UCLA now has a "clear edge" over Duke, Cornell, NU

Graduate School Law School
21

<p>HUGE (well, not huge) problem with those rankings: salary.</p>

<p>*People in cities make more, because there is a higher cost of living. This slants your rankings towards schools with high placement in high cost of living areas.
*People with more debt make more money when they start. (If you want, I'll email you my spreadsheet on this - I dumped about 20 law schools into there, computed ratio of average debt of grads to average starting salary. Quite a strong correlation!). Those who graduate with less debt are able to take jobs more conducive to having a real life -fact is, 25-year-old young lawyers work 80 hours a week because they are in debt. Theoretically, a great law school will offer its students some form of debt relief - you fast find out that a young lawyers life is dominated by debt. Not a good thing!
*Starting salary (hopefully they did this) should also only be measured for private practice lawyers, not just everyone - otherwise, you would slam a school that turns out public-service or government types.<br>
*Does that measure salary of judicial clerks who then go to private practice? A school that turns out a disproportionately high # of clerks will drop its 1st year salary (clerkships pay almost nothing) but those clerks tend to command the best jobs afterwards and are often paid a bonus for having clerked, as it is quite an accomplishment.</p>

22

<p>Aries, nicely reasoned and cited. The kind of skill where you will go far in, well...Law.</p>

23

<p>UCLA has a clear advantage over Cornell and NU for students who want to go to school near Westwood.</p>

<p>Cornell has a clear advantage over NU and UCLA for students who love to hike in gorges.</p>

<p>Norwestern U. has a clear advantage over UCLA and Cornell for students who are prone to sing, "Chicago, Chicago, my kinda town..."</p>

24

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<p>The numbers suggested that UCLA, as a whole, places nearly as well Boalt does (nationwide!!!). then it's quite likely that UCLA would at least own Boalt in its own backyard (L.A., Orange County, San Diego).</p>