<p>Law schools do not care at all what undergrad you went to. All that matters if your GPA and LSAT score (and minority status).</p>
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<p>Hmm, you raise some interesting point… I am not sure what is exact truth as to how much financial aids are being handed out at each institution. I know this is not very scientific approach, but I would estimate that, out of sample of people I’ve known at my UG, around a quarter of people got near full tuition assistance to attend UG. And, I would estimate that around half the people were on significant financial aid, as in over 20-25k a year. I have no way to prove this, but that is just my rough estimate based on people I’ve known. </p>
<p>Although you raise plausible deductions as to why you believe 38k in financial aid was over 4 years’ cumulative sum, I have hard time actually believing it based on my experience at my UG. I just know far too many people, even among many of my friends, who got at least over 20k in financial aid per year, and they all came from middle class families whose parents made over 70-80k a year. If your figure is correct, that would mean that the financial aid awarded on yearly basis would be less than 10k a year on average for 87% of people who applied for aid. If that were true, I think there would’ve been some serious riot on campus or people transferring out, seriously.</p>
<p>For the sake of this argument, I will share my personal story. My dad makes close to 85k a year, and I got 25-28k in financial aid per year for all four years of my time there. And, when I was growing up, I never considered myself poor. I lived in comfortable suburb, attended nice schools in nice, safe neighborhood, and was raised without facing any poverty or starving, or anything like that. </p>
<p>Also, schools like Harvard have 80% yield. I honestly don’t believe Harvard would be successful in attaining such high percentage of its admits if the majority of its accepted students got less than 10k in financial aid per year and they would have to pay at least 40k a year to attend.</p>
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<p>Well, my opinion is that attending any law school outside HYS (top 3), or even Harvard Law on sticker in this economy is a pretty big risk. That is what I am saying, and the risk of attending law school in my opinion is significantly underestimated by many. Before recession, T14 used to be pretty good bet of success, but right now it is too risky. Starting salaries for lawyers outside BigLaw tend to be in 40k range, hence, the pay in legal industry is named ‘bimodal salary distribution’. And, in this economy, we are looking at around 20-25% of kids even at Harvard Law striking out at BigLaw. So, even going to Harvard Law comes with a decent amount of risk.</p>
<p>I actually think attending a lower T14 law school such as Georgetown on a sticker price is a very risky proposition, and people should be warned of its potential consequence. Last year, around 40% of class at Georgetown Law got NLJ250 firm jobs, and not all of NLJ250 firms are 'BigLaw". Hence, my general overall point is that people shouldn’t attend law school by default: that being led to a career in law as a result of not knowing what other options to pursue, or out of one’s speculation that legal career is lucrative. Also, that in this economic climate, I think people should really try to enter fields that aren’t suffering as much as legal field, because chances of employment in law are significantly lower than say, accounting.</p>
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<p>Well, think of it this way, nobody is a lawyer before law school, and everyone becomes a lawyer after law school. Hence, we can agree that any employer that someone would work for before law school isn’t a legal employer. Then, why would this non-legal employer subsidize one’s legal education, if that employee is making a career switch and will likely get a job in legal industry after law school? (meaning, no rate of return on investment on their subsidization of law school) I was questioning the logic involved here.</p>
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<p>Well, I am not exactly sure how easy it would be for a Georgetown Law grad to get that DA’s office job in North Dakota. I just read an article that suggested that for DA’s office in Philadelphia, over 600 law grads applied for maybe 2-3 openings. So, I definitely know that getting a LRAP eligible public interest job is very competitive. </p>
<p>What I know is that legal employers, both in public and private sector, outside NYC care a lot about a law student’s geographical tie. Believe it or not, many law firms in Texas will prefer to hire a Texan native coming out of U Texas law school over a Harvard Law student who was born and raised in Boston, all else equal. Only NYC legal employers, and to a less extent, legal employers in Chicago or LA, don’t care this much about one’s geographical connection/ tie. </p>
<p>Also, like I mentioned, employers outside BigLaw/ clerkship don’t really care about the rank of your law school. It is comparable to the situation in which employers outside finance/ consulting don’t really care about the rank of undergraduate college that much. In my experience, many employers outside finance/ consulting would rather prefer to hire a state school grad with some years of relevant work experience, over hiring a fresh Harvard grad with no relevant skills or experience. Same applies for many jobs in law outside BigLaw. Hence, I don’t think those unemployed Georgetown grads can write their ticket to ‘low’ paying lawyer jobs just because they hail from T14.</p>
<p>There have been many articles of law grads even from T14 who failed to secure any form and shape of lawyer job whatsoever, including the Above the Law articles above. The legal market is brutal out there, and outside of BigLaw, people truly have limited opportunities. Counting on LRAP to fall into place is, in my opinion, not a very good idea at all. </p>
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<p>Most people, regardless of their socioeconomic background, won’t get into Harvard anyway. But, among those who do get in, many get financial aid. Or why would Harvard have this reputation to be a very generous school to its students.</p>
<p>I disagree with the notion that one needs to hail from wealthy background to get into Harvard. For instance, at my public high school that was filled with middle class kids, there was a fair share of kids who were very smart and got near perfect SAT scores with minimal prep. My friend literally studied for one hour before the exam and got over 2300 on SAT and this kid was a math/ science whiz. Although there are people who get high test scores with the help of test prep tutors or whatnot, many people I know (myself included) broke 2200 on SAT without any help of tutors. I actually thought that SAT was pretty easy and I studied less than a week, on my own, for SAT and still got a very good score.</p>
<p>**I just read an article that suggested that for DA’s office in Philadelphia, over 600 law grads applied for maybe 2-3 openings. So, I definitely know that getting a LRAP eligible public interest job is very competitive.</p>
<p>What I know is that legal employers, both in public and private sector, outside NYC care a lot about a law student’s geographical tie.**</p>
<p>True–even within the city.</p>
<p>[Assistant</a> District Attorneys](<a href=“http://www.queensda.org/ada.html]Assistant”>http://www.queensda.org/ada.html)
<a href=“http://www.queensda.org/newpressreleases/2011/september/ada_fall_2011_class.pdf[/url]”>http://www.queensda.org/newpressreleases/2011/september/ada_fall_2011_class.pdf</a></p>
<p>The Queens D.A.‘s Office receives 1,300+ applications a year, and ends up with a “class” of about 13. If you look at this year’s and even past years’ hires, nearly half hail from St. John’s, a local school ranked #95, with <3.5/<160 medians.</p>
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<p>I know a few patent lawyers who went to law school on their employer’s dime. They were engineers with a lot of experience as inventors, who eventually transferred to the patent department, and became patent agents. And then eventually went to law school, part time at night, paid for by employer. It was a long, hard road.</p>
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<p>And I would argue that your sample is biased. After all, as you said that you weren’t rich, you probably weren’t socializing with rich people while in college. {I’m not insulting you, for I’m not rich either.} Rich people tend to associate with other rich people. </p>
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<p>Actually that’s quite trivial to explain: Harvard’s student body is disproportionately rich and therefore doesn’t care about money (and hence financial aid) anyway. Bill Gates came from a rich family, his father being a prominent lawyer and his mother serving as a Board Director of several major corporations. Mark Zuckerberg’s father is a dentist and his mother is a doctor. Conan O’Brien’s father is epidemiologist and Professor at Harvard Medical School and his mother is a partner at Ropes & Gray. Or how about all four children of Al Gore. Surely we can agree that Harvard tuition is not a significant burden to of any of them. And then of course there are all the children of elite families from overseas, such as the daughter of Xi Jinping, who is widely reputed to be the presumptive heir of the leader of China, or Catherine Oxenberg who is descended from Russian, Greek, and Serbian (Yugoslavian) royalty, or Sadruddin Aga Khan, whose father was President of the League of Nations and one of the original founders of the nation of Pakistan. Surely we all wish we had been born to such families of privilege. More importantly, these people are coming to Harvard no matter how little aid they may obtain. To them, Harvard is an elite brand, little different from the brands of luxury cars that they regularly drive or the jewelry that they wear. {For example, I just recently saw a Harvard student who was wearing a watch that probably cost more than I make in a year.} </p>
<p>Besides, let’s face it. Harvard is Harvard. Whether we like it or not, Harvard has the brand name that transcends higher education, and is therefore arguably the one school (perhaps also Oxford) in the world for which plenty of families are willing to pay dearly for the privilege. Note, whether they should pay is irrelevant, the question is whether they do pay. </p>
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<p>Actually, your argument seems to indicate that now is precisely the best time to attend law school. Certainly I agree with you that the economy is in poor straits now. But if are applying to law school in the current application cycle, you obviously won’t be graduating now into today’s economy but rather into the economy of 4 years into the future (1 year of the current application cycle + 3 years of law school). I have to believe that the economy will improve in 4 years (for otherwise the entire country will be poised for mass social unrest). </p>
<p>Your advise would have been entirely apropos regarding today’s graduates who were applying to law school in 2007. But of course back then, the economy was scorchingly hot and lawyers (along with everybody else) couldn’t seem to be making money fast enough. Let’s face it - it would have been difficult to argue with a straight face back in 2007 that the economy was about to crash and therefore people should not attend law school. {Heck, if you had been so prescient about the economy, then what are you doing here? You should have been shorting the housing, banking, and Greek securities and transformed yourself into a billionaire, as John Paulson did.} </p>
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<p>We cannot agree. Plenty of legal employers hire people who are not lawyers. At a law firm that I recently visited, I would guess that 1/4 of all of the secretaries (who are not lawyers) were taking or had taken night/weekend law courses, all on the law firm’s dime. Many government agencies will at least partially pay for their employees to attend law school. I can think of some cops and Federal agents (FBI, DEA, ICE, etc.) who had taken subsidized law courses. Heck, you don’t even have to be a uniformed and sworn peace officer, you just have to work for that agency. For example, I know a guy who works as a civilian employee for the real-life NCIS, and they would subsidize law courses that he took. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the Federal government is one of the few employees in the country that is still hiring heavily. I don’t think it’s that hard to get some job - albeit perhaps a low-level job - with the Federal government, or at least, not relatively harder than getting a job in the private sector nowadays, as long as you’re willing to move to wherever the Fed wants you. Many (probably most) jobs with the Federal government probably offer such law school subsidies. </p>
<p>Or you can consider working for higher education - yet another one of the few industries that is still readily hiring. I don’t think it’s that hard to become a secretary or a clerk at some university. {The competition may be tough at a well-branded school such as Harvard, but surely the competition isn’t strenuous at some low-tier university.} Most universities offer some sort of tuition reimbursement program, sometimes restricted to courses at their own university, but often times universally available for any university. </p>
<p>The upshot is that there are things you can do to reduce your law school debt burden. </p>
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<p>Sure…in Philadelphia. What I would like to see are the unemployment rates of lawyers in North Dakota. Like I said, I’m still surprised that more Americans (not just lawyers but everybody) don’t move to the interior states where the economy is absolutely sizzling. They should. {Granted, the winters in North Dakota are brutal, but let’s face it - the winters in Philadelphia are no picnic either.} </p>
<p>[Finding</a> jobs in America’s Boomtown - Oct. 28, 2011](<a href=“Finding jobs in America's Boomtown - Oct. 28, 2011”>Finding jobs in America's Boomtown - Oct. 28, 2011)</p>
<p>[Unemployed</a> Flock to North Dakota to Take Advantage of Job Boom - ABC News](<a href=“Unemployed Flock to North Dakota; What's Their Secret? - ABC News”>Unemployed Flock to North Dakota; What's Their Secret? - ABC News)</p>
