BigLaw Lawyer, yes, I agree that school prestige is somewhat regional, outside of HYP/Stanford/MIT and the like. If you search for a Gallup poll about university prestige, the poll results support that. Duke may not be viewed as well on the West Coast as it is in the Southeast, but it’s still well-viewed, though-certainly not a podunk institution.
But for the Harvard alum who doesn’t know that Columbia is an ivy? He must just be in his own little world; I went to one of the schools listed in this post, and there was frequent talk of other schools in the same athletic association. At least people would compare notes about where else they had applied.
^I don’t think he compared notes. He also only applied to the best schools so didn’t bother applying to the lower Ivies. My friends and I certainly did not apply to the same schools - we all looked at different schools and ended up at different places. Maybe you went to preparatory school? We went to public school and public school kids don’t talk about the process that much.
When I went to Michigan Law in the early 90s, it was ranked in the top six or seven, and Penn, Duke, Virginia, Cal and Cornell were indisputably lower ranked and sent far fewer clerks to the SCOTUS and BigLaw. I received a high paying summer associate job after my first year as well. Times have changed and while Michigan’s recent deans were asleep at the wheel, we’ve fallen down on the rankings. My point is that rankings will change, so choose a school that will provide a lasting name or brand recognition. I love college football, so Michigan has opened doors and avenues to develop client relationships, especially while traveling and at networking events.
By the OP’s reasoning, one would pick Harvard Law over Yale Law. The average lay person would assume that one is attending Yale after failing to gain admission at Harvard.
I looked up the SCOTUS stats on Wikipedia for clerkships since 1990, followed by the total number for all years reported. This is the count, which could be off by one or two, in order of total numbers per school:
By the OP’s reasoning, one would pick Harvard Law over Yale Law. The average lay person would assume that one is attending Yale after failing to gain admission at Harvard. "
People certainly do that. I didn’t even bother applying to Yale in part because I wanted to work overseas and figured that another law school had a better-known name abroad.
Considering that Cornell is by far the easiest T-14 to get into, and cross admits for the most part go to other T-14s, it seems like either (1) most people don’t think that certain schools have more lay prestige than others in the T-14, and/or (2) most people just don’t care.
And honestly, who the fuck cares. It doesn’t mean shit in the end anyway.
I mean, do we care cause it may mean more money? The richest people I know personally (richer than law partners) went to no name state schools and aren’t even working professionals. Life is what you make out of it.
I have come to realize that having a prestigious degree(s) means very little in the big picture.
When I was more youthful–and you won’t get me admitting to how long ago that was–I made the error of going with the “brand name”, higher ranked university over the better law school. Part of my decision was really very stupid, for example, because I didn’t go to a really good college, and I wanted to be an alumni of a prestigious university, and also my naive view that the the high rankings of the law schools associated with larger, lesser or state universities wouldn’t stand the test of time. So I attended Duke even though I was also accepted to Michigan, NYU, Georgetown, UVA, Penn among others. (Chicago and Yale were my top choices, but I didn’t get in.) When I got to law school, I realized how much more respected the larger schools were, especially Michigan. And NYU has only risen to be one of the top law schools in the last twenty years. But in some ways some my thinking was right, that smaller schools provide more job opportunities, and I still made the right decision wrt to Georgetown and UVA.
spayurpets, I don’t think that you made a wrong choice at all; Duke Law is certainly the peer of all of those schools, and more highly ranked than some of them. It’s certainly not “lesser” than any of them. Maybe US News ranks NYU a bit higher but it’s 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.
@happyalumnus Yes, I turned out fine and Duke was good in many respects for me, but I think my process in choosing a school was flawed, and I do think it is wrongheaded for prospective law students to go for the high-prestige university over the best law school.
