<p>Brown is quaint, picturesque, sexy and perfect. It’s Ivy League, Old New England and just the right size. It’s existed before the Declaration of Independence was signed and its open curriculum is decades ahead of every other school in what it envisions for the future of higher education. It’s liberal, progressive and just a little bit lazy…all commendable attributes in a school that has escaped the corporate vortex that is swallowing the less noble institutions.</p>
<p>GreenZen, I couldn’t agree with you more. I just wish it got wider acknowledgment from the general public, indeed the world, about its uniqueness. Mg, we just don’t agree. I’ve been among old-school Ivy undergraduates whose sons or daughters had gone to law school, were interested in a particular firm, and still knew people at the firm. In this case the connections went all the way back to Andover. This is not saying the kids didn’t have the goods. They had top grades, and some were Coif at schools like Penn, Yale, and, yes, Harvard. Don’t tell me that the connections made in undergraduate schools, in this case Harvard, doesn’t form a link in the continuum from an upper-middle class background to tippity top elite law firm. I’ve witnessed it.</p>
<p>Brown still is a great school and at least from general public’s view (look at the link provide below) - [A</a> Look at Brown’s Four Rhodes Scholars | Fellowships and Research](<a href=“News | Fellowships and Research”>A Look at Brown's Four Rhodes Scholars | Fellowships and Research)</p>
<p>Need improvements, just see Princeton as a model in my view, i.e. provide not just great undergraduate education, plus plus great graduate/professional school education at the same time.</p>
<p>@Galanter:
Harvard doesn’t have coif. Coif is not meaningful in hiring; law review is. No one talks about coif. Again, you’re exposing yourself as an outsider with an outsider’s understanding of how law firm hiring works.</p>
<p>Do people leverage connections to get jobs at firms? Sure! I’ve seen it with many of my classmates. It’s simply a fantasy, though, that connections around prep schools are advantaged or more common in any way. The most frequent and effective connections I’ve seen leveraged, by far? The major state schools: UF, UT, and the like.</p>
<p>The legal profession, even at the oldest firms, is no longer a stuffy world of elite privilege. During my 2L search process, I interviewed with at least 50 lawyers at 25 law firms. Probably the majority of the lawyers I met with did not go to elite undergrad schools (and certainly not elite prep schools).</p>
<p>How about a discussion of facts about Brown instead hyperbole?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>4 Rhodes scholars–same as Princeton and Harvard and more than all other schools except Stanford.</p></li>
<li><p>Brown consistently produces more Fullbright scholars than its peers. Michigan and Northwestern are also top producers.</p></li>
<li><p>Brown just raised over 1.6 billion in its latest capital campaign. This is extraordinary given that there is no business or law school and a relatively small grad school alumni base. Brown also has a strong annual fund and Avery high alumni giving rate as a percentage of alumni. Only Princeton raises more annual fund dollars and only Prince ton and Dartmouth have higher percentage alumni giving.</p></li>
<li><p>Brown loses most of its cross admits to H,Y,M and S, and holds its own against other peer schools. It loses to P also, but smaller overlap pool. Happiest students and still top 10 dream school per Princeton Reivew. Top 6 undergrad school and college counselor ratings per US News.</p></li>
<li><p>Top faculty prizes galore in past year. National Medal Humanities (Wood), NSF Waterman award (Dunn), Clay Prize in Math (Kahn), etc</p></li>
<li><p>Simmons was a transformative President-- need blind admissions, new med school building and other life sciences research labs, new athletic facilities, enhancement of engineering program, increased funding for grad school, bigger international footprint. Also Brown has very strong academic departments in many fields–applied math, creative writing, brain science, geology, etc. Brown does not have departments as big as many peers and rivals, since Grad School is still relatively small. But quality is very high.</p></li>
<li><p>Brown students place well at top grad schools, especially since they have no business or law school to feed into. Y,S,H and C undergrads are heavily favored in applying to their respective prossional programs.</p></li>
<li><p>Brown has a unique approach to enhancing its university, and believe it or not, it does not want to be Johns Hopkins or Harvard or Stanford (all great schools). Given the size of its endowment compared to peer schools, it has an excellent level of achievement. It will always excel at undergrad teaching and selectively build on its strengths on the grad and professional school level. The med school was founded in the 1970s and has already gained a strong reputation in the last decade. A new school of public and community health is also being developed. Brown has the only NSF funded advanced math institiute.</p></li>
<li><p>Bigger endowment does not guarantee better teaching or better student outcomes. In many cases, it only increases the number of researchers in labs-- with little benefit to undergrads. Many schools with large endowments still have classes with more than 100 students and undergrads relegated to the “scraps” and TAs.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My experiences are consistent with mgcsinc’s posts. The top law firms look almost only at law school grades (and, most of the time, only at first year grades) and consider the quality of the law school. Over the past few decades there’s actually been a trend away from considering “pedigree” and towards a purer meritocracy. Getting one’s foot in the door through a connection made in college or prep school may still happen, but the culture today looks down upon that sort of thing, even, or maybe especially, at the top firms. At interviews with top firms, I sensed that name-dropping my prep school would even be harmful to my application. The times have changed, and thank goodness.</p>