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<p>Yet as mentioned in the 2 articles above, it seems as is employers in North Dakota (and surely also South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and the other booming states) don’t really have a choice. Employers are so desperate to hire and jobs are so plentiful that they are importing workers from around the country and paying them handsomely for the privilege. Apparently strippers there are making up to $3000 a night and
even fast food jobs are paying $15 an hour. The same is almost certainly true of legal employers as well, as I’m sure that many local graduates from the University of North Dakota Law School are being tempted away to work at the myriad law firms that are serving the burgeoning oil/gas/mining industry rather than taking jobs at local NGO’s or the state government. </p>
<p>Frankly, this is why I’ve started to lose some sympathy for the unemployed, including unemployed lawyers. They say that the law market is brutal, but they’re not willing to relocate to one of the booming interior states. I don’t see too many AbovetheLaw articles decrying the intense competition for law jobs - whether private sector or government/NGO in North/South Dakota. Granted, those jobs are not high-paying and not prestigious, but at least they’re paying jobs. Working for the public defender’s office in Bismarck, ND is surely better than no job at all. </p>
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<p>The reputation is well-earned: Harvard is indeed very generous to the small population of students who actually need aid. But like I said, Harvard also has plenty of students who hail from wealth and privilege that I can never imagine. </p>
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<p>Nobody is saying that you need wealth to be admitted to Harvard. But a sad testament to the United States is that the quality of the school you attend is correlated with your family’s wealth. Poor children are predominantly consigned to bad high schools where they not only learn little, but where the value of education is never conveyed and hence never learn to care about learning. Poverty-stricken high schools in the inner city or the depths of rural Appalachia probably do have some students with the talent to go to Harvard…but we’ll never know about them because they were never taught to care about their own education.</p>
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<p>Sure, but the dynamics are different for law schools and legal employment from other types of employment. For many non-legal jobs, it is a lot harder to take advantage of timing and economic circumstances than with legal jobs. For example, lots of college seniors in recent years who would have gotten BB offers before the recession came up empty-handed after BB IBD or MBB consulting interviews. Yet, you can’t take a couple of years off and apply for a job at a BB or at MBB when the economy is better. Their recruiting doesn’t work like that. </p>
<p>You can, however come back to the law school thing in three to four years later, and if the economy is indeed doing much better and law firms significantly pick up their hiring, you can time your attendance to coincide with a good economy. Remember, you’ll be doing your first On-Campus-Interviews (OCI) less than a year after your first day of classes in law school. It’s much easier to take advantage of timing with law than with other jobs. </p>
<p>Why is this? It is because the main vehicle to BigLaw and other respectable legal jobs is done through OCI at law schools, and OCI is done in August to October (first two months) of a law student’s second academic year. With recent fears of double dip and turmoil of financial industry, I don’t see demand for corporate M&A picking up anytime soon, nor do I project that legal hiring for BigLaw will ever be at the level of 2007 level - at which BigLaw hired record numbers of law students because of bubbles in financial industry and hence, M&A or Capital Markets -driven legal work were at record-high demand. The employment situation is getting worse not better, and now is not the time to jump into it.</p>
<p>Another thing is that getting a good legal job is a one-shot deal. You strike out on 2L OCI interviews, then you pretty much missed the boat on BigLaw and other selective, lucrative firm jobs. (NLJ250 law firm jobs) When the economy picks up four to five years later and firms hire X more numbers of lawyers, sorry, they’re just going to OCI and hire second year fresh law students, not an unemployed T14 law graduate. That is why in recent years, we often see even Yale, and Harvard Law graduates who end up working in odd jobs, such as doc review/ temporary lawyer jobs, or even as secretaries at law firms in some cases. (I know one Harvard Law graduate of 2010 now working as a secretary at NYC BigLaw, not even as a paralegal - because law firms won’t hire him because he is ‘over-qualified’ for paralegal position, but somehow, he isn’t ‘over-qualified’ for a secretary position. Sad, but true)</p>
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<p>I see your point here. However, stretching this train of thought a bit further, would you agree that a high percentage of kids in ‘poverty’ tend to be under-represented-minority ethnic groups? Although it may be politically incorrect thing to say, but a very high percentage of people who live in impoverished, inner-city regions are of African American or Hispanic races. And, we both know that African American and Hispanic kids have 10 times easier time of getting into an elite college compared to a White guy from a ‘normal’ background. </p>
<p>Even for law school admissions - the advantage of URM status is truly significant. I overheard a law school rep at a Q&A session indicating that their law school, a top ten school, tend to give 6-10 point boost to an applicant of URM race. What that means is that a black student with 166 LSAT stands a healthy chance of getting int Harvard Law, when for a white guy, an LSAT score of 173 and above would be expected. </p>
<p>I do agree with your point that being from an impoverished socioeconomic class will be against you for attaining higher education, but it can be overcome, somehow, by privileged admissions policy for many of poor URM kids. Also, my point was that you can be middle class, or even upper middle class white guy and still end up scoring a hefty sum of financial aid at Ivies and top privates. For instance, I would bet that even if your parents make slightly over 100k a year, you can still walk away with ~30k in financial aid per year, at Harvard. My parents make total income of about 120k a year, but I still ended up getting ~25k a year in financial aid from my lower Ivy. I can’t help but think that Harvard or Princeton has a noticeably better and generous financial aid package than my alma mater.</p>
