Top Law Schools

I don't know if it's just ITE but yikes at SCU

holy sh*** this is incredible. Above the law should copy this on their site "Now in addition to increased ranting about the horrors of law school, a visual, with delightful colors and bars"

drmguy wrote:I don't know if it's just ITE but yikes at SCU

Copy that. As someone who applied at USF, SCU, and even (ahