what's up with Michigan Forum

[notgreat]

Why are you weirdos still talking about lay prestige ITT?

[TheOnePercent]

Let's get back to Michigan bros making excuses for their worst-in-the-T13 biglaw placement.

[BiglawAssociate]

Uchicago undergrad is majorly overrated by US NEWS in recent years imo, before like the last five years it was always around fifteen, but then they gamed the rankings hard and are pretending they're on the same level as HYPSM now

okay, why though? maybe its the echo chamber effect of rankings, but chicago can afford to be nearly as selective as harvard, columbia, yale, MIT. Moreover, its an incredibly well respected school with prolific faculty, global recognition and great grad school/career results for its graduates. Few institutions can claim their own self-styled intellectual moments in political economy or literature the way Chicago can. What makes a school "overrated"? because some people haven't heard of it? Most people don't know Bernardaud porcelain either, but that sure as shit doesn't make it overrated compared to target's Threshold brand Dinnerware set.

I haven't really followed UChicago's moves through the USNWR undergraduate college rankings over the years, but I do remember when I was in high school looking at college rankings like a decade ago (wow, I'm old) and developed my sense of school preftige that it was essentially NU and UChicago were peer schools. When I look at the rankings today, it looks like UChicago undergrad is a notch above Northwestern and closer to HYPSM. It is difficult for me to attribut this to anything other than year-over-year fluctuations in the USNWR rankings and it is a very limited perspective, but it does seem that UChicago has focused on ensuring that their undergrad moved up in the USNWR rankings.

The drastic decline in admissions rate at UChicago is a relatively recent trend (http://chicagomaroon.com/2011/04/05/adm ... ate-falls/). Even when the admissions rate was "high" at UChicago it was still an incredibly prestigious school with renowned academics but of course they for whatever reason have more "lay prestige" now and are able to drop the admissions rate as more applicants apply. Either way I'm not saying that UChicago undergrad is overrated or underrated by USNWR, I'm just saying that I think that it's very likely that they definitely decided to focus their efforts on making sure that they were addressing all of the metrics to ensure that they could move up in the USNWR rankings.

An interesting link I came across: http://web.archive.org/web/200709081424 ... ts/usnews/

Looking at that link, it looks like UChi was ranked quite high in the initial USNWR surveys and then around the late 90s-mid 00s begin to slip to the mid-teens. So when looking at it this way, you could say that UChi decided to likely refocus on the USNWR metrics and "correct" their rankings moreso than actually them ever moving up.

Looking at the link, it looks like most schools have remained relatively stagnant in the USNWR rankings (through 2007 at least, couldn't find a more up to date link). There are some notable exceptions though where schools have really moved up a lot. Penn, WUSTL, and USC it seems are the schools that would likely be the most guilty of trying to "game" the USNWR rankings just looking at their rather sudden rises in the rankings.

When I was applying to college, UChicago had a 50% acceptance rate......I think it's pretty overrated for undergrad at least. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the employment prospects are worse than schools ranked around/lower than it because a lot of them are liberal arts majors since the school's not that well known for the employable sciences.

Undergrad rankings are pretty dumb though - Penn and Duke should not be in the realm of Caltech. I wouldn't be surprised if USNews just ranks schools more highly if their employees went there, since they can randomly change their metrics to do whatever they want.

[BiglawAssociate]

Dude your schtick is seriously running out if you didn't know what Penn was.

I'm from the Midwest and I guarantee you non of my co-workers know the difference between penn and Penn state, only rich people and I'm guessing more people from the northeast are aware of it.

Also how did this turn into a lay prestige thread

I'm not from the Northeast originally, but according to people who are, supposedly Penn is the rich kid's party school and an extension of the rich elite society from the Northeast. I guess that's generally what I think now when I think of Penn - rich kids. (Before, I thought it was Penn State; I assume most people in other regions do the same.)

[NYSprague]

Dude your schtick is seriously running out if you didn't know what Penn was.

I'm from the Midwest and I guarantee you non of my co-workers know the difference between penn and Penn state, only rich people and I'm guessing more people from the northeast are aware of it.

Also how did this turn into a lay prestige thread

I'm not from the Northeast originally, but according to people who are, supposedly Penn is the rich kid's party school and an extension of the rich elite society from the Northeast. I guess that's generally what I think now when I think of Penn - rich kids. (Before, I thought it was Penn State; I assume most people in other regions do the same.)