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<p>This is off-topic, but I never understood the fascination with Harvard that prevails across the globe. I mean, attending Harvard itself won’t guarantee anyone a lucrative job, much less a successful career. This is interesting, because the MD I spoke with suggested that from his experience, his firm aims to hire the ‘biggest fish in the pond’. What that implies is that his firm - a BB IBD - would rather grant interviews to a 3.8 Finance major from University of Michigan, over a middling, average student from Harvard. Also, there was one scholarly article that suggests that the reason why many Harvard alums are successful is because of the type of people that get into Harvard in the first place, not necessarily the result of Harvard brand. These folks would have been equally successful, even if they attended Duke, Northwestern, or even University of Michigan instead of Harvard. (we can also see that Harvard accepts many people from wealth and power, and these people will be successful no matter where they attend college)</p>
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<p>Well, again, I am not sure if those bunches of unemployed law grads can count on getting lawyer jobs in those booming states. If they can get those jobs with relative ease as you suggest, I do agree that they should really go after those opportunities. But, the bigger point in question here is - is going to law school, even a T14 law school, worth it at sticker? </p>
<p>I honestly don’t think many law students take all the trouble and all that debt to go to a T14 law school, only to barely wind up with a 35k lawyer job in the middle of nowhere - like North Dakota - just to take advantage of LRAP policy. Although, many law students wind up in far worse situation than this particular scenario - being unemployed or taking jobs as secretaries somewhere. I suspect many of these young, ambitious, and intelligent students aim for lucrative firm jobs, such as BigLaw or NLJ250 in major or secondary markets. (NYC, Boston, Chicago, SF, LA, Houston, DC, etc) </p>
<p>Think about it, you can probably get a job that pays 40k a year straight out of college or maybe even straight out of high school, and even if you can’t you can attend a masters in accounting program for one year and land a job as a CPA for 55k a year, for example. Why take the huge gamble at law school and incur three years of opportunity cost in the first place? Going to a lower tier T14 law school, such as Berkeley, Michigan, Georgetown, Cornell, or UVA, is essentially a 50-50 bet at a firm job. (odds are probably 40-60 at Georgetown or Berkeley) And, getting a legitimate firm job that pays over 50k a year, out of a T30 law school, is essentially a 20-80 bet. (At Washington University in St Louis Law school and Notre Dame Law School - top 30 law schools, only ~25% of their students got a firm job) Yet, even with these terrible odds of success, we witness droves of law students enrolling in even law schools ranked outside T50. No law school has run out of business due to lack of students or lack of tuition money. Essentially, no law school has much trouble filling most of seats in their class. In fact, more law schools are being established each year because it is a profitable business.</p>
<p>So, this comes down to my original point that: 1) law schools outside top 6 are very risky, even lower T14, if one is going at sticker, 2) people should probably assess other career options outside law because law school is expensive as hell and job outlooks are terrible due to oversupply of lawyers.</p>
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<p>Yet the fact is, at the end of the day, only a small percentage of URM’s at the top private universities come from truly poor backgrounds. This is precisely why AA sparks so much controversy, as numerous observers have noted that a highly disproportionate percentage of URM’s who benefit from AA tend to come from the middle-class and up and arguably don’t need any boost at all. {Thomas Sowell and other scholars have noted that a middle-class or even upper-class black is more likely to be admitted to a top private university than is a poor white or Asian.} </p>
<p>As a simple case in point, to even be eligible to apply to a top private university in the first place, you first have to graduate from high school. While seemingly a trivial step, the fact is, only about half of all URM’s - across all economic levels - manage to this feat, and the figure is far worse in the most poverty-wracked districts. Less than 25% of high school students graduate from the high schools of inner-city Detroit and only 1/3 from Baltimore. All the college-based AA in the world won’t help those students who don’t even finish high school. </p>
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<p>And similarly to be eligible for law school, you actually have to graduate from college. The URM completion percentage of college degrees is also noticeably low. Only about 40% of black college students manage to graduate, compared to about 60% of white college students. </p>
<p>[Black</a> Student College Graduation Rates Remain Low, But Modest Progress Begins to Show](<a href=“http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html]Black”>Black Student College Graduation Rates Remain Low, But Modest Progress Begins to Show)
[Baltimore</a> graduation rate among worst - Washington Times](<a href=“http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/jun/13/20070613-113138-6093r/]Baltimore”>http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/jun/13/20070613-113138-6093r/)</p>
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<p>The truth of the matter is that there are still a greater total of poor whites and Asians in this country than there are poor URM’s. To be sure, URM’s represent a disproportionate percentage of the poor, but are dwarfed by the sheer numbers of poor whites. About 60% of welfare recipients in the nation are white. Race-based AA is obviously of no help to them. </p>
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<p>Sure, if you can get in. Let’s face it - the vast majority of people, whether rich or poor, will never get into Harvard or Princeton. I take it that you didn’t, and that’s why were consigned to a lower Ivy. (Note, that’s no insult, because, like I said, the vast majority of people won’t get in.) </p>
<p>Furthermore, most people won’t even get into your lower Ivy either. The overwhelming majority of high school graduates will only be able to win admission to no-name colleges for which financial aid is skimpy at best. What are these people supposed to do? </p>
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<p>This is likely false. Consider what I had written in a previous thread regarding a published academic paper about the recruiting practices at elite consulting, finance, and interestingly, law firms:</p>
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<p>[Rivera</a> forthcoming](<a href=“http://www.docstoc.com/docs/69081703/Rivera-forthcoming]Rivera”>http://www.docstoc.com/docs/69081703/Rivera-forthcoming)</p>
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<p>Then let me tell you a story. I remember meeting a female student at Harvard who I thought had jokingly (and I suspect drunkenly) told me that one major reason that she chose Harvard was because she wanted to meet and marry a rich man. Years later, lo and behold, she’s now indeed engaged to a rich Harvard student who is about to take a job in fund management. Before that, I heard that she had been dating plenty of other rich investment bankers and consultants, and I think at one point, even a European prince. </p>
