<p>I would definitely pick BU over UMB.</p>
<p>My reason is that as I recall reading when I was in law school (in the law school paper), prestige of undergrad school is the 2nd most important factor in getting job offers. (The most important is your law school grades.)</p>
<p>I would think that the connections from BU would be more helpful over the course of your career, too.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I reiterate, for the sake of young naive students that may digest such wrong information at face value.</p>
<p>Having gone through Biglaw recruiting and having worked in Biglaw (along witnessing dozens of my classmates going through the process), I can confidently claim that what college you attended has no impact on 1) law school admissions, 2) law firm hiring process. Actually, let me rephrase. For legal hiring, the law school one attends, one’s law school grades, and one’s interviewing/ networking skills are such dominant components of law firm hiring that other credentials or factors matter very little to none. </p>
<p>If you really do insist, feel free to bust your butt in high school just to get into a ‘top’ college, likely end up paying multiples of what Big State U kids are paying for that ridiculous ‘top private’ tuition, and again bust your butt in college to keep that 3.7+ GPA against those competitive Ivy gunner peers… and all of that sweat and unnecessary headache for the (false) belief that having done such things will help you get that Biglaw job in the end. Hey, people should feel free to do whatever that makes them sleep well at night.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you sport 173+/3.8+, I’d say you WILL get into Harvard Law unless you wrote your application essays with crayons while being drunk. Let me tell you this. Not everyone is very honest with their credentials, scores, income, jobs, etc. I’ve met a fair share of people very good at ‘over-selling’ themselves in their intelligence, scores, or skill-set, when in reality some of those guys were literally dumb as a rock. </p>
<p>But hey, maybe getting rejected by Harvard Law with 173 LSAT and 3.8 GPA is a blessing in disguise. That person would very likely score a full merit scholarship money at a school like Northwestern Law, and you can argue attending a lower T14 school for free beats graduating from Harvard Law with 250k debt + 8% loan interest. Trust me, the people in the formal group are a lot happier when they start working in Biglaw compared to the latter group. </p>
<p>I honestly can’t believe there is much debate on this topic. Anyone who’s ever worked a professional job for just a bit SHOULD know that when employers interview candidates, what they are most interested in is the candidate’s most RECENT evidence of success. For experienced hires, employers care the MOST about the candidate’s most recent track record of work experience. For entry level hires, employers care the MOST about the candidate’s most recent degree and most recent set of grades. (in this context, this means legal employers care about law school, not undergrad)</p>
<p>When I was interviewing for Ibanks and consulting firms my senior year of college, not a single employer cared to know what high school I attended or what my high school GPA was. They only cared about my college GPA, the college I attended, my college major, and my interviewing skills. Likewise, when I was interviewing for law firms, not a single Bigfirm cared to know what college I attended or what my college GPA was. </p>
<p>@NYULawyer, why do you keep saying going to Harvard will land you 250K in debt. Harvard afterall gives need based aids. Secondly, many of them have their fees covered by their parents. For some parents, paying for private and professional schools later for their children is not that big of a deal. What else would money be better spent? Thirdly, Harvard has a pretty nice program to help loan payment for graduates who desire to take on a lower paying job and that debt will not restrict career choices.</p>
<p>Perhaps you can see viewpoints other than getting a high GPA at a State U debt free, and doing well enough to get into a law school for a BigFirm job later. Perhaps there is the alternative view that one may go to college to receive a good education and that going to a law firm only as the last resort? </p>
<p>I was reading into Harvard Law’s debt forgiveness program - individuals choosing to go into the public sector have their debt forgiven by HLS - but I didn’t know if that was just federal loans that would be taken care of or private loans as well. I don’t know much about loans/financial aid at graduate schools. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I encourage you to do some research before posting about topics you have little information on. HLS gives fin aid, but only on very limited basis. (hint: most people won’t get much aid)</p>
<p>Second, the point remains that for the vast majority of people with 172+ lsat & 3.8+ gpa, going to a lower T-14 school would be dramatically cheaper compared to attending a top 3 law school. (due to merit money)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Funny you mention that. Maybe HLS demographic is drastically different from the law school I attended, but many of my classmates were on their own for financing grad school. Actually, many of them got very little help from their parents for their undergrad as well.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am not saying it’s necessarily bad to attend HLS or Yale at full sticker. For some, it could make sense. For others, taking full-ride at a lower T-14 would be preferable even if parents are willing to chip in. For me, if my parents offered to pay law school money, I would do lower T-14 at full ride and bank all of my parents’ would-be-spent money directly into my savings account.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Again, getting those jobs (most of which are competitive public interest gigs) are many times TOUGHER to get than Biglaw.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’d say attending a good college is a good thing as long as finances are within means. What some here are saying is that doing so for the sake of getting into a good law school or getting a good law job is really dumb. Wasn’t that the point of contention?</p>
<p>I’ve known a few people who said that their outstanding (read: Harvard) undergraduate alma maters helped them in OCI and other hiring, but the effects of that pretty much disappear once you’re outside of HYPSM. </p>
<p>We’ve discussed the problems with debt forgiveness before, but a quick recap: the problem with debt is that it restricts your options. The problem with debt forgiveness is that there is very little deferral for child-bearing and a spouse’s income counts in the calculations. It can be fine for a 25-year-old to have $250k worth of debt from HLS, but he, or especially she, might feel very differently five years after that. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Since you went to law school, I assume your interviews weren’t too successful.</p>
<p>Had you gone to a IB or consulting firms target school, (Ivy or top 10)you wouldn’t have to interview in your senior year, you would have had an offer at the end of your jr. year, right after your internship.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>not sure what that has to do with this thread. but yes, getting a front office finance job out of college is a lot more difficult than getting a biglaw job out of law school. And, getting a top tier consulting job out of college is even more difficult than getting a front office finance job. these employers give offers to less than 3-4 people at each ‘target’ school and competition for these jobs are beyond ridiculous.</p>
<p>and no, I actually did go to a ‘target’ school (read: an Ivy undergrad). you obviously know very little about anything related to getting a job, getting into a school, etc, so I suggest you do some research before you post anything.</p>
<p>here is the hint: the recruiter on campus i’ve talked to indicated that at the consulting firm he works at, over 300 people apply for about 3-4 slots EACH year, just from each top school. (harvard, yale, princeton, penn, etc) getting a banking or consulting job out of college takes WAY more than just attending a ‘top 10’ or ‘ivy’ undergrad. </p>
<p>
You brought it up.</p>
<p>
If someone knows more than you do, resort to ad hominem. Is that your modus operandi?
With this attitude it doesn’t bode well for you in working at a law firm and since you just went through law firm recruitment, you are obviously very inexperienced.
A look at my previous posts along with my long history with CC will tell you my experience with high finance. Perhaps you should do some some research yourself.</p>
<p>My 4th generation Whartonite son had an IB internship in his jr. year and was offer a job upon completion of his summer internship. He did not need to interview for any job his senior year.He worked in IB for 3 years and now is at a hedge fund. No need to go to any grad school and burn $$$.
We are digressing here, but since you brought up IB and consulting and I know lots about that field.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So very spot on.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I brought up my experience of interviewing for Ibanks and consulting firms when I was a college student in order to share my observation that what employers really care about is a candidate’s most recent set of accomplishments, whether that be school-related or work experience-related. You keep side-tracking from others’ main points. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We Bigfirm lawyers have relatively little tolerance processing either illogical arguments, or other types of arguments with suspect evidences or sources. If my tone in this thread reflected such nature so prevalent in my profession, I apologize.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No. I already have worked in Biglaw. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not interested wasting my time reading through your post history. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I said “… when I was interviewing for Ibanks and consulting firms my senior year of college…” It is true that Ibanks hire most of their incoming IBD analyst via junior year summer internship. However, they still DO interview seniors when fall OCI comes around. It is true that seniors have a harder time getting a banking offer without having done junior year summer internship, but I’ve seen it happen to people I knew.</p>
<p>On the other hand, most Management Consulting firms hire majority of their incoming analysts from the college senior applicant interview pool. They don’t really run those big ‘summer internship-then full time job offer’ programs that Ibanks run, and they just hire seniors who are smart and who can crack those grueling case interviews.</p>
<p>You keep bragging how your relatives are Biglaw partners and how your son is a hot-shot I-banker. All of that is nice, but because of all these, you suddenly know better about how law school admissions or law firm, finance, consulting, and other types of job recruiting work, compared to others that actually went through these processes.</p>
<p>I mean, my parents have a son who went to an Ivy undergrad, a top 6 law school, has interviewed for a bunch of employers in several industries, and has worked in Biglaw. But, they don’t know much about processes regarding getting into a top college, getting into a top law school, getting good grades at a top law school, interviewing processes at a Management Consulting firm, or getting into NYC Biglaw. More importantly, they don’t pretend to know about these topics better than I.</p>
<p>I grant you that you had experiences with what it may take to get into a top 6 law school, but can you really claim that you know what it takes to get into the top three. If you are basing on what your friends had done, how would that differ from us parents who know students who are in the top three? </p>
<p>Everyone on this thread should dig up the Harvard Law Record article about prestige of undergrad schools in landing job offers during law school. As I recall, undergrad school prestige was the #2 factor in getting jobs, second only to grades. The article was there in the mid '90s and is probably online somewhere.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well… I’ve worked alongside many of HYS law grads at my Biglaw firm. Mind you, the firm I’ve worked at is one of the top law firms in the nation, at least on the corporate M&A practice. </p>
<p>But, since you keep insisting… ok, fine. I do not know the secrets to getting admission to Harvard Law School. Feel free to send your son, daughter, whatever to a ‘top college’ so that s/he can rightfully claim one of those coveted spots at the ‘top three’ law school and go on to achieve utter greatness in the real world. </p>
<p>I am done wasting my time here. I am out.</p>
<p>@NYU. Just to set the record straight. My D has already done most of that. She received a wonderful education at a liberal arts college known for its scholarship. She was able to double major in English and Math and is currently studying at what is generally considered to be the top law school. I don’t know what she will achieve in life but I am hopeful that she can be a good citizen. </p>
<p>
Can we all stipulate that what happened during the mid-1990s is functionally irrelevant to today’s legal job market?</p>
<p>
That would be Yale, correct? Yale enrolls approximately 180 students per year, correct? Stanford, about 200, and Harvard, about 550, correct? </p>
<p>Please do not judge Harvard admissions by Yale admissions. Aside from the fact that HLS takes three times as many students as YLS does, it loses out on the top students to Yale and Stanford, and a whole slew of students who are bought with the Hamilton to Columbia, or similar scholarships to other T14s. Admission to HLS is pretty straightforward: 3.8+ GPA and 173+ LSAT score. Yale is much more finicky. </p>
<p>ariesathenaariesathenaPosts: 4,963Registered UserSenior Member </p>
<p>2:04PM </p>
<p>"Everyone on this thread should dig up the Harvard Law Record article about prestige of undergrad schools in landing job offers during law school. As I recall, undergrad school prestige was the #2 factor in getting jobs, second only to grades. The article was there in the mid '90s and is probably online somewhere.</p>
<p>Can we all stipulate that what happened during the mid-1990s is functionally irrelevant to today’s legal job market?</p>
<p>She was able to double major in English and Math and is currently studying at what is generally considered to be the top law school.
That would be Yale, correct? Yale enrolls approximately 180 students per year, correct? Stanford, about 200, and Harvard, about 550, correct?</p>
<p>Please do not judge Harvard admissions by Yale admissions. Aside from the fact that HLS takes three times as many students as YLS does, it loses out on the top students to Yale and Stanford, and a whole slew of students who are bought with the Hamilton to Columbia, or similar scholarships to other T14s. Admission to HLS is pretty straightforward: 3.8+ GPA and 173+ LSAT score. Yale is much more finicky."</p>
<p>Response:</p>
<p>Unfortunately, no, we cannot “all stipulate that what happened during the mid-1990s is functionally irrelevant to today’s job market”.</p>
<p>There is no sure-fire reason why firms now would not give the same weight to the prestige of an applicant’s earlier degree(s) than they did in the 1990s. If anything, I’d think that a law firm now, in a tighter job market, would place even more weight on undergrad school attended, since a fancy pedigree would enable the firm to check a box and be more confident in a new hire’s merit.</p>
<p>Second, your statements about HLS are not supported by the facts. HLS is tied for #2 in law school yield (64,2%), behind Yale (82.9%) and far ahead of Stanford (46.9%) and Columbia (not even in the top 10). HLS loses students to Yale, but Stanford loses students to HLS and Yale, and Columbia loses students to all of them.</p>
<p><a href=“Which Law Schools Had the Highest Yield Rate? - Above the Law”>http://abovethelaw.com/2013/03/which-law-schools-had-the-highest-yield-rate/</a></p>
<p>No, @CityEntrepreneur : by your own stats, Yale loses 42 students a year to other schools; Harvard loses 310; and Stanford loses 202. </p>
<p>Although Stanford may not have a high yield, my statements about Harvard vis a vis Yale stand and are supported by the facts. In fact, the very same facts you cite in alleged opposition to my statement support it, i.e. that Harvard loses approximately seven times as many students to other schools as Yale does. </p>
<p>That would be a knockout punch if the issue were merely yield, not yield as a proxy for admissions (which was the issue). Yale can be more selective than HLS can - and that is well established. </p>
<p>Nice try!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, all smaller schools are more selective than their tier counterparts. It has to be since there are not enough top scores to go around. For example, </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Even with its lower yields (geographic preference of easterners) Stanford is much more selective than HLS. </p></li>
<li><p>Chicago is more selective than the much larger Columbia and NYU. (of course it too, suffers from geographic preferences)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In other words, ECs/recs/essays can play a role in admissions to the ‘small’ schools, whereas the larger schools have to be much more numbers-driven to hold their medians.</p>