<p>hi folks</p>
<p>i'm not a law forum regular so if this question has been asked before, my apologies.</p>
<p>a friend of mine got accepted to this program. i don't think she got accepted anywhere else.</p>
<p>it seems to rank pretty low. is it worth it for her to pay her way through this degree? are there any other considerations she should have with respect to attending? how likely will she be able to come out with a decent career prospect at the end?</p>
<p>New York Law School (not to be confused with NYU law school) is a rather old (over 110 years) local school that has many graduates in local law firms as well as in politics. It is a good school of its type, and if your friend is aiming to work in the New York area, will give her many good contacts among alumni, including local judges.
It also has built a good reputation in the copyright field.
However, if she's looking for a name that will be recognized outside the area, this is not it.</p>
<p>The school does not place very well. Paying full price, or even near full price, for a degree that will not give you a good shot at a job paying over 65K in one of the most expensive cities in the country is a very risky proposition.</p>
<p>thanks for the replies.</p>
<p>dado - yeah - what u write there sounds pretty similar to what i found on wikipedia. </p>
<p>its kinda surprising its so old (and used to be the biggest law school in the US apparently) but has basically no reputation. how on earth could this be?</p>
<p>What are the chances of me getting into a T14 law school graduating from a 4th tier college for my undergraduate studies? Assume I had an adequate GPA with LSAT scores in this range 168-175. Would a person from a forth tier school have the capacity to handle the work load of a T14 law school? Assuming one was admitted to one of these schools, coming from a 4th tier school, would it be more prudent to go ahead and aim under the radar and go to a lower ranking school, say in the top 35, or so.
I guess my question is, does the LSAT show an acurate measurment of one's aptitude to handle the rigor of top law schools? I might be over analyzing, but I cannot believe, even if my scores were adequate, that my acceptance to a T14 would be near as likely as someone coming from the Ivy League, Georgetown, Berkeley, or even a places like Orberlin, Tufts, and Fordham with comparable scores. I would think that a majority of people that apply to these T14 schools come from tier one and tier two colleges, so most likely the ones accepted are going to be from this pool of applicants.</p>
<p>Spades: New York Law School is a local, independent law school, not affiliated with a university. For many years its focus was strictly on producing lawyers who could practice locally, and not on academics, and it did a fine job of that. That has changed, but in the law school or university world it takes a good many years to change an institution;s image.</p>
<p>Madclown: gaining admission to a law school and being able to handle the work are not quite the same thing. There are some students at colleges below the first two tiers who could handle the work at a top law school. GPA and LSAT scores can indicate that. However, whether top-tier law schools consider those students to be at the same level as graduates of top-tier colleges is another issue, and one that I'm not in a position to comment on.</p>
<p>Madclown,
If you think that tier 4 college graduates as a group may be incapable of doing the work of a top law school, you just shouldn't apply. Give me a break, just because a law school is tops means that the workload is THAT much higher than a lower ranked school?</p>
<p>tomslawsky: It's not that I think that Me or other students from 4th tier schools would be especially challenged at top graduate level work. Again I speak completely ignorant of the matter, but it would seem intuitive that law school admissions would consider undergrad ranking a big factor considering how hard it is to even be accepted those colleges, and on top of that get very good grades. Believe me, I have gotten a lot of advice stating that the undergraduate institution does not matter as long as your scores and grades are adequate. The real problem here is the 9 to 15% acceptance rates at these schools. Common sense tells you that that more than 9 to 15% have adequate scores and grades at these places. I think the real question here is, "what percentage are turned down who apply at top 14 law schools who get adequate scores and grades?" and "why are those people turned down?" I of course realize that you're not going to get in everywhere you apply no matter what. I'm simply being a realist in asking this crucial question. I also realize what I think really doesn't matter a whole lot to Yale, Stanford, Boalt Hall, Duke admissions. That's why I'm trying to understand their thought process more. I am satisfied with my intellectual capacity to learn and my dedication. I also happen to think that I can handle the workload that these schools offer, but like I said, It really is not about what I think.</p>
<p>Hit or miss. There are people who graduate at the top of their class at New York Law School who get plum big firm jobs over people from far better non-local law schools. There are also people in the middle of their class at New York Law School who pay a tremendous amount for a degree that has added little to their earning potential.</p>
<p>I have a friend who went to a Tier 4 undergraduate school, goy A's in every class but one, and an LSAT score high in the 99th percentile. He was admitted to Boalt (caveat, this was 25 years ago), and waitlisted at Stanford. He did very well at Boalt, and spent his third year as an exchange student at Harvard, where he also did very well.</p>