<p>While hers is admittedly an extreme case, what she demonstrates is that the true power of any college experience is the networking. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, as the old saying goes. One of the main reasons to attend Harvard is, and likely always will be, to meet important people. Steve Ballmer is the billionaire CEO of Microsoft because because he was Bill Gates’s old late-night poker-playing pal in Currier House. Networking seems to be particularly important in clubby industries such as consulting or finance and, whether we like it or not, Harvard offers the best alumni network in the country. </p>
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<p>But that gets back to why we were talking about undergrad in the first place. Just like you ask whether law school, even at a T14, is worthwhile at sticker, I would similarly ask whether many colleges, even some of the top ones, are worthwhile at sticker. Like I said, the average college provides only skimpy financial aid that mostly consists of loans (and hence cannot be considered to be true aid at all). Plenty of college graduates, particularly in this economy, are consigned to low-end jobs that they could have obtained right out of high school. </p>
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<p>Is that so? Then that raises the question of why more college students, particularly in the low-paying humanities, don’t do exactly that. </p>
<p>As a case in point, take the graduates of the Berkeley English department. In 2010, they made an average of only $37.5k a year despite graduating from what is reputedly the #1 ranked English department in the country according to USNews. If it is true that they could have made $40k a year right out of high school, then why did they graduate from a top-ranked college program only to make less? Maybe many of them should have quit Berkeley to attend a 1-year accounting program? </p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/English.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/English.stm</a> </p>
<p>The upshot is that it isn’t clear to me that the risk of being consigned to a low-paying job after a T14 law school, such as, say, the UC Berkeley School of Law, is significantly worse than the risk of being consigned to a low-paying job after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in the humanities from Berkeley. In fact, the risk profile is almost certainly better; a graduate from the Berkeley School of Law seems far more likely to land a BIGLAW position than is a Berkeley English major to land a high-paying position.</p>
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<p>Actually, not only can you do exactly that - and I know people who have - you can use the very same tactic with regards to the timing of law school.</p>
<p>How so? You simply don’t graduate, by taking judicious use of the withdrawal option. I can think of numerous Harvard and MIT undergrads who withdrew for several years to do other things - whether that be working on startups, working for NGO’s, or (for some of the richer students), taking tours around the world. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Matt Damon are basically on withdrawal from Harvard. Elisabeth Shue returned to Harvard after about a 2-decade hiatus to graduate. {Incidentally, that casts their career choices in a whole new light; if Microsoft or Facebook had failed, oh well, Bill Gates/Zuck would have simply returned to Harvard, which is not exactly the worst outcome in the world.} Heck, I can think of some students who withdrew precisely because the job market was poor and they wanted another shot at it in another round. </p>
<p>The same seems to be true of law school. HLS allows up to 7 years to graduate. If the biglaw hiring cycle looks abysmal, then you can simply withdraw after your first semester to return at a later date. Granted, you have to find a way to support whatever loans you may have taken, but that can be minimized if you withdraw early. {For example, HLS students who withdraw before Sept 30 pay only 1/9 of the annual tuition, which isn’t that much money. Heck, one could view it as an ‘option fee’ to pursue another career with the option to return to HLS.} Granted, you must submit documentation detailing why you are requesting leave, and periodically why you should continue to be granted leave, but I have never heard of anybody in good academic standing who was denied leave. And let’s face it, by 7 years, the law hiring scene should have recovered.</p>
<p>This rather esoteric discussion is making me smile. As an attorney (and parent) I will tell you that no matter where you go to school, a GOOD attorney will always make good money. A degree from one of the elite law schools will help you for the first few years simply to get an interview. Once you get in somewhere, you will be worked HARD no matter where you went to school. After that, your reputation takes over. If you are known as a good, smart, hard-working lawyer, your pedigree matters less and less. I’ve been in large firms and in-house at large, international companies, and that is a universal truth.</p>
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<p>I hate chicks like this. I’ve dated a girl just like this one before, and she was too materialistic and shallow; and quite dumb/ignorant. All she was concerned with was to look pretty and surround herself with luxury items such as BMW, Gucci handbags, and all that vanity. Funny, although I wasn’t rich, she dated me regardless, but always talked about all the previous men she dated before me who were mega-rich and all that stuff. Although she was very hot, I became very tired of dating her and became convinced that dating her is doing myself a disservice. After this experience, I learned to avoid such women like a plague.</p>
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<p>You seem to exaggerate the benefits of having attended Harvard vastly. There are networking opportunities available for other schools as well. Consider - University of Michigan - that has much larger size of alumni and students, as well as decent numbers of alumni presence on the street. True, Harvard has strong alumni, but it really comes down to what each individual makes out of his opportunity and resources. </p>
<p>This is off-topic, but I have hard time understanding the aura of consulting. I have some friends working as business analysts at consulting firms, and their work isn’t sexy at all. They travel 80% of time to random places such as Utah, and work to death involving grunt excel and powerpoint work, 80-90 hours a week, just for 70k a year in NYC with like 5k/ year bonus. To me, that is not a very good job at all. I would much rather take a F500 corporate finance job, with much better hours, no travelling to random places, and slightly lower pay. I do, however, think I-banking is awesome. In fact, I would LOVE to have a chance to lateral into I-banking as an associate after working NYC corporate BigLaw for a couple of years.</p>