No, that's Brown. Hth.

[Alan Grant]

Again, as others have pointed out, apart from HYS (and sort of Duke) it is very regional. For the point above, as someone who spent several years in the Northeast, I can say that Penn is indeed considered to be very prestigious (that is, of course, when it is not confused with Penn State, and this does still happen on occasion in New England and in other parts of the country with great frequency).

Also, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/w ... on-ranking. Note that UC-Berkely, Michigan, and even UCLA outrank Penn.

[Alan Grant]

As for the topic at hand, I think U Michigan's fall from grace can be explained party by the deterioration of Detroit, partly by the way US News ranks undergraduate schools combined with the obsession with prestige among law students, and partly by the feedback cycle from a slippage in the rankings stemming from the first two.

[Yea All Right]

Sorry Michigan bros but medians and obsolete prestige are keeping Michigan up, it should go down to Georgetown-level. You can try to justify the job numbers with whatever reasons, but tbh those reasons affect a lot of the other schools as well (how often do we hear "self-selection" used as an excuse?). And one more complaint I have about Michigan, sorry it's an off-topic rant but...

A lot of guessing and misinformation in this thread, so I'll try to clear up a few things:

1. Michigan Drop: Yes Michigan dropped, but it was really only a spot from last year as Duke just moved up and we didn't follow suit. This isn't meant to imply the drop didn't happen, it did, but it's not as serious as some people have let on. Michigan has been towards the bottom of the top 10 for the last few years now, so a 1 spot drop is/should not be alarming.

2. Explanations For Drop: Lots of factors here, most of which have already been mentioned. We don't have a home market, so when the market contracted, we got screwed. That's true. I also think for a few years Michigan continued to admit an incoming class that did not have as much work experience, on the whole, as classes at peer schools. This hurt us as well at OCI. Finally, and this is certainly the hardest to explain, I think demographic and changes in living preferences has also played a huge role. Young people today want to be in cities, even much more so than 10-15 years ago. To many students from the coasts, Michigan seems like a foreign land (trust me, this continues even amongst such students from the coasts now attending). I think it is harder today to get good students to come to the middle of Michigan than it was 15 years ago. Hopefully some people will want to come see Harbaugh.

3. Adjustments Already Made: Our 2L class is smaller by about 50 people than previous classes. I think this will make a huge difference when OCI #s come out. All anecdotal information from students and OCP indicates that OCI went very well for our class this past fall. OCP also moved up OCI to the first week of August, I think this will also benefit students. Additionally, Michigan adjusted its grade curve last year, so we are now in line with our peer schools, whereas before we were unnecessarily below. Finally, Michigan decided to play along with the rankings game started by other schools; we have started "employing" graduates without jobs post-graduation. These numbers, though, won't show up in our employment data used by U.S. News for at least 1-2 more years, according to the Dean. Oh, we also hired a new football coach, so I am confident that will do wonders for us as well.

Michigan leadership is pretty honest that we are never going to get back to our place in the T-6, i.e. when the rankings first came out. Two of the biggest metrics now used are spending per student and endowment. Michigan, as a public school, is never going to catch HSY, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, or even Penn. That we know. But I wouldn't be surprised if we are are back in the lower part of the T-14 in the next few years.

Ok I expect the Harbaugh circlejerk to happen on /r/CFB and other sports sites, but on TLS, come on! Michigan has had 2-3 terrible seasons and just signed a 14-person class and lost out on its best in-state prospects. That kind of recruiting performance is like being on sanctions, wait no it's even worse. Harbaugh is a great coach no doubt and has turned around worse programs, but he's not going to get Michigan competing for the playoff or even Big-10 championship this year or next. Law students, and any students in general, definitely shouldn't consider Michigan football when choosing schools lol.

[thatsnotmyname]

I just want some clarification, what exactly is causing all of the Michigan hate? I'm not particularly fond of Michigan and will not be attending there, but just looking at BL+FC #s it doesn't seem that their placement ability is really all that far out of line from their peers.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=226198

Looking at that data Michigan placed a larger percentage of students into BL+FC than Berkeley and really isn't that far behind Duke, UVA, or Northwestern. Its placement metrics definitely do not seem to be so far behind to warrant as much bashing as it has been getting on TLS lately. People keep acting like UM fell from 3 to 11 like its a really big deal and is indicative of some dramatic shift that happened overnight. In reality, UM was ranked at 3 one time in 1983 when the USNWR survey was using a different metric than it is now. UM has basically has hovered between the 7-10 range for the entire existence of the USNWR rankings for the entire existence of the rankings except for that first year. The difference between the schools ranked 8 and UM are not really that different. I'm just not sure I'm understanding all of the UM bashing that I'm seeing.