Also, I think you are assuming that there is some prestigious school network that can be tapped into by going to the name brand school. I’ve found the evidence of that pretty scant during my career. Duke, for example, has a loose law school alumni network, which is small, because the school is small. It’s probably stronger in the southeast and some big cities, but where I live it’s almost nonexistent. And you can find some funny little pockets of Duke Law alumni which emerge at certain law firms like Simpson Thacher or Williams & Connolly. But the greater Duke undergrad community could not care less about the law school grads. So far as I know, I never got a client, job, business opportunity because I went to Duke Law as opposed to another school. I did give a small assignment to a lawyer once through his contacting me as a fellow Duke Law grad, but only because I needed some papers filed in Kentucky and he was the only lawyer I knew there. Maybe some people recognized it a bit more in cocktail conversation than if I had said that I had gone to NYU or Chicago, but mostly because of the basketball team. My D1, who was good enough to get into several Ivies for college, was waitlisted at Duke, which tells you how much impact that legacy connection on the admissions committee. I’ve also spent a lot of time overseas in Asia, and Duke was largely not known, whereas Michigan, Cornell and Berkeley had much more name recognition.
honestly who cares if some random dude at a bar has heard of the school you attended? if you got into U Virginia and Cornell, but like U Virginia better for whatever reasons, do yourself a favor and go there. since I graduated college, less than 10 people total have ever bothered to ask me where i went to school. really, nobody cares.
That’s interesting because I’m constantly asked by others where I went to law school and college and my undergrad is higher ranked than Michigan at the undergrad level. (They assume because I went to a top law school I likely went to a good college too.) I think it also has something to do with the company where I work, which has a great reputation. During my second year summer associate position at a now defunct large law firm, I remember vividly the admin in charge of us introducing me to others by instructing me in front of them to state where I went to law school, as though I was a trophy wife. I must say, however, that Michigan Law alumni are not uniformly friendly or helpful to each other but rather very competitive, with the notable exception of small networks of friends or cliques. The name opened doors and got me jobs and clients, but not the law school alumni network. In fact, during law school the kids were downright nasty toward each other, just like the kids in Legally Blonde. (Ann Coulter went there.) The division between kids who had gone to private colleges like myself and public schools was also noticeable and at times negative. On the other hand, the Michigan undergrads absolutely worship the law school, which, to the OP’s point, is the highest ranked professional school at Michigan and occupies its best physical plant. To many Michigan undergrads, getting accepted to the law school is a dream. Especially during football games, the undergrad alumni I meet are in awe, which I eat up. And I frequently get asked for my business card, career advice and invited to parties. At the undergrad level, the alumni are generally a very friendly bunch.
@SeattleTW, I would also admit that I had a bit of State U bias when I was younger. When I looked at the stats of the in-state students at Michigan and UVA there was a significant difference and I felt like this would be diluting the quality of the student body. I really didn’t take into account that the faculty at these schools were better than Duke, and isn’t the point of school, to learn from the best? At the time, I also spoke to a Harvard Law School professor who was a former next door neighbor. He advised me flatly to go to Michigan, but I didn’t follow this advice.
@spayurpets, some schools such as Harvard and Columbia consider applicants as legacies only when one parent or grandparent attended their school as an undergrad.
I don’t know how Duke defines its legacies.
going to a top law school helps you land that first job out of school. (primarily in biglaw) but that’s pretty much it.
I went to cornell undergrad and nyu law school. I am far more impressed by someone who did hard STEM major at a no-name state school, compared to someone who did some fluff non-sense like history or poli sci at an Ivy then Harvard Law. You can B.S. through Ivy law school or Ivy MBA, but you can’t B.S. through any decently rigorous engineering program. You actually need some talent to get through that.
lawyers are dime a dozen, esp. in any large metro areas of the country. anyone can become a lawyer, which is basically a glorified paper-pushing profession.
my cousin did CS & Stats @ University of Florida. Now he works at F500 as a data scientist, building sophisticated statistical models to shape corporate strategy based on company’s data, while banking well over 100k a year with 50 hour/ week work schedule. His work is way more analytical and dare I say ‘prestigious’ than any Biglaw attorney could ever wish for. I would think of him to be in a much more enviable and prestigious position than someone with Ivy UG + Top 6 Law school background.
After my D1 applied to Duke, they sent a letter to me (form letter) that acknowledged that I attended Duke so they promised that my D’s application would be given an extra reading. It was a nice acknowledgment but as you said, it’s not clear it made any difference at all. Some other discussions I have seen have said that the legacy status really only has an impact if the legacy child is applying early. After that it no longer has an impact since the school perceives a lack of interest. My D1 did not apply early to Duke.
Surprising that you received a letter telling that your D’s application would be given extra reading since she didn’t apply ED.
My son was also a legacy applicant who applied ED. No letter was sent out acknowledging any legacy status(Ivy).
He was accepted.