same time it isn't in the south or a place like kansas.

It is a plain fact that a (significant) majority of Columbia and Chicago cross-admits choose to attend to Columbia. And until I hear a convincing argument for why this is so, I think it is a feather in Columbia's cap.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848731)

Again, all this is anecdotal, but it strikes me as more common for it to work this way (in favor of the Northeast or Cali) than the other way (in favor of the Midwest).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849147)

The only school west of the mississippi I'm applying to is Texas

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019543)

But I do think it becomes a factor among "peer schools". Part of the reason I believe that is pretty much anecdotal: I talked to a bunch of CCN cross-admits at Chicago's Admitted Students Weekend (I was one myself and still weighing my options), and a lot of the people leaning toward Columbia and NYU cited wanting to be in NYC as a major factor. It was a factor for me, in fact. And I've seen a lot of that on this board too (more people leaning toward Columbia or NYU because they want to be in NYC than people leaning toward Chicago because they want to be in Chicago--although the latter do exist).

The other reason I believe that is less anecdotal, but still quite casual: I've noticed that this general pattern seems to exist throughout the law school spectrum, with schools in desirable areas (like NYC or Cali) generally having better student numbers than their "peer schools" in less desirable locations.

Of course, all this is begging the question of what a "peer school" actually means in the first place. But insofar as Chicago and Columbia are peers, I do think the cross-admit effect is caused, at least in part, by Columbia having a more desirable location.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849129)

however, unfortunately, if you are continuously underrated then you eventually become the lower ranking. self fulfilling prophecy. thus, i fear that soon this won't be true.

chicago is the shit. went to CLS though. new fucking york. can't beat it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2846521)

NYC is great if you want to be urinated on.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848501)

i don't know why you find GPA a meaningless statistic (other than that it doesn't assist your argument). i understand that GPAs are variable, and are not equal across the institutions, but the undergraduate institutions represented at both chicago and stanford are remarkably similar. they are, predominantly, ivy league institutions, (lots of yales and harvards), prestigious public universities, and prestigious liberal arts colleges. that stanford is comprised of people who tend to graduate with a 3.85 from yale, while chicago is comprised of people who graduate with a 3.6 from yale is, i think, statistically meaningful. given that both schools have roughly equal lsats, the difference in gpa becomes even more significant. (besides, i think assuming that the lsat is any more or less meaningful a barometer than gpa is a mistake, and, in your assumption, gives too much credit to the test). in my experience, and in studying the data, the student body at stanford is superior.

location, i think, is far less relevant on a statistical level than anyone here claims it would be. the reason for chicago's low yield, in my opinion, is not its location, but rather its 1. lack of significant (to say full-ride) scholarships and/or 2. its insufficient loan repayment program relative to HYS and NYU. if chicago had the loan repayment program of Stanford, I *may* have enrolled there, given its other strengths. they don't, however, and despite the $60,000-ish scholarship they provided me, i knew my attending chicago would result in at least a few years of corporate work.

it's no surprise that some of the best, and most qualified law students are idealists. they enter law school with altruistic intentions. to attract the best students in the country to a law school, the school must play to those intentions. stanford does, chicago doesn't. i think this leaves chicago less desirable for students and less of a law school than it could be.

the SCOTUS placement may be a result of many things not having to do with quality. nevertheless, there is no doubt that chicago is better than any law school, save yale at placing its students into the SCOTUS. i wonder, however, how stanford and chicago compare for CoA clerkships.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2848966)

By the way, did you get a scholarship from Stanford? Because it would be very unusual to get $60K out of a LRAP program, even the most generous ones.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849217)

the point is that most people admitted at stanford are deciding btwn hys and those at chicago are not. that stnaford admits are choosing among hys and chicago admits are choosing among ccn can't be explained strictly by better numbers alone, so i do think there's some weird soft factors things going on that does contribute to some differences in the stduent body.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849291)

the only schools i was consdiering before stanford was nyu and hls and i was going to nyu.

cls didn't want me and chicago threw a crapload of money but i didnt' want them.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849361)