[052220152]

Michigan is definitely not what it used to be, but its still a good school.

http://www.lstscorereports.com/compare/ ... tern/gulc/

If you get rid of school funded positions (which i don't know why those get included in the employment score), then Michigan's total numbers are way ahead of gulc, still ahead of NU, and outpaces Berkeley. It's biglaw + clerk numbers are the best on this list except for NU, and it starts out at 30k-40k cheaper than all of them. Getting decent money makes Michigan a very logical choice, especially if you plan on not chasing unicorn jobs and bid onto your home market + nyc.

http://www.lstscorereports.com/compare/ ... rnell/uva/

If you get rid of the school funded positions, Duke basically still outperforms Michigan in all meaningful categories. Duke is objectively the better school. When you take away the 14% school funded positions from virginia, the outcomes look oddly similar to Michigan (edit: obviously not the 5% difference in clerking). Cornell is a great school and I don't understand why it doesn't get more love. Once again, Michigan starts out 30-40k cheaper than all of them.

If you take into account what the real job numbers are and the cost of the degree, Michigan is still right there. 20-40k cheaper is worth the negligible difference in job outcomes between uva, berkeley, and northwestern.

IMO the real rankings (tiers really, because who cares) are as follows:
Harvard, Yale, Stanford
Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Penn
Duke, Cornell
Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley,Northwestern
Georgetown

Then again, I'm only concerned with biglaw shots and costs, so i guess if you don't fall into that category your calculus will be different. At the end of the day though, just follow the $$$, i doubt the plus or minus 4 points on biglaw shots is really worth the 20-40k price difference

[BiglawAssociate]

Michigan is definitely not what it used to be, but its still a good school.

http://www.lstscorereports.com/compare/ ... tern/gulc/

If you get rid of school funded positions (which i don't know why those get included in the employment score), then Michigan's total numbers are way ahead of gulc, still ahead of NU, and outpaces Berkeley. It's biglaw + clerk numbers are the best on this list except for NU, and it starts out at 30k-40k cheaper than all of them. Getting decent money makes Michigan a very logical choice, especially if you plan on not chasing unicorn jobs and bid onto your home market + nyc.

http://www.lstscorereports.com/compare/ ... rnell/uva/

If you get rid of the school funded positions, Duke basically still outperforms Michigan in all meaningful categories. Duke is objectively the better school. When you take away the 14% school funded positions from virginia, the outcomes look oddly similar to Michigan. Cornell is a great school and I don't understand why it doesn't get more love. Once again, Michigan starts out 30-40k cheaper than all of them.

If you take into account what the real job numbers are and the cost of the degree, Michigan is still right there. 20-40k cheaper is worth the negligible difference in job outcomes between uva, berkeley, and northwestern.

IMO the real rankings (tiers really, because who cares) are as follows:
Harvard, Yale, Stanford
Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Penn
Duke, Cornell
Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley,Northwestern
Georgetown

Then again, I'm only concerned with biglaw shots and costs, so i guess if you don't fall into that category your calculus will be different. At the end of the day though, just follow the $$$, i doubt the plus or minus 4 points on biglaw shots is really worth the 20-40k price difference

I think Duke should be on the same level as Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley, NU....didn't it only place 2 percentage points higher into biglaw+clerkship than Michigan?

Also, i think people are forgetting that Berkeley has lower biglaw+clerkship placement than Michigan, and Berk is second worst in the T-14 after Georgetown. (Wasn't Berk's at 56%?)

[052220152]

sure, i dont think it really matters to be honest. the differences at the schools between Penn and georgetown are minor, except Cornell, which really deserves more love. I don't get why people dont gripe on virginia and their 95% employment score. employing a very significant portion of your class so you can count them as FT LT is pretty dispicable. Just own your 83ish% employement score and hang with michigan, berkeely, duke, northwestern.

[rahulg91]

Sorry Michigan bros but medians and obsolete prestige are keeping Michigan up, it should go down to Georgetown-level. You can try to justify the job numbers with whatever reasons, but tbh those reasons affect a lot of the other schools as well (how often do we hear "self-selection" used as an excuse?). And one more complaint I have about Michigan, sorry it's an off-topic rant but...

