<p>Is it better to rank in the bottom of your law school class at a university like Harvard or Yale or to rank within the top 3 students at a local tier 3 school?</p>
<p>The said local tier 3 school offers a 6 year program where you can obtain a bachelor's in business and your JD. Basically, I would be on a full ride for 6 years. (I know several years ago, the top girl in the law school got a 200K job in Boston right out of college.)</p>
<p>Or, I can go to a higher-tier college, pay $200,000 for a bachelor's, and still have 3 years of law school ahead of me.</p>
<p>So really, all biases aside, whuch path would you take and why? Which will get me farther ahead?</p>
<p>Having a full ride at undergrad and law school would certainly remove a big burden off of your shoulders. However, if you have your sights set on a lucrative and prestigious legal career after law school, the rule of thumb is to always go with the best school possible. To have the same shot at lower-tier schools, you need to be in the top few percentiles of your class, and no matter how smart or talented you are, there’s no way you can predict with any certainty that you will find yourself along that part of the curve.</p>
<p>Well, do you think it’s better to be in the bottom percentile of your class at a school like Yale or Harvard or closer to the top at a lower-tier?</p>
<p>The girl with the 200K job might have been a fluke. I have no idea how often things like that happen. It might not even happen at schools like the Ivies for all I know. Would a brand name education really open that many more doors?</p>
<p>The main reason I’m applying to the school is for the program- I’d love to complete it within 6 instead of 7 years.</p>
<p>I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure you need to bind yourself to the program when you enter as a freshman. I’ll definitely look into that though.</p>
<p>First, the caveat: Even the career development folks at YLS are saying that the legal job market is different this year than it has been in the past and that they are unwilling to make too many strong predictions at this point.</p>
<p>That said, and without intending to raise too much furor, I think even the bottom of the YLS class likely has better average job prospects right out of school than the top students at most 3rd tier schools. Two reasons: 1) You can be pretty certain that in a typical year, those graduates who don’t go into biglaw jobs self-selected out of them and could have taken one if they wanted. I am looking at the 2L summer job list and the number of students who are working anywhere other than biglaw or top gov/pi jobs is trivial. 2) YLS does not have a grading system conducive to identifying the bottom of the class. You could be the worst student there and still look like you are at the median.</p>
<p>How do law schools rank their students, especially in the T14? Do they do it by overall GPA? Also, I heard that some law schools don’t give out letter grades but have a credit/ no credit system. Is this true?</p>
<p>Which T14’s use this high pass, pass, etc. grading system? Also, how do law firms and recruiters look at your law school performance under this system? I’m worried that after maintaining a competitive GPA in my undergrad, it’ll be even more competitive in law school. Do grades really matter at a T14 as long as you graduate and pass the bar?</p>
<p>Moot point as Harvard and Yale do not rank their students. There would be no real way of knowing who is at the bottom of the class. In addition, HYS have all done away with traditional grades.</p>
<p>The majority of the T-14 either does nto rank or does not release their rankings:</p>
<p>Sybbie’s post is an excellent one. Most of the top law schools do not rank their students in any way throughout law school. The only time that students at those law schools get some inkling of where they stand in their classes is when honors such as cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude and Order of the Coif are handed out at graduation. At my law school, we literally did not see who was going to graduate with those honors until we were lined up in caps and gowns waiting to walk into the auditorium where we would graduate – the names were listed in an addendum to the graduation program. </p>
<p>Also, when deciding between a T14 and a Tier 3 law school, the answer isn’t always as obvious as some would make it seem. If a Tier 3 law school has excellent placement statistics in a local legal market and you are determined to spend your life working in that local legal market, than that Tier 3 law school might be a good solution, particularly if the school is less expensive than other options. There is no question that going to a T14 law school will open many more doors in many more markets for many more years, but that is not always necessary for everyone. Please remember, too, that not everyone who applies will be offered a spot at a T14 law school – far from it, in fact. </p>
<p>My only concern for the OP is in making a decision at such a young age that could potentially affect the OP’s options both immediately after law school and into the OP’s future. It is always difficult to see one’s path 3 years, 5 years, or 10 or 20 years ahead, but particularly so when the OP is so young (I’m assuming that the OP is an applicant to college, considering a 6-year program right now).</p>