But I agree with your basic point--the schools are not entirely numbers-maximizing.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849316)

I really doubt the truth of this statement. There are around 500 people who score 175+ on the LSAT, and it's exceedingly unlikely that once Harvard and Yale take their share, S and Chi could fill their entire classes with the remnants, especially with a 3.9 GPA filter.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849446)

i did get money from stanford, but the lrap program provides loan forgiveness for any employment under 40K, and on a graduated scale up to 80K. stanford's superiority in the resources arena wasn't an issue of absolute amount saved in law school, but rather the freedom to take a very low paying job after i graduated if i wanted to. i read over chicago's hormel program, and perhaps i misread it, but it still seemed like i would have substantial loans to pay, even if i entered the program...is that incorrect?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849331)

Incidentally, I know no details of the Stanford program, so I can't compare. It is certainly entirely possible if you are looking at taking a job that will pay less than $40K that you could get more out of that program than Chicago's. But without belaboring the point, and again in the absence of any information about Stanford's program, most people end up getting far less than the theoretical maximum from the LRAP, through a combination of things like making a decent amount of money in PI/gov, to getting married, to having better options (like loan consolidation and prepayment), and so on.

So, I generally think people need to be careful about counting on LRAP's to make up for straight cash.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849533)

the lrap program covers all loan repayments for graduates who earn salaries under $40,000/year. this means that the payments one would typically make that year would be covered by the school. above 40K, the amount of money one is expected to pay back is adjusted to the salary, and will never leave the graduate with less earnings that 40K.

the hormel program qualified me for 25K in forgiveness, but i would still have to pay back the remaining loans on the same schedule. so if i made 40K or 50K, the loan repayment would be just as significant as if i made 125K.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2849633)

Of course, you are right that you might still end up paying more initially than you would with Stanford's plan. But there are a couple more things to consider. One nice thing about the Hormel is that it doesn't consider spousal income. I don't know if that is true of Stanford, but if not it could make a big difference. Another nice thing about the Hormel is that it doesn't matter how you structure your debt. For example, you can consolidate and stretch out your loan payments, even using a graduated plan to really reduce your early payments, and then prepay with the Hormel. In most traditional LRAPs, however, your benefit is tied to your actual scheduled payments, which means if you stretch them out or otherwise reduce them, you actually reduce your award, and you don't get to offset prepayment.

In other words, to maximize your benefits under a traditional LRAP, you often have to give up other ways of reducing your payments, either in the short or long term, or both. And you may have to worry about the consequences of marriage.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2850475)

:(

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2850356)

