Illinois 1L - Ask away

[lou]

Bars:
  Always open till 2.  The fun thing though (or bad, depending on your POV), is that the undergrad green st. bars allow in 19+, while 21+ get bracelets to drink.  This makes for great opportunities to drop the law bomb: "My buddy here is #1 in the law school class..."  I've seen this work to marvelous effect.

If this would constitute advice, it is the best piece of it I've ever got on this website. 

I do have a question though; Is preference given to in-state applicants? Or is there a "% of class" they shoot for? I noticed the gap between their 25/75 LSAT scores is rather large (160/167) compared to similarly ranked schools. Not that the one necessarily has anything to do with the other. Any other reason you know of though?

[Speedzie]

You know, I'm actually not too sure about that.  I DO know that in-state definitely gets a nice on tuition.  I would look at Dean Pless's thread over at top law schools:

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=57169&hilit=pless&sid=9a19078b5298347c05694c5511e9ebf6

[non parata est]

The in-state break in tuition is shrinking.  I think in-state tuition has gone up between $10,000 and $13,000 over the last three or four years.

[jansafan]

If you're still around, checking msgs, do the law students come from all over the US or is it more a home grown in Illinois vibe?

[Speedzie]

I'd say it's like 50/50.  Lots of people are from Chicago, others are from michigan and iowa, etc.  I'm personally from outside the midwest, and i have plenty of friends from florida, maine, california, texas, etc etc.

Note that IL wasn't the highest ranked school i got into either.  But i really liked the school, the town and the people, not to mention the price.  I plan to go back home when it's over, as do lots of folks.  It's nice to know that Chicago biglaw is out there as an option though. 

On that note, the folks who are set on biglaw are mostly planning on staying in chicago (from what I hear, top 10% is totally portable nationally, top 1/3 and you're pretty much set for chi-town; and 60%ish of the class getting solid near-biglaw chicago firm jobs).  Since I'm looking for a mid-size/smaller firm job, I'm not too concerned.

[jansafan]

I'm down to a final choice between Georgia and Illinois - money is so much better at Illinois but I just want to get a sense of it allowing me to practice somewhere besides Chicago. I like the idea that the law school keeps itself separate, in my 4 yrs of undergrad at Illinois I never met one law school student - you guys must avoid campustown and all that. Do you hear of many 3L's heading out to the west coast after graduation? I have to make a decision. Tks for your thoughts.

[LawDog3]

What are the curves like? Not going there, but curious.

[Speedzie]

Curves:  3.2 avg for 1Ls, 3.4 for 2+3Ls.

West Coast Jobs?  Not sure, mostly bc I'm a 1L.  I can tell you that I went to a career services workshop a few weeks ago, and they had a bunch of 1L summer positions lined up in Seattle.  I remember some talk of CA too. 

In terms of biglaw, my sense is that this is a Chicago-centered school.  If you're like me, and you're not after biglaw, i doubt it's much of an issue.  As a 1L though, jobs really aren't my specialty...

http://www.law.uiuc.edu/prospective-students/employee-stats.asp

[officeguy]

How diverse would you say the law school is? ie. Racially, geographically, socially...ect.

[Speedzie]

How diverse would you say the law school is? ie. Racially, geographically, socially...ect.

Without looking up hard numbers, which I'm sure are available:

I'd say white guys are the largest group you could single out, but I don't feel it's white-guy dominated (mind you i'm a white-guy).  My small section (30 students) has 3 African Americans, a similar number of Asian Americans (I think there might be a higher proportion outsite our section), and a similar number of Indian American students.  There are also very sizable gay and hispanic populations  (OUTLAW - gay/lesbian; and LLSA - Latino/a law students) seem to be popular groups with lots of meetings.

Also, there's a sizable number of Chinese (ESL) LLM students.  I'd say they probably take up 1/4 of the school's total population, and they seem to stick together.  Since they're LLMs, they're never part of a 1L section, and thus aren't mixed in with the rest of the students.  Many of them also don't speak English especially well, which throws up another barrier I feel.

It's roughly 50/50 male/female.  I've seen hard numbers from the 2L or 3L class saying 60/40 male/female, but i don't believe this is true for our class

Age:  the strongest concentration in the 1L class is the roughly 23/yr old group.  Students in their late twenties are less common, but are in no small numbers.  Past 30, and over 40, the number dwindle accordingly.  I think 2 students in my small section (of 30) are over 40/yrs.