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<p>I agree that anyone that pays sticker for college is not being reasonable if the sticker price is expensive, and it isn’t the best investment that individual can make. But, like I mentioned earlier, for colleges there exists a lot of options for students to consider, including countless state schools that are relatively cheap to attend, even at sticker price. Or, many students can even ponder the option of attending a community college for a couple years, which is dirt cheap, before transferring to a state university. (which seems to be quite a popular option) </p>
<p>Case in point - I have a friend who comes from a middle class family that was unwilling to pay much for his college education. Also, his grades weren’t too hot in high school. In fact, he graduated bottom 10% of class at our high school and his SAT was something like 1700. He made a prudent decision of attending a community college in California for a couple of years, save a ton of money, and successfully transferred to UC Berkeley. In the end, he got the best of both worlds - not only did he get into a fine university - UC Berkeley - through a ‘easier’ admissions standards (I heard from my friend that getting into Berkeley/ UCLA/ Michigan/ UNC/ or UIUC as a transfer is much easier than getting in as a freshmen), he also greatly benefited from greatly reduced tuition money. Yet, all that matters is that in the end, he got that Berkeley degree for quite an affordable price tag after having avoided painfully competitive freshmen admissions process. If there is someone who is in this kind of dilemma - coming from not so wealthy family but can’t get into an Ivy/ top private where financial aid is great - consider going to a community college for a couple years then transfer to a good state university. Then, you can win, big time.</p>
<p>For law school though, such options aren’t always available. Even third tier law schools cost over 50k a year to attend. In the end, what it comes down to is that anyone who drops 50k a year for his education is not being reasonable, except some notable cases such as attending medical/dental/pharmacy school, or very top law/ MBA programs from which the promise of top employment is quite strong to make all the debt potentially worth it - depending on the individual’s goals.</p>
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<p>Yes, I really question the rationale of people who major in non-marketable degrees such as English, Sociology, or Gender Studies during college. People with such degrees may very well end up waiting tables after college, and employment prospects are terrible. Yet, we witness lots of people majoring in those majors regardless. Heck, there is no shortage of people who pursue PhD in majors such as history, political science, English, or Sociology, which is a far worse investment than pursuing such majors at undergrad, considering the opportunity cost of 6 years it takes to complete PhD, and notoriously low success rate of attaining tenure track job in academia. </p>
<p>Also, many accounting schools offer 1-year Masters of Accounting program to people who didn’t major in accounting in college, such as UIUC, University of North Carolina, Notre Dame, and USC. However, to even apply for these programs, you have to have a college diploma. As a result, you can’t just quit your undergrad and pursue this path. Or, even better option would be to major in something marketable such as accounting or computer science in undergrad. That way, you won’t even have to pursue a masters degree.</p>
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<p>Yes, attending Berkeley Law would give someone a better shot at a lucrative job compared to Berkeley undergraduate. Regardless, it is quite risky and there is a 60-65% chance that you won’t get BigLaw. And, Berkeley Law, even at in-state price, is significantly more expensive than Berkeley undergrad in-state. I am talking only about in-state scenario at Berkeley undergrad because the majority of their student body is in-state. (~90%) Berkeley Law would cost over 200k to finish, and Berkeley undergrad? It costs less than 15k a year for tuition. Obviously, each individual has differing level of risk that s/he is comfortable with, and each person has to make a choice for himself.</p>
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<p>Attend a cheap state school where sticker price is reasonable. Or, consider going to a community college for 2 years before transferring to a state university.</p>
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<p>Yeah, if these figures you cite are correct, I do agree that these poor white kids really have it rough. </p>
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<p>Getting a banking/ consulting job is very competitive. Banks won’t hand out IBD jobs to a Harvard history major with a 3.3 GPA with mediocre resume. In fact, such a student probably doesn’t even stand a chance at landing IBD interviews at On-Campus-Recruiting. Even at Harvard or Princeton, landing a top banking job is very competitive, and you need to strive like crazy to attain such jobs. I am talking maintaining a GPA of 3.6+ and having a banking-related summer internship experiences, probably two to three internships, during one’s undergraduate career.</p>
<p>Princeton is one of few Ivies that makes it mandatory that its graduates take post-graduate career survey. As a result, one can look at the data they have and trust the validity, due to the ample sample of data they collect. Consider the employment statistics of Princeton, and it ain’t so rosy, especially considering the fact that it is widely known to be one of the most prestigious colleges in the world:</p>
<p>[Princeton</a> University - Career Services - Online Publication](<a href=“http://ocsweb.princeton.edu/pro-flip/Main.php?MagID=1&MagNo=1]Princeton”>http://ocsweb.princeton.edu/pro-flip/Main.php?MagID=1&MagNo=1)</p>
<p>~25% of all Princeton graduates are unemployed after graduation, and that figure is after factoring out ~23% of Princeton grads that are heading directly to graduate school. So, in fact, it is likely that more than 25% of Princeton graduates did not have good jobs lined up, or else, lesser percentage of its graduates would be heading directly to graduate schools. And, 10% of those who count as ‘employed’ are working internships - not during their study at Princeton, but after graduating from Princeton. </p>
<p>Is there an advantage of attending a school such as Princeton or Harvard for one’s career? It depends. If someone is interested in pursuing a career in finance/ consulting, yes. If not, then not so much. For example, industries such as accounting, pharmacy, medicine, and engineering, school prestige doesn’t matter much at all. Also, I-banks recruit at wide number of schools, including less competitive schools such as Michigan, UNC, NYU, Indiana University, Boston College, and some liberal arts colleges such as Colgate, etc. They look at the whole package: GPA, one’s internship experiences, interviewing skills, and networking skills. I happened to know quite a few people from schools such as Indiana University, UIUC, Colgate, or Boston College who ended up getting IBD jobs at BB, while I know a ton of people from my Ivy undergrad who failed to make a cut at IBD. Just going to Harvard or Princeton will never make it that much easier for one to get a top finance job. One needs to really want it, and work very hard, from early on, to get such jobs.</p>