How did it happen that making the tired claim that this ghetto shithole is UNDERrated became the signature conversation piece for people who desperately want to be thought smart; really, really smart. smart people love "rigor" and Chicago is full of it; it must be, what with its hair-splitting number grades, punishingly low enforced mean, and oppressive course load. Chicago boosterism usually comes in the form of a comparison with the appallingly UNrigorous Stanford or Yale -- gradeless, abundantly pass-fail, unserious; students who do nothing and know nothing. Chicago: graded, competitive, serious... That it's really just a ruptured ego rehab clinic for Harvard rejects is a fact not emphasized. I have seen a homely Chicago girl, deep into her second year, still spontaneously weeping upon Proustian recollections of the stiff NO Harvard sent her, in brisk three-week turnaround time from the point her doomed application was deemed complete. Happy December, chickiepoo. Then the Yale axe fell, as it does. Welcome to the New Year, dipshit. January passed; February crawled by with those joyless acceptances that only accentuated the horror of Plan B: Georgetown, which is a "Law Center," a failed euphemism if ever there was one. Next: woeful Cornell. Oh, what a very bad school. And -- what do we have here?!? -- a Boston University full-ride. Ummmm, no. On second thought in stead of BU I'd prefer the f free roasted dogshit mignon with a pus reduction sauce and a heaping blob of earwax garnish. Thank you no. I am woe. Add to that the fact that the imbecile whoalways posts about how Sean Hannity is a "serious thinker" just got into Harvard. Time for you to start some damage-control posting here, on the PR board, pretending to seriously consider this BU affront. You wave the flag of thrift and test out a quaintly anachronistic abhorrence of debt. Substantively, you add in some tommyrot about how BU's "really strong in ...'international law,' whatever the fuck that is. BU? Yeah, right. But you need something that gives the illusion that Georgetown, if it comes to that, isn't the three years incarcerated in a smegma chamber that it is. So good, so fine you'll drop the cash dollars despite that lovely gift from BU. You're forming a cover story; something to puff the very real and very nauseating prospect of joining 600 other defeated mediocrities at ... fuck, no ... Georgetown. And you thought going to college at Penn was bad. . Still, there are two more to hear from. Two more law schools ...There's that late April Stanford rejection (inconsiderate bastards) which at least affords you ample time to manufacture the next layer in the cover story: e.g., a strict policy against California, a suburban aversion, a preference for bigness, all of which eliminate Stanford from the sweepstakes. Be sure, too, to ridicule their tepid 25-75 LSAT %ile, too. Kill it dead, if you must. Maybe you thrust out of your frozen horror by sending off one of those strategic "withdrawal" letters, the way all those clowns do when Harvard puts them on hold ... ".you cant't fire me ... i quit! " Adios, Stanford. Suck my cunt, you no-SCOTUS-clerking/dike-dean-TTT. ... die, die, you gravy-sucking pig. .... and now, then, there is just one. Chicago. The Law School. Chicago does do that pathetic yield-maximizing stall, so February passes, March crawls. They haven't the nuts to try the ricockulous move Stanford does. So they write. Ever rigorous, The Law School requests the pleasure of your company. Not so fast . No decision has been made. They want to inspect you in person. The "evaluative interview. Looking for people skills. And evident thirst for knowledge. The life of the law is the law itself. It seems you've fucked up; quite possible3 when the went "behind the numbers." Maybe those two essay paragraphs about why the 171, exactly where you topped out in Kaplan, is a truer measure than the 164. maybe it was two paragraphs too many. You weren't an auto-admit. So off to the "evaluative interview," and you give them not much to evaluate. You stay on message, though: owing to its RIGOR, Chicage is now, and ever was, your FIRST CHOICE. Tell your audience what it wants to hear. Then they decide, engaging the only evaluation that matters in this gig. Looks like they can break even with your sorry ass. Median-wise, your 171 nullifies the 159 URM from Howard they took yesterday. They'll swallow your 3.46; sometimes that's the price of a yield-lock, and you're that. (No one's swallowing the Howard guy, if you catch my racy double entendre.) These admissions guys talk, as you suspected, and you wisely decide against telling them it had come down to Chicago or Harvard for you; first versus second choice; no choice at all. Never get caught lying. Bad idea, even worse than telling that stupid girl from Emory you were "a Kennedy." These things get found out. Like they say, no sense lying about your cock size. Turns out you didn't need to fake a bidding war. The usual stampede of all Chicago's best admitees are going to Y and H and S without so much as the courtesy of telling C to go pound sand. Why tell them what they already know? They need to fill place #143 of their famously teeny-weenie class. The assumed occupant got unheld at Harvard this morning; never so relieved, he had the audacity to ask Chicago for his deposit back. They don't need these headaches. You're in. They write, very pleased to offer admission; then a recital of just how "keen" the competition was for the few precious "seats" in the class of 2006; and, finally, a paragraph celebrating the legal profession with a toploftiness and richly felt purpose so precisely at variance with reality that you are unsettled by the suspicion that you might be the target of a satire so subtly corrosive that you will never connect it with the despair that will progress, exponentially; beginning as a persistent annoyance progressing into a pervasive physical and mental crapulence and ending in the crippling burden as lumber and writhe and tumble toward the epiphany. What epiphany is that? That this "career" of yours --BIGLAW! -- has somewhat less to recommend it than residence in the "shoe" at Pelican Bay. For now, though, the