New President Announced

Berkeley salaries are public record since everyone works there is a state employee. I haven’t checked recently but a few years ago they were not even the top paying UC school. In fact at that time both UCLA and UC Davis paid more. If you check out the salaries of some of their stars especially the older ones, they are paid less sometimes considerably less than the folks at other state flagship universities. One of their elderly law professors said a few years ago he was happy to be at Boalt Hall at the end of his career even though he was earning half of what his peers at other institutions were paid. Rich academic tradition there. In 1969 the American Council on Education rated Berkeley, Harvard and Stanford the top three highest quality PhD programs as a whole. I do think Berkeley to some extent lives a little bit off its reputation of former years and there is a “hallo effect” on many of its PhD programs. It does however offer probably the greatest breadth of high quality PhD programs of any college anywhere. At last count it offered 33 languages. I will reiterate my former point that its professional schools do tarnish it a little a bit even if @JBStillFlying disagrees. Compare it to Yale which is not nearly as strong in as many areas but has the best Law School and a top 5 medical school. These go a long way toward enhancing academic prestige especially among certain members of the educated classes. If UChicago had a top three law school to go with its top five business school, it would be perceived a little more highly. And just for the record I am a graduate of the Law School.

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actually, I’m willing to agree that Berkeley might be running a bit on fumes at this point, and that the professional schools lag the academic departments. I was surprised that Haas and Law were ranked as high as they were and if it’s disputable that they are truly T10 I’d like to know more about that (my son’s pre-law counselor at UChicago told him that these schools are very very aware of the rankings and I haven’t seen its rank disputed). @rleaman I think we are in agreement on the med school but how do you see Law leapfrogging over Stanford’s money to compete with H and Y? By the way, one bugaboo is that both those schools take a huge number of their own and each other’s college grads. UChicago’s college representation is significantly less at its own law school, although they are still the highest representation of any particular feeder school. Law takes a huge variety of students from all over the place and also has the lowest yield AND the lowest LSAT scores of the T5. For a midwest school they do fantastic (and I wouldn’t expect less) but they just don’t compete well against the coasts. How to remedy that?

Boalt Hall has a superb faculty and always has. A little bit like UChicago. It’s weakness has been among its alumni, practicing lawyers and lack of high profile judges. UChicago is basically running in place. When I came out of undergrad in 1975, Harvard was the pinnacle followed by Yale and then a group of four equals: Columbia, Michigan, Stanford and UChicago. Michigan fell back to be replaced by NYU and Stanford leaped over Harvard. I do not think it was money but prominent alumni on the Supreme Court like O’Connor Rehnquist. UChicago law has never had a graduate on the Supreme Court. It also has fewer applications and a higher acceptance than its peers. Haas is a great school but has both an undergraduate program and PhD program which limit resources available to the flagship MBA program

Yeah that’s unfortunate. They have appellate court but no surpremes. ND is ahead of them at this point!

Do you know why this is? It’s been my impression that it’s tough there, but is that different from other top places?

Yes this can possibly dilute prestige of the graduate school as resources go to the ever more popular undergraduate program. Other flagships have seen that happen. I’m amazed that Haas is ranked as high as it is, given this reality - #7 on USNews! That is higher than Darden which is dedicated graduate program and also higher than Columbia, Yale, Stern and Tuck. Don’t know much about Yale but these others all send people to Wall Street from MBA (or did when I was at Booth).

Not sure why applications lower. Acceptance rate higher because of lower application. I am somewhat surprised because I would have thought the Obama presidency would have really piqued interest. UChicago law has long had a reputation of exceptionally mean arrogant professors which is tough when there are fewer than 200 in the class versus 575 at Harvard and 450 at Columbia. Haas has outstanding very academic research oriented PhD programs which really suck up resources. MBA’s are afterthoughts

And yet Haas is ranked #7!

Does this reputation of law at Chicago match your experience there? We know many who have attended over the years and most lived to talk about it. A friend with a current 2L indicated to me that the message has lightened up a bit; they were assured that their acceptance would be looked upon favorably by the top firms and don’t worry about grades blah de blah de blah. Not quite the “you’ve made it!” message of H but not quite the “Hell DOES freeze over” slogan from the '80’s either. They are a small class and so is the med school btw. But I thought Yale Law was similar size.

Yale, Stanford and UChicago were all at 160 until about 25 years ago and are now all about 200. Placement is much better because of this than Harvard or Columbia. I think things are less intense just because students will not put up with that any more

My third day of class my Torts Professor Richard Epstein asked the class some questions. After getting two unsatisfactory responses he called on me. I shrugged my shoulders. He asked me if I would like to come to the front of the class and put on a pantomime show for them. BTW I was also a student at Booth and an accounting prof told the class they could never be as smart as he was.

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Pretty typical for UChicago. Academics is a contact sport there and many an ego takes a bruising, usually in proportion to the amount of hubris going into the classroom. No grade inflation either. Very different environment from other places. At least in my day. BTW, at the time you attended they were probably tops in accounting - it was one of my concentrations and the education I received in that field was superlative.

It is why I chose to go there. Not a masochist but wanted a more intense academic experience than my undergrad. I never felt it was personal but it certainly was not the appropriate environment for everyone