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<p>What you are suggesting here is essentially equivalent with my original point. Taking leave of absence just 3-4 weeks into law school is essentially either dropping out of law school, or same as postponing the attendance for several years without starting law school in the first place anyway.</p>
<p>The bigger point in question is the importance of timing for law school attendance in getting BigLaw offers. If you finish your 1st year of law school, and still do On-Campus-Interviews in bad economy (which begin even before your 2nd academic year of law school starts), your chances of getting a BigLaw offer is significantly lower. And, in case you strike out on BigLaw, sorry, there is no second bite at the apple. You can’t take time off from law school at that point and come back later and still do 2L OCI, second time. You’ve pretty much missed the boat.</p>
<p>Hence, my point is that it is important to coincide your law school attendance with a good economy to fully maximize your employment potential. (and right now seems to be an exceptionally bad time to attend law school)</p>
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<p>Well, like it or not, these women exist, and some men clearly like them. Hence, for those women, it is entirely rational for them to choose a school based on the ‘networking opportunities’ they provide. </p>
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<p>It’s not about the sheer size of the network, but also about its exclusivity. The problem with an alumni network of the size of UM’s, is that you are competing against the boatloads of other UM graduates who are also trying to leverage the network. </p>
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<p>Hey, it’s a heck of a lot better than most other jobs out there.</p>
<p>Consider the lamentations of Nicholas Pearce, who speaks to why students who even studied engineering from MIT often times don’t want to work as engineers. </p>
<p>*Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: “It’s marketed as–I don’t want to say dead end but sort of ‘O.K., here’s your role, here’s your lab, here’s what you’re going to be working on.’ Even if it’s a really cool product, you’re locked into it.” Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. “If you’re an M.I.T. grad and you’re going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day–as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that–it seems like a no-brainer.” *</p>
<p>Read more: [Are</a> We Losing Our Edge? - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575,00.html#ixzz1do4TRLsP]Are”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575,00.html#ixzz1do4TRLsP)</p>
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<p>If you can make it work, that is. Granted, transferring to Berkeley is easier than being admitted as a freshman, but it’s hardly a guarantee; the vast majority of transfer applicants are not admitted. So what happens if you attend a community college and then find that you can’t transfer to a decent state university?</p>
<p>Furthermore, this strategy only works if you happen to live in a state that offers a strong state university to which you could transfer. Most Americans don’t live in such a state. The Northeastern United States, including NY State, is notably bereft of strong state universities. </p>
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<p>Which is why I recommended that those students should strongly consider part-time programs where they can at least keep working and generating income while they earn their degree. </p>
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<p>Well, actually, I don’t consider the pursuit of a PhD in those fields to be such a terrible career move, as most respectable PhD programs will provide you with a stipend and waived tuition (in return for teaching/research work). And let’s face it - most humanities and social science graduates aren’t going to obtain desirable jobs right after undergrad anyway, so their opportunity costs are reduced. {For example, I’d rather pursue a PhD in English rather than work as a Starbucks barista, as some Berkeley English graduates do.}</p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2006/English.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2006/English.stm</a></p>
<p>The root of the problem was choosing those undergraduate majors in the first place. But once you’ve already chosen and graduated with such a major, you have to do the best you can out of a constrained choice set. </p>
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<p>Is it? I believe you said yourself that your lower Ivy was cheaper than your state school because of financial aid. But let’s face it - the vast majority of people will never be admitted to a lower Ivy.</p>
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<p>Nor will banks hand out IBD jobs to the average student from the average school.</p>
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<p>But notice how you didn’t mention anybody from, say, Northwest Missouri State University. </p>
<p>And that’s the point: every one of the schools you mentioned is a top-tier school. The vast majority of students attend average, no-name schools such as NW Missouri State. Practically none of them, especially the ones who major in the humanities or social sciences, have any serious chance of landing a top job in any field, much less in finance, by coming out of those schools, no matter how strong their grades are. </p>
<p>For many of these students, a top law school may well be their only real shot at advancing themselves. For example, somebody with a 3.95 GPA in English from NW Missouri State can’t get a high-paying job right out of undergrad. But what he can do, if coupled with a strong LSAT score, is be admitted to a T14 law school and then have a shot at BIGLAW. Frankly, that’s better than being stuck as a barista at Starbucks. </p>
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<p>The key difference is that by withdrawing, you’ve reserved your seat. You know you can always go back. By formally dropping out or not even applying at all in the first place, you will have to undergo the admissions cycle with no assurance that you will be admitted. </p>
<p>By the same token, somebody who enters Harvard College and then withdraws has a reserved seat to return to at any time. The option value of that is immense, as he is free to try a high-risk project, such as a startup like Facebook or Microsoft. If it fails, oh well, he just returns to Harvard, which is not exactly a terrible outcome. </p>
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<p>I’m still not sure that you can time it that well. For example, by far the worst time to enter law school in recent memory was 2007, when the economy (and hence the biglaw hiring market) was about to implode. But of course we didn’t know that was about to happen back in 2007, as the economy was still scorching. {And anybody who did know that should have become a millionaire by shorting financial stocks.}</p>