Hopefully some people will want to come see Harbaugh.

Ok I expect the Harbaugh circlejerk to happen on /r/CFB and other sports sites, but on TLS, come on! Michigan has had 2-3 terrible seasons and just signed a 14-person class and lost out on its best in-state prospects. That kind of recruiting performance is like being on sanctions, wait no it's even worse. Harbaugh is a great coach no doubt and has turned around worse programs, but he's not going to get Michigan competing for the playoff or even Big-10 championship this year or next. Law students, and any students in general, definitely shouldn't consider Michigan football when choosing schools lol.

HARBAUGH.

[buntort]

Man these U of M students really drink the Kool-Aid.

[052220152]

Man these U of M students really drink the Kool-Aid.

you realize though if michigan employed the same percentage of students as uva it would also have a 95 employment score. im not saying michigan is super great, and its definitely sliding a bit, but the difference between them and the others is that they suck at covering it up.

[thatsnotmyname]

sure, i dont think it really matters to be honest. the differences at the schools between Penn and georgetown are minor, except Cornell, which really deserves more love. I don't get why people dont gripe on virginia and their 95% employment score. employing a very significant portion of your class so you can count them as FT LT is pretty dispicable. Just own your 83ish% employement score and hang with michigan, berkeely, duke, northwestern.

I just posted this in another thread, but I think it's applicable here as well:

"I don't think that UVA gives you worse odds than Cornell at getting BL+FC. I'd guess that the percentage of students getting BL+FC from Cornell is higher because a larger percentage of Cornell students are probably all targeting and bidding on NYC firms whereas I'd bet that a much larger percentage of UVA students that are targeting not only DC but also secondary markets. If you were to control for bidding and difficulty of the markets that UVA students are targeting compared to Cornell, I'd bet that UVA would have better placement percentages than Cornell. Just look at where Cornell grads practice versus UVA grads, according to the LST score reports 57% of Cornell students end up in NY (likely NYC) whereas only 17% of UVA grads do the same. UVA actually places 18% of its class in DC versus 6% for Cornell. Could Cornell close that gap some if as many of their students bid DC as UVA students do? Maybe a bit but I'd doubt they'd be able to close 12 percentage points. I think that UVA's reach into DC BigLaw is much stronger than Cornell's. OP has stated that she'd much rather work in DC than NYC. A better opportunity to work in her target market may be worth 15K/year to her."

Context: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 7#p8461497

Cornell is getting better BL+FC figures largely due to the BL component of the equation. I bet that it is doing better on the BL side of the equation compared to its peer schools b/c its students are bidding and targeting NYC biglaw more heavily than students at UVA and Berkeley for sure and probably Michigan, Northwestern, and Duke too. I would imagine that there is a much larger group of students at UVA who are targeting DC and southern secondary markets, Berkeley targeting LA/SF and west coast secondary markets, students at Duke also targeting DC and southern secondary markets, students at Michigan/Northwestern targeting Chicago and midwestern secondary markets. I just get the feeling that Cornell's CSO has really focused on getting their students to bid heavily on NYC firms and given the location of the school it probably attracts a lot of students who wanted to target NYC anyways.

All that I'm saying is that it is not necessarily easy to just look at BL+FC percentages and say definitively that one school has better odds of placing students into those jobs than another when there are so many other variables at play, namely what markets students at certain schools tend to bid on for BL. Could Berkeley/UVA/Mich have a higher BL+FC percentage if they got everyone to do OCI and bid intelligently on NYC firms? I'd bet that doing so would increase their BL+FC percentages and bring it to about even what Cornell's percentage is now. Students opting out of BL+FC altogether to do PI is also probably something that is happening with greater frequency at Berkeley than Cornell, just one example of how it is difficult to control the data to make it 100% comparable and relevant.

[052220152]

cornell puts up numbers. rationalize them any way you want, but close to 70% of that school has the option to get a 160k job by graduation. uva/michigan/berkeley can't say the same

[TheOnePercent]

IMO the real rankings (tiers really, because who cares) are as follows:
Harvard, Yale, Stanford
Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Penn
Duke, Cornell [?!?]
Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley,Northwestern
Georgetown

Lulz: egregious Big Red trolling - f'ing Northwestern's placed a higher percentage into BL than Cornell six of the past eight years.