seed of tragic hopelessness finds expression in the "Law Discussion Area." You post -- IN AT CHICAGO -- and, without overtly lying, you manufacture the entirely erroneous impression that you "chose" Chicago, being also the originator of the CHICAGO v. HARVARD and YALE v. CHICAGO threads, under various of your insipid monikers, all selected from either Pulp Fiction or Friends. Be careful not to ass fuck your credibility, though. The purported Yale turn-down is a tough one to pull off. The "New Haven's-an-armpit" trope just doesn't pass the ha-ha test. It's too puny a reason to toss away a lifetime of being supposed a genius ... fuck it: always good to give your fabrications a little populist tint, not to mention a dollop of truth. Join the commiseration thread of Yale rejects; pretend to be sad for that Nuisance turd; be one of the masses for once. Getting rejected isn't the same thing as not getting in, You merely did not get in. You claim to have been wait-listed; and, with admirable maturity, you hold out no hope. Remember, too, this lie must be built on several fronts. Lard up the Harvard thread with grave concern about big classes, low morale, faculty acrimony, and speculation about a precipitous US News ranking drop. Throughout April, you go political, fulminating about Tribe and Dershowitz and how Duncan Kennedy drives a far-too-expensive car. to be a genuine socialist. Chicago's "conservative climate" is just a better fit for you; marginal cost curves figure in your every analytical moment; you read Posner opinions on the crapper; Coase is as important as Socrates. There is that little stinging glitch, though. Somehow Stanford neglected to process that request to quash your application, which is not favorably acted upon and this is memoriaized in a letter that suggests the Stanford Admissions Office ignores their LaserWriter Pro's TONER LOW warning. On May 7th they regret to inform and wish you well at any of the scores of other law schools that, they assure you "offer excellent programs of legal instruction." (Which, you have no doubt, they do. What they don't offer, is really the only important thing Stanford does offer: the opportunity to sit for three years with your thumb up your ass, comatose, and still get the job you'll have to bust nuts to get coming from whichever craphole you end up at.) It's sealed. An ugly, styleless maroon CHICAGO LAW, Champion sweatshirt has arrived, per your online order. You wear it, eliciting congratulations from the babe you want to rail. She's so happy for you, and you're so wrapped up in the fantasy of creaming on her tits you nearly miss perky aside that her boyfriend remains in the throes of elation from his admission to Yale, back in January. Throughout the summer, you bookmark links that embody the wisdom US News lacks. Your are heading off, soon, to your own first choice, which also places first in a ranking produced by the rigorous methodology conceived by a statistician from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. That Harvard tied for #14 undermines your confidence in the ranking diminishes the likelihood it will supplant US News' preeminence. So you go. Your Hyde Park apartment is actually rather nice. Your housemate went to Harvard College. One night, instead of jacking off before sleep, you register as an active component of your self-conception the notion that, transitively, your housemate's undergraduate credential nullifies the Harvard rejection that left you lusterless and unlaid at your senior prom, -- and has persisted as a gnawing ache, going on five years. You are now on equal footing with a Harvard graduate. Should your law school prowess exceed his -- say a 75 in Torts to his 74 -- you will once and for all flick away the scab of that Harvard wound. First cut is the deepest. As it turns out, your housemate is an engaging, witty fellow. He's porking the big bosomed lady with the Dutch accent. Wow! He offers to you, his new chum, the story of his own execution -- by lethal injection -- as expected, he painlessly relates, by the HLS admission staff. You pretend to explore what might have caused things to go awry, flatulating the usual fatuousness about Harvard being excessively "numbers driven," the "arbitrariness" of it all, dangling the threat of going on at some length, when he offers up the only information you genuinely care to know about him: : 178/3.34 ..Of course some one will inevitably have the 6th percentile college GPA in every HLS class; probably not a white guy from Greenwich, though. Friendship is built through reciprocity. So you tell your own story. You attempt to weave compassion into the telling of your story, being careful not to appear boastful about not just possessing, but discarding something he does not possess. HLS. Dreamy, So, your story: the grueling back-and-forth ... one day it's Chicago, the next Harvard; the hardest decision you've ever made; that feeling of immense responsibility to yourself; discovering and summoning the emotional maturity to pierce the specious veil that is prestige. With the bearing of a battle weary soldier you tell what it is to do something rarely done -- circumnavigate the Earth, dunk a basketball on a regulation hoop, turn down Harvard Law School . You picked Chicago. You chose, you adorable little existentialist. You are not exposed, chiefly because this a shared lie, Community glue. (Postscript: Throughout the 1Lyear you and your housemate discover much commonality, He, too, prefers the Stones to the Beatles. You both smoke pot. neither is circumcised. You've each fucked 5 girls; gotten head from several others. Each of you applies to transfer. He gets into HLS. He turns down Harvard Law School. Of course no two people are exactly alike. Your desire to transfer wanes around the time Stanford and Yale's decisions on your transfer applications reach you by mail. You begin the CHIGAGO 1L TAKING QUESTIONS thread. One of your alter ego monikers asks simply: how do you like Chicago. You love it. You wouldn't go anywhere else and, you note, there were other places you could have gone. Same for your housemate. He transfers to Yale.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#2850428)

