<p>If your law school choices are ones ranked 6-15 in US News, you could get some pretty fancy names on your resume and the ability to be part of a prominent alumni network: Duke, Cornell, Penn or Georgetown. Unless someone wanted to practice in Michigan or Virginia or got a good deal on tuition, why would someone turn down any of those four schools to go to two others in that tier: U. of Virginia or U. of Michigan? Lawyers likely know that U. of Virginia/Michigan are the peers of Duke, Cornell, Penn and Georgetown for law, but the general public likely does not.</p>
<p>Why short yourself by picking a law school that's part of a less-well ranked and less prestigious university when you could go to a law school of equal caliber and get a fancier university name to drop to your non-lawyer friends, and an alumni network of sharper people overall? (Surely graduates of Duke or Penn overall, for example, have done well in their careers and are spread around the US.)</p>
<p>And wrt to GULC, it has the lowest employment prospects of any of the T14. Any of the other 13 would be a much better bet at the same price. And #15 only works in Texas. </p>
<p>btw, your post is missing something since it is hard to follow.</p>
Well, don’t lawyers hire lawyers? What the general public thinks doesn’t really enter into it for OCI, clerkships, or Biglaw hiring down the line.</p>
<p>I personally give the general public more credit than to think it believes that Duke, Cornell, Penn and Georgetown provide “an alumni network of sharper people overall” than Virginia and Michigan do. </p>
<p>A lower chance at having a high paying job isn’t worth a bumper sticker name. OCIs at Michigan/Virginia are more likely to result in a higher ranking firm than an OCI at GULC.</p>
<p>"Lol…you really think the general public does not know that U of Michigan is in that tier? That is ridiculous. "</p>
<p>You should ask the general public and check out rankings before making such ill-informed posts.</p>
<p>US News ranks U. of Michigan undergrad #28 and U. of Virginia undergrad at #23. Neither is in the top 20.</p>
<p>When I told a neighbor on a plane recently where I went to school (an Ivy), he went on and on about how he had met a college senior recently who was asking where to go to law school. The person’s choices were Michigan and Cornell. He went on and on about how a Cornell resume will “jump off a desk” while Michigan was just “a state school”. The neighbor had gone to a regional college in Virginia, so I’d say that he counts as “the general public”.</p>
<p>Figured I’d answer the OP’s question rather than fight over rankings :)>- One huge reason to choose a lower ranked school is based on money. I opted for a lower ranked law school that paid 50% of my tuition, gave me paid fellowship, internship and editorial work opportunities, where I was on the Law Review and National Moot Court team, and had multiple opportunities to clerk for a federal judge after graduation, as well as a Wall Street law firm job waiting for me after that. Much less debt and nearly as much opportunity, as long as I remained in the top 5% of my class. Could have attended a school with more prestige, but would have had far more loans to pay back. Instead I was debt free within five years of graduation. </p>
<p>Fighting over rankings probably is a pointless exercise. But to those for whom rankings are all-important - why wouldn’t the fact that Michigan outranks Cornell as a law school be at least as important as the fact that Cornell outranks Michigan for undergrad? It’s the conventional wisdom, certainly here on CC but in other circles as well, that the name on the graduate degree has more impact on one’s professional opportunities.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the point of the anecdote about the guy on the plane. A regional VA school grad - presumably not a lawyer, since he “counts as the general public” - tells a prospective law student that he/she should choose Cornell for law school because the Cornell name on a resume will jump off the page and Michigan is just a state school. But if the guy is not a lawyer (or one of the rare non-lawyers who hires lawyers), why is what he thinks important to the prospective 1L, or to others choosing a law school?</p>
<p>“I don’t understand the point of the anecdote about the guy on the plane.”</p>
<p>It was in response to intparent’s allegation that it is “ridiculous” to think that “the general public does not know that U of Michigan is in that [6-15 ranking] tier”</p>
<p>The guy on the plane who recommended Cornell over Michigan for law school, since Cornell is a fancier school overall, is a CEO of a company and hires lawyers.</p>
<p>CEOs don’t hire lawyers, they have general counsel for that. Even if they did, CEOs hire from the major firms, not from law schools. Law firms already weed out people by where they went to school. Going to school for lay public name recognition is idiotic.</p>
<p>Just to get a “wow” from people who don’t know anything about law schools may not be the best strategy, but a fancier and more national school overall gives you a stronger alumni network. My own school’s alumni network, both from the law school and otherwise, has been very, very helpful and has put dollars into my pocket as a working adult. Plus, a fancier school gives you more respect for things like dates, which is certainly something to consider, as minor as that may be to some.</p>
<p>. . . .with superficial girls.
(or maybe that should be “ignorant superficial girls”, as at most places, most educated folks understand that UMich and UVa are pretty highly-rated institutions).</p>
<p>I only see one person here who seems out of touch with reality (and who ranks Georgetown, fine school, BTW, over UMich and UVa in anything . . . other than maybe opportunities in DC).</p>
Doesn’t the answer to this question depend on which region you are from?
Many people on the West Coast, for example, do not think highly of Duke, Cornell, Penn, Georgetown, Michigan, or Virginia. Most people in the US probably think Penn is Penn State and don’t even know Penn is an Ivy. Also the term “Ivy” doesn’t even mean anything in most regions outside of the Northeast. Nobody really cares about going to an “Ivy” and can’t even name the Ivy League schools. A friend of mine who went to Harvard had never heard of Cornell before going to Harvard.
[url=<a href=“http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/gulc/2013/%5DGeorgetown%5B/url”>http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/gulc/2013/]Georgetown[/url] isn’t placing as well as others in the lower T14, but it’s hardly terrible.
I agree with Demosthenes, and “Ivy” certainly has a good reputation anywhere in the US, and internationally. I doubt that someone who went through a college application process and ended up at Harvard never heard of Cornell before arriving at Harvard, but if the person didn’t know about Cornell before starting the application process, that just speaks to the lack of knowledge of the person, not anything negative about Cornell.
When I was weighing where to go to law school, people thought that “Columbia University” was “U. of South Carolina at Columbia”. That just indicated the lack of knowledge of those people, not anything about Columbia U., one of the best in the world.
^ That’s not the purpose of the thread though. Isn’t this thread about choosing law schools to name drop to the “general public”?
The general public thinks Penn is Penn State and has no idea it’s an Ivy, and that Duke is a sports school. Most people outside of the Northeast have no idea what schools outside of HYP comprise the Ivies and probably think Stanford is an Ivy.
I know on the West Coast many people would choose UCLA over a non-HYP Ivy and don’t even bother applying to the “lower Ivies.” A Stanford friend of mine had never heard of Northwestern. I’m saying it’s all regional (at least outside of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT).
The friend who went to Harvard got into HYPSMIT and Caltech, so never had to bother applying to 'lower" schools and probably didn’t do any research on them. He had no idea Columbia is an Ivy and still thinks Penn is a party school. He’s not from the Northeast though, so people in his region talk about very different schools.
My point is that a school’s reputation is purely regional (outside of HYPSMIT, and what should be Caltech (although this school has very little lay prestige so people forget about it)). Although I will caveat this with I am 100% confident that most people in all regions confuse Penn with Penn State.