Didn't listen to bluebayou, now stuck between hard spot

Graduate School Law School
1

Hello. I’m back for my every-semester once a time post, where I also read forums

I am back, and I am stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It’s my senior year; I didn’t take bluebayou’s advice to gap year, so I’m K-JD.
Yes, I want to go into law school right away and already decided on applying this year, sorry about that.

But I need heavy advice.

I want to ED to either PENN or UChicago and enter big law. I was in the 168-172 range beforehand, and the digital exam was really relaxing tbh. (Something super calm about using a tablet, I guess it’s because I use a windows surface so it’s similar.)

My LSAT results come out next Monday.

My current GPA is a 3.97/4.00.

Money is not an issue. (So let’s take it out of the consideration.)
Yes yes, I know what you’re gonna say: why not take a few months and get your 172+ and be HYS competitive, or better yet, gap year and go for 174+ and goto HYS?

But I came here today to this forum for some advice because I’m unsure which school I’d love.

So today, I ask: UChicago or PENN Law?

I also want to ask about the location as well, anyone heard anything about which city/campus is prettier?

I want to be a lawyer as soon as I can, so that’s why I’m wanting to K-JD rather than gap year. It gets me closer to my dreams and I just wanna be a lawyer ASAP.

Thanks for understanding.

2

Oh I guess and also: why would I want to goto NYU over Upenn or Columbia over Uchicago.

Oh and also @bluebayou you will probably read this post soon! Hope you’re not too mad at me about this…

3

check back with your LSAT.

But to answer your question, neither. Not a fan of ED to law school, unless its to Northwestern for their financial deal.

btw: you don’t need a gap year for HLS, but you do need a high LSAT score. (that is what the gap year was all about: time to prep for the LSAT. The extra year of growing/paying bills is just a plus factor.)

Choosing a law school? What are your career goals? If you want to be a law professor, better aim for Yale. (prettier campus should not be a consideration.)

If money is no object*, attend the highest ranked school that you can get into. OTOH, if say, you have an SO and need to be in NYC, then choose one of those schools.

*family is independently wealthy and can easily just write a check for $300+k.

4

This is a pretty funny discussion to have before you have scores in front of you.

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Only commenting about the Penn campus and location in general.

Penn is right in the city of Philadelphia, and is walking distance from the main railway station - 30th Street Station, which serves both Amtrak, and SEPTA regional rail. This is a major convenience for getting to/from New York City, Washington DC, and even Boston, by rail, including the high speed Acela line. There is also a line from 30th Street to the airport, which makes this location extremely convenient for air travel as well, without having to deal with the major traffic that can jam up the highway routes to the airport. The campus also has plenty of green spaces for such an urban area, though you will be right on city streets when going in and out of the class buildings. It’s a short distance across the river from the Penn campus to Center City Philadelphia, about a half hour on foot, or a 5-10 minute subway or train ride. Location-wise, you’re surrounded by fabulous cultural and dining options, and if money isn’t an issue, then getting an apartment nearby shouldn’t be a major hassle. Internships and part-time employment opportunities in Philly will also be an easy commute, thanks to plentiful bus lines, and the subway.

Overall I agree with bluebayou that you should be considering the quality of the program, over everything else, but if location matters a lot to you, and you’re looking for a highly urban location, and easy access to more than one major city with internship and entry level job opportunities, then I might lean a bit more towards Philadelphia and New York, than Chicago. Chicago is a great city, and has plenty of opportunities all on its own, but if you want to be able to travel pretty easily between different locations while studying, without flying, the shorter travel distances on the East Coast may be a consideration.

6

It’s grad school, not college. You aren’t there for a pretty campus or social life.

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Law firm recruiting is pretty straightforward for BigLaw- the firms come on campus for three days in August after your first year. So being able to “travel while studying” is a tertiary consideration at best. The top firms rent hotel suites and do their interviewing there. Can’t imagine that travel for interviews would be a top consideration, VBSprints.

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Can’t believe that travel is a consideration at all, unless one has a family that can’t temporarily relocate. (frequently we encounter a SO who is in a medical program, for example)

If you can easily pay sticker for a T14, ‘commuting’ is not even an after-thought.

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If you are interested in Big Law, you have to shoot for the highest ranked school you can get into. Unless things changed drastically since I was involved in hiring for a Big Law firm, the number of flybacks/callbacks we would give varied greatly by school and there were a limited number of schools where we would even recruit. Geography also played a role. We were NYC based, so in addition to Columbia and NYU, we would recruit on campus at Fordham, Cardozo, Hofstra and Brooklyn Law. I am not sure a Chicago, LA, SF, DC or Boston firm would recruit at some of these schools. Conversely, my “territory” was California since I am UCB Law grad, and we recruited at UCB, Stanford, UCLA and USC only back then even though there were/ other fine law schools in California. Now some of this regionalism has gone away with all the big law firm mergers with regional offices doing their own hiring.

Separately, if you were going to a top 10 law school and you were in the top 25% to even 50% of your class, you were legitimately in play. For lesser law schools, you had to be in the top 5% to 15%. Our summer associate classes were predominately Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Cornell with a sprinkling of Yale, Stanford, UCB, UChic, UVA, UMich, G’town, Duke, Northwestern. It was hard to get students from the Cali schools to leave Cali!

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Top half of Columbia and NYU (and Penn, for that matter) students can easily get to any of those cities, as long as one has ties. Fordham et al, not so much.

And the flip side of that is that it hard to get students from NYC to leave NYC! (Nothing but a vast wasteland west of the Hudson. hahahaha)

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^ Yes, Columbia and NYU (and Penn) have national reach. The other schools listed not so much, but the point is if you can’t get into a top national school, you might have a chance at a regional level if you go to and do very well at a decent regional school, e.g. Fordham.

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I’d ask the question once you’ve applied to a slew of schools and have a slew of admissions in hand. With that GPA and those LSAT scores, you may well be admitted at both–and others in the top 10. But it’s premature to be asking this question.

I find choosing between Penn and Chicago to be somewhat unusual. Both are amazing schools; Chicago is perhaps a bit more selective, but Penn is an Ivy, and Penn is a job machine, so you can’t go wrong either way.

But, again: apply to a bunch of schools, get admitted to a bunch, and then weigh your offers.

13

OP ought to have his LSAT score by now, so things should be a bit clearer.

14

Guess that he may be disappointed with his score.

If so, study hard for the LSAT & retake it.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no “penalty” for retaking other than Yale which, if I recall correctly, wants to see all scores. And I could be wrong about Yale.