How I Picked the Right Law School
How I Picked the Right Law School
How I Picked the Right Law School
I always knew that after I finished my bachelor's degree I would pursue a graduate program, but I wasn't sure which one I wanted. Medical? Business? Law? All seemed like great options: each led to fantastic careers that provided great earning potential. In the end, the only program that could offer me the skills I needed for my future, hold my interest for life, and open the doors I wanted was Law.
The first step, of course, was to apply to some schools. I submitted applications to all the big names: Harvard Law, Stanford, Berkely, Michigan, Viginia, Georgetown, NYU, Penn, Columbia, and Duke. This, of course, included the application fees, but I took advantage of the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) fee waiver to help defray my costs. As a student, every penny counts, and this made applying a lot easier.
Applying to plenty of schools, and all my hard work as an undergrad, paid off in spades! The acceptance letters rolled in--with few exceptions. Berkely and Yale put me on a waitlist, and I got a surprising letter of rejection from UVA. Their loss. Even with those three culled from the list, it was a tough choice, but in the end it came down to Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania, which was offering a sweet, nearly full, scholarship deal.
The elite law schools are pretty well known. US News and World Report publishes an article every year ranking the top schools. Its no surprise that Yale, Harvard, and Stanford are chart toppers. Conventional wisdom says that if you are accepted, as I was, to one of these top schools you would be out of your mind not to attend. Their reputations are well earned. They consistently place graduates in choice clerkships and many of the most respected law professors have passed through their halls. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, for instance, received his degree from Stanford. Combine their reknown with the fact that they don't use a traditional grading system, and why wouldn't I go to one of the ""top three""? These criteria made my short-list get even shorter, but many of the other schools' programs had attractive features I had to consider. NYU had location, for instance--and I couldn't forget the scholarship offer from the University of Pennsylvania, could I? Grad school is expensive.
As I considered my decision, there were three main points I needed to consider: Grades, Opportunities, and the Cost.
Grading System: Yale, Harvard and Stanford do not issue the traditional letter grades for their courses, instead each issues a grade that amounts to a ""Pass"", ""Fail"", or ""Honors"". In contrast, Penn uses the traditional lettered grading scale we are all used to, with ""A's"" being issued for top work. I spoke to my faculty advisor from college, and some friends of mine who were attending school at Harvard about this, and I was advised that this leads to an academic culture more focused on education and less on competition. My friends assured me that they ended up spending less time per week studying or in class in graduate school than I did as an undergraduate. Using this non-standard grading system contributed to this, and placed these schools, in my eyes, in a positive light.
Future Opportunities: Any school I chose would have to offer me the most opportunity following graduation. Not everyone with a law degree goes on to actually practice law, and I wanted my options to be open to as many degree paths as possible. I did some research into the schools on my list's law programs, and where students who gradutated found work after graduating. Overwhelmingly, Yale, Harvard and Stanford were the most successful in placing students from their law programs in careers that did not involve the practice of law. Top performers from any of the schools seemed to do well, but middling and lower-teir students routinely had trouble finding alternate employment opportunities. Having been wait-listed by Yale, Harvard and Stanford were beginning to pull ahead of the competition.
$$$: The financial burden of graduate school, and particularly law school cannot be understated. With a degree from Yale, according the US News and World Report's 2011 Graduate School Rankings running at amost $71,000 per year, inclusive of tuition, fees, books, room and board, we were talking a serious financial commitment. This monetary blow can be softened, of course, via scholarships, grants, loan repayment plans, work-study, paid internships, and even employment agreements for post graduation work. This stacked up unfavorably against the scholarship offer from Penn Law. In the end, I decided that if the only difference between enjoying my graduate experience was retiring a year or two later, it was a fair trade.
Having finally narrowed my choice to Harvard and Stanford, I began making contact with graduates of each school and speaking to my friends that were currently in those programs, seeking their advice. Both friends and graduates confirmed that between schools with such reputations, it would be hard to go wrong, regardless of my choice.
It was good to receive affirmation of my choices, but it did little to narrow things down. I decided that the next thing to do was to make a list of pros and cons on what I considered key differences, with the categories prioritized in order of their importance to me.
Number of Students: The biggest concern for me was size. Harvard routinely has an incoming class size of about 550 students. Stanford has a smaller program, with about 170 students per year. Classes at each school get grouped into student sections for their first year. Stanford divides the students into smaller groups of about 25-30 individuals per section, and Harvard, with their larger class size, divides students into sections of 75-80 Students. Students spend their first year attending class with their sections. I had some experience with bigger schools, and contrary to popular belief, they have a lot of advantages. While I was getting my Bachelor's at the University of Michigan, I noticed that the larger size of Michigan allowed them the ability to have nicer facilities, more and better programs, and lent itself to a broader alumni network. All of these I consider important, with the alumni network being particularly key since I knew there was a chance I might pursue a non-legal practice career upon graduating. The other benefit would be having sufficient other classmates around for study groups and like-minded friends for moral support. Harvard was the clear leader in this category.
Location: Location, location, location. This is always the most personal and subjective criteria in picking a school. I grew up in the Midwest, and having had plenty of snow, upon graduation I was attracted to the sunshine of the West Coast and headed out there to work. Having lived in the West and the Midwest, and still not being sure where I wanted to work after graduate school, the East Coast held some attraction to me, even though Palo Alto, California has much nicer weather than Cambridge, Massachusetts. Palo Alto held many advantages, mainly with the number of start-ups in California, access to venture capital is easier. Boston, however, is another hub for startups and venture enterprise, and remained a viable competitor.
Brand and Reputation: One of the big attractions to a degree from either Harvard or Stanford is their name recognition. While I was applying to grad school, I spent some time working in Europe and Asia. In my travels, I noticed that the school name that got the most international respect for both legal degrees and work in other fields, was Harvard, and most of the people I spoke to said that if they had the same choice to make, Harvard would be where they would go. I also ran into a surprising number of Harvard graduates abroad--another example of their wider alumni network, which further pushed Harvard to the front of the pack.
Curriculum: I also looked closely at the programs each school offered. This category I further subdivided into 3 sections: which school gave me the most access to classes at big-name business schools, which school offered classes on negotiations, and which school offered the best coursework on venture capital and entrepreneurship law. Both schools offered access to business classes and negotiation. Harvard was the clear leader in offering the best access to business schools, but Stanford was neck-and-neck on the venture capital/entrepreneurship. They had more specialization in it, but with Harvard's larger program, they were had almost identical offerings. The one area that put Harvard clearly in the lead in this category was their Program on Negotiation.
It was clear at this point where my decision fell. While no one could argue that the shores of Palo Alto are far warmer than the chilly New England weather of Cambridge, and while I ultimately will return to the West Coast to work, my experience at Harvard has been exactly what I hoped it would. I can't say that I haven't had moments where I didn't think the grass may have been greener on the other side, but making an ordered, well thought out decision, based on clearly defined criteria has helped me remain convinced that this was the right choice.
Educational tours including school trips to France and Spain Parents have a better choice of schools in metro cities Buy Peppa Pig Toys – Great For Pre-School Kids! Learning Mandarin In a Private Chinese Language School Educational Information about Dental Hygiene Instant Student Loans - Offers You Support To Convene Your Educational Wants 4 Reasons Why Scholar Tours Excursions Are Essential in Education How To Select a Violin School Teaching Our Children Compassion The Actual Facts Hiding Behind What Affiliate Marketing Teachers Actually Do Simple Solution to Cope with Essay Assignment at School Visual Communications Schools - Career Training Possibilities Legal and Paralegal Schools - Training and Course Options