Law School Discussion

Quote from: jaykay1995 on March 14, 2006, 11:11:50 AM

I see.  That's what I figured.

Perhaps you could demand to pick your 1L professors before admission while leveraging your yield.  This might work with schools who are offering you a scholarship, or who are inclined to match other schools' $, or who seem desperate to raise their yield.  (We all know who some of these schools are.)  You have something they want--numbers--so why can't you make demands?

I think knowing your professors a summer before (or, in case of deferral, a year before) would give you a distinct advantage.

Um, no.  The reason you can't use your "numbers" assets as leverage is because 1) it just does not work this way, ALL law schools will choose your first year classes and professors for you, so you really don't stand to gain anything by accepting from somewhere else (except a CHANCE at having professors you MIGHT prefer to the ones they'll give you) and the schools know this; and 2) there's a reason law schools have waitlists.  It's no skin of their nose if you turn them down; they'll just go down the list and extend an offer to someone else with numbers and soft factors similar to your own.

I realize that not letting students select their courses is an entrenched practice.

However I object to "there's a reason schools have waitlists" as a reason why a students don't have any leverage.  Schools generally waitlist/ding people with inferior numbers, and give $$ to people with superior numbers.  Schools who particularly want to game the rankings (WUSTL, anyone?) will accept students with 168+ LSATs even if they have horrible GPAs because USNews computes LSAT as a higher factor.  If USNews changed their formula, the school would change its formula too.  Schools don't give away money for no reason, or because they think a particular student is "impressive."  They give away the money to get that student's numbers, therefore improving their rankings!  Clearly, most schools view numbers as a commodity.

Sure, if your numbers are not at the high end for a particular school, you don't have any sort of leverage--that's why the school didn't give you any money.  This is also why many schools accept autoadmits first before sorting out the rest.

For that matter, some schools will take your scholarship away if you don't stay in the top 25%, and this is rational too.  This has absolutely nothing to do with the normative value of being a "good student."  The school already got what it wanted from you--you accepted admission with good numbers--so why should it pay you anymore?  They probably put you in a section full of other scholarship kids to pay as little as possible.

Schools will do all kinds of crazy things to improve their ranking--building new libraries when they wouldn't otherwise, accepting unimpressive students who are solely good test-takers, etc.  Why wouldn't they give in to equally weird demands from students they want?

Sorry for the misunderstanding--I'm an 0L, not at FSU, although it's one of the schools I'm considering.

How far in advance will you know your class schedule?  Can you request a certain professor ahead of time?  Is there an "add/drop" week like in UG where you can switch from one section to another?  Clearly, I have no clue what I'm talking about.

I suppose it also may depend on the school, but I'm generally wondering how much latitude (if any) 1Ls get in choosing professors.

Are there many different professors possible for 1L classes at any given school, or is FSU just bigger than most?

Sounds like you'd rather live in Pittsburgh, and with these types of schools you will pretty much have to stay in the same city when you graduate, and live there for a very long time.

They're both going to be competitive.  At a TTT, people want to have a chance to work when they're done.

As far as transferring, sure if you're tops in your class you'll have the chance, but who wants to bank on that?

Toledo, which is a crappier city, does not offer competition from students from better local law schools (unlike Pittsburgh).  However, there probably isn't much of a legal market there to begin with.

I would pick Duquesne.