haven't read anything but the line up in the title is simply correct.

if chicago were in nyc i'd be there

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3018814)

Also, one note: NYU and CLS are much better for international law than Chicago.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019640)

However, international law doesn't exist.

Just kidding. Sorta.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019744)

btw you are flirting dangerously with some joe_vaj trolling.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019824)

International Law is a little different, at least as I understand the definition of the discipline, in that it purports to be about the laws that govern international matters. That is what I was joking about, insofar as it is not clear that there are such laws. But it is just a joke in the sense that I still think treaties and such are worthy of study.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019964)

yes.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3028217)

hth

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3019714)

In other words, I think small differences in matriculant numbers will have no detectable effect on the experience of attending the respective schools. And I don't think the argument that employers should care about these population statistics makes much sense either (they could always just ask the individual applicants for their LSAT scores, rather than rely on induction), and there are other ways of just testing directly for the behavior of employers over the respective schools.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3028837)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3028284)

From 1992 through 1998, Chicago was #4 in the USNWR rankings, which, as you note, more or less went along with how employers perceived Chicago. For the 1999 rankings, USNWR changed (and hid much of) its methdology, and since then Chicago has been #6. Did anything substantive change in 1999, or since? Not as far as I can tell. Moreover, as far as I can tell the change in USNWR rankings had no immediate effect on Chicago's actual reputation among employers, who continued to perceive Chicago as something like a close #4 (at worst).

Nonetheless, from 1999 until maybe a couple years ago, some prospective and current students were arguing that eventually some convergence would occur between Chicago's actual reputation among employers and its USNWR ranking. But over time, this convergence has not been occuring, and we have actually accumulated additional evidence and analysis indicating that Chicago does in fact remain in higher regard among employers (eg, the various law firm placement studies, studies of SCt clerkship hiring, and studies of academic hiring).

So, I get the sense that the notion that Chicago's reputation among employers was going to converge on its post-1998 USNWR ranking has been fading away, to the point where most people now think that the current situation is pretty stable.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3029092)

yes. chicago has seen a decline in its academic rep. in years gone by chicago had rep scores greater than or equal to columbia. now, for the first time chicago's academic rep score is below columbia's (which incidentally carries greater weight than the l/j score), while the l/j rep score (that carries less weight) is still just .1 above columbia. so it is not clear that if usnews went back to its old methodology that chicago would jump back to a number 4 ranking.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3031346)

It is also worth mentioning that in US News, the difference in overall score between Columbia and Chicago is greater than the difference between Chicago and any other top 14 school. The gap between Columbia and Chicago is the same as the gap between Chicago and Georgetown.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3031800)

Of course you can draw your own conclusions about whether per-student spending is a valid metric for assessing school merit.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#3030984)

::single tear::

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#7282807)

Edit: Of course, this isn't to say I wasn't working my ass off, it was just I was doing it by working for things I actually care about (pro bono) rather than studying stuff I will never need to know to that level of detail in the future.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=186820&forum_id=2#7282950)