Columbia vs NYU

[heartbreaker]

Or Queens if you happen to be white.

What are you talking about?

[k0em9u]

Blatant flame bait. Should have been obvious. Apparently didn't work.

[squirrelrogue]

My non-experience is that the atmosphere at NYU was much more welcoming to public interest than was the atmosphere at CLS (or Penn, for that matter). It was as simple as speaking to at least one current student who was not going to a firm for their 2L summer, something that did not happen at CLS or Penn (at least not without said PI student having been trotted out especially for that purpose).

And my ACTUAL experience is that when we're talking about the already small PI communities, every little bit (especially raw numbers-wise) helps--one reason why HLS worked for me was that, since the school is so big, you can still get a critical mass of students doing PI, even though the percentage is still small. I think it would have been much harder for me to make the decisions I've made at someplace like CLS or Penn where it really would have been much more a swimming-against-the-current thing, percentage wise as well as raw numbers wise.

My actual experience as a public interest (no applications to firms for either summer) person at CLS is that there are enough people to make a good group of public interest people.  I'm not sure if adding 10 or 15 people would make much of a difference.  I'm not suggesting Columbia is a better place to go than NYU or other schools for PI, just that my actual experience here and discussions with my numerous friends at NYU lead me to believe that NYU does not offer any tangible benefits to PI people.  If that is OP's only reason for preferring NYU, I think it's unwarranted. 

[k0em9u]

Can you offer him any reason at all to pick CLS? Other than eating at Toms restaurant?

[squirrelrogue]

Can you offer him any reason at all to pick CLS? Other than eating at Toms restaurant?

He said he was leaning toward CLS, but thought NYU might be better for public interest.  My point was that I don't think there's as much of an advantage for NYU in PI as people say, and if he wants to go to CLS that concern shouldn't stop him.

[Jamie Stringer]

I think Columbia's LRAP is a bit stronger than NYU.  I think academically the schools are equal.  My experience is that NYU's public interest "advantage" is overstated.  To the extent that it exists, I think it is mainly based on self selection.  From what I have seen CLS people have no problem finding and landing top public interest jobs.  If you look at the raw numbers, NYU does place more people into public interest than its peer schools, but it is something like 6% instead of 4%... The point is that no school is really very public interest oriented.  

If you are seriously considering NYU, look into whether or not their LRAP has an asset cap.  I believe that you can't use the NYU LRAP if you have more than $20,000 in assets.  So you wouldn't be able to own more than 20k worth of stuff for ten years after you graduated if you wanted any assistance.  That, for me, was a dealbreaker.  You may want to double check the fine print, I'm pretty sure that's the case.

Anyway, you can't make a mistake choosing between the two.  But I wouldn't recommend going to NYU just because you think it will be better for public interest.

This is just untrue.  Between 10-15% of NYU grads go into public interest yearly.

[Resident CLS Troll]

This is just untrue.  Between 10-15% of NYU grads go into public interest yearly.

It varies. 

2005: 6%
2006: 14%
2007: 8%

source: http://www.law.nyu.edu/careerservices/employmentstatistics/jobtype/index.htm

[Jamie Stringer]

Contradicts what's written here

http://www.law.nyu.edu/publicinterestlawcenter/recentgraduateplacement/index.htm

Also, IIRC, the dean mentioned last year's number was 12%.

[Resident CLS Troll]

Contradicts what's written here

http://www.law.nyu.edu/publicinterestlawcenter/recentgraduateplacement/index.htm

Also, IIRC, the dean mentioned last year's number was 12%.

It's their website.  Maybe not everyone was reporting.

And the link I posted doesn't show 2008, so 12% might be right.  It wouldn't be an outlier or anything.

[Jamie Stringer]

It's their website.  Maybe not everyone was reporting.

And the link I posted doesn't show 2008, so 12% might be right.  It wouldn't be an outlier or anything.

Perhaps.

And yes.

OP: Bottom line is that a higher percentage of students at NYU are going into PI than Columbia.  This may or may not mean anything to you.  At the end of the day, it's a toss-up because both are great schools.