/aware Ithaca is gorges, but relax son

[brianiac]

Michigan doesn't have an area for itself. That's why it's declining. Every big legal city has two powerhouses. California = Stanford/Berkeley. New York = Columbia/NYU. Chicago = University of Chicago/Northwestern. Washington DC = Georgetown/GW. Those are the movers and shakers in the largest legal cities in the country. What does Michigan have. Ann Arbor? Detroit? Sorry, it's time for Michigan students to face the music.

[Tiago Splitter]

Michigan doesn't have an area for itself. That's why it's declining. Every big legal city has two powerhouses. California = Stanford/Berkeley. New York = Columbia/NYU. Chicago = University of Chicago/Northwestern. Washington DC = Georgetown/GW. Those are the movers and shakers in the largest legal cities in the country. What does Michigan have. Ann Arbor? Detroit? Sorry, it's time for Michigan students to face the music.

You lost me with the GULC/GW thing. Michigan would do better if another top school showed up in the Detroit area? Ok

Anyways, here are the biglaw/fed clerk numbers from 2010-2013:

Columbia: 74.5%
Penn: 71.25%
Harvard: 70.25%
Chicago: 67.5%
Cornell: 65.25%
NYU: 63.25%
Northwestern: 60%
Duke: 59.75%
UVA: 58.25%
Berkeley: 57.75%
Michigan: 52%
GULC: 44.25%

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=245071

[BigZuck]

Michigan doesn't have an area for itself. That's why it's declining. Every big legal city has two powerhouses. California = Stanford/Berkeley. New York = Columbia/NYU. Chicago = University of Chicago/Northwestern. Washington DC = Georgetown/GW. Those are the movers and shakers in the largest legal cities in the country. What does Michigan have. Ann Arbor? Detroit? Sorry, it's time for Michigan students to face the music.

BUT SEE

Duke doesn't have a major market to feed into either

This thread is really starting to take off

[052220152]

Michigan doesn't have an area for itself. That's why it's declining. Every big legal city has two powerhouses. California = Stanford/Berkeley. New York = Columbia/NYU. Chicago = University of Chicago/Northwestern. Washington DC = Georgetown/GW. Those are the movers and shakers in the largest legal cities in the country. What does Michigan have. Ann Arbor? Detroit? Sorry, it's time for Michigan students to face the music.

thats some real grade A reasoning you got going there

[TheOnePercent]

IMO the real rankings (tiers really, because who cares) are as follows:
Harvard, Yale, Stanford
Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Penn
Duke, Cornell [?!?]
Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley,Northwestern
Georgetown

Lulz: egregious Big Red trolling - f'ing Northwestern's placed a higher percentage into BL than Cornell six of the past eight years.

/aware Ithaca is gorges, but relax son

My antagonistic reply aside - Duke/UVA/Boalt/NU/Cornell/Michigan really is just one big clusterf.

[052220152]

IMO the real rankings (tiers really, because who cares) are as follows:
Harvard, Yale, Stanford
Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Penn
Duke, Cornell [?!?]
Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley,Northwestern
Georgetown

Lulz: egregious Big Red trolling - f'ing Northwestern's placed a higher percentage into BL than Cornell six of the past eight years.

/aware Ithaca is gorges, but relax son

My antagonistic reply aside - Duke/UVA/Boalt/NU/Cornell/Michigan really is just one big clusterf.

sure.

[brianiac]

Michigan doesn't have an area for itself. That's why it's declining. Every big legal city has two powerhouses. California = Stanford/Berkeley. New York = Columbia/NYU. Chicago = University of Chicago/Northwestern. Washington DC = Georgetown/GW. Those are the movers and shakers in the largest legal cities in the country. What does Michigan have. Ann Arbor? Detroit? Sorry, it's time for Michigan students to face the music.

You lost me with the GULC/GW thing. Michigan would do better if another top school showed up in the Detroit area? Ok

Anyways, here are the biglaw/fed clerk numbers from 2010-2013:

Columbia: 74.5%
Penn: 71.25%
Harvard: 70.25%
Chicago: 67.5%
Cornell: 65.25%
NYU: 63.25%
Northwestern: 60%
Duke: 59.75%
UVA: 58.25%
Berkeley: 57.75%
Michigan: 52%
GULC: 44.25%

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=245071

How did I lose you? Four big cities for legal jobs. Each with two major schools feeding into that region. What is so hard to understand.