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<p>People who went through OCI in the midst of 2008 financial crisis really got screwed, and I feel for them. And, I agree that they didn’t have much tools to predict their fate, before law school. That year, many kids from even Harvard Law got completely screwed. However, the point stands that it is much easier to take advantage of timing with law school. For example, in 2009, you could see the market heading to the wrong direction and make an educated guess that law school was not a good bet at the moment. When economy improves and law firms pick up their hiring significantly, you can know that you will likely to be in a decent spot, as your interview schedules for law firms will be only one year (less than one year) away from your first day of law school. </p>
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<p>Law school admissions are very different from college admissions. College admissions for top Ivies, for example, are crap-shoot and highly unpredictable. In fact, there are plenty of applicants with near perfect stats that don’t get into a top Ivy for whatever reason. This is likely due to the fact that top colleges practice ‘holistic admissions’, and there is a great deal of subjectivity involved when admitting an applicant. Hence, an applicant with top credentials cannot rest assured that s/he will get into X,Y,Z college.</p>
<p>In contrast, law school admissions are highly predictable, much more objective, and much more numbers-oriented than college admissions. In fact, an applicant with 173 LSAT and 3.9 GPA will get into Harvard Law School, 10 out of 10 times, as long as that applicant writes his application essays longer than a paragraph. Hence, I don’t see the benefit of your proposition re: applying to X law school one year, enrolling, and withdrawing, just for the sake of keeping one’s spot at that law school. If you decide that right now isn’t the best time for law school attendance, wait out a couple of years and apply later.</p>
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<p>For finance jobs, yes, the rank of college you attend matters to an extent. As long as you attend a good enough of a university, (top 40-50), you stand a chance and whether you get an IBD job or not would probably depend more on your individual qualifications and effort than the name of your school. You are right in that people from complete non-target schools can’t expect to land interviews for IBD positions realistically. Also, to me, schools such as UIUC, Indiana University, UNC, and to a lesser extent, UVA (all schools that get plenty of recruiting from banks), aren’t exactly ‘top’ tier schools. They are good schools, but not ‘top’.</p>
<p>If someone realizes s/he really wants an I-banking job and s/he attends a no-name university, then s/he can take the chance and transfer to a school that gets recruiting from banks. It is important to note that one doesn’t need to go to Harvards or Princetons of the world to have a shot at IBD jobs. Consider, for instance, University of Michigan. Michigan gets heavy recruiting from banks and it is not very hard to get into. It has 50% acceptance rate at freshmen admissions, and is arguably even easier to get in via transfer admissions. (and for transfer admissions, they don’t even ask for your SAT scores. If you have decent GPA at your university/ community college, you have a good chance of getting in via transfer) Also, another decent option, in this context, is a school like UIUC - that has acceptance rate of 65% and gets some recruiting from i-banks.</p>
<p>True, not everyone can get into a school like Michigan and take advantage of banking or consulting recruiting, one might say. However, if you can’t even get into a school like Michigan (which isn’t that selective), you are, by large, no where near the caliber of an I-banking or top consulting job in the first place, anyway.</p>
<p>The point here is that for finance jobs, where you go to school matters, but only to a certain extent. In the end, the individual qualifications and drive will be more important in determining outcome. And, if you don’t attend a school that gets recruited by banks, you still have an option of transferring to a different school that isn’t that hard to get into, yet, at the same time gets recruited by i-banks. (Such schools would include Michigan, UNC, UIUC, Indiana, etc - where admission process isn’t the most competitive in the world)</p>
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<p>Well, the point here is that students have an option to minimize their cost of college education via community college route. You may not get into Berkeley or UVA after your stint at community college, but, you can expect to get into some decent state schools given that you perform reasonably well. And, for transfer to state schools, your SAT and high school records don’t even matter. It is highly likely that people who don’t get into Berkeley type of schools after trying out transfer route couldn’t have gotten in as freshmen anyway, since transfer admissions is much easier than freshmen admissions. So, in that regard, people have nothing to lose. In the end, people who don’t get into Berkeley or UVA -caliber state schools via transfer route after community college still benefit from their (greatly) reduced tuition costs for first two years of college. </p>
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<p>I still think PhD in those subjects are terrible investments, because even if you majored in English in college, you can still pursue other graduate schools that will give you more marketability. Masters of Accounting programs come to mind. (many of which don’t even require that you have taken a single accounting course before applying) Or, if you are driven and good with science, you can take some science pre-req courses at a local university and take a chance with a pharmacy school/ med school/ dental school. </p>
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<p>I agree. However, it is rare that people from tier 2-3 colleges make it to top notch law schools by absolute percentage. For instance, over 70% of Harvard Law student body is comprised of Ivy undergrads. That is likely due to the fact that the vast majority of student body at low ranked colleges lack the requisite intellectual horsepower to score 170+ on LSAT. </p>
<p>For law school admissions, LSAT is king, followed distantly by GPA. Even if you have 4.0 GPA, you won’t get into a top 10 law school with a mediocre LSAT. So, I am not sure if many students at low-ranked colleges will have options to attend top 6 law schools. And, many of these students do end up at low-ranked law schools due to low LSAT scores. I think, in this scenario, people are really digging their holes deeper. </p>
<p>I do agree that if you can get into Harvard/ Columbia/ Yale Law, coming out of third tier college, then more power to you.</p>
<p>Lazykid, you seem to make the argument that attending a top law school is a worthwhile investment given the right economic preconditions. So what about someone graduating in the Class of 2013 or 2014 applying to law school, say, one or two years out? Can we make the assumption that law job prospects coming out of a T-14 school five years from now will be better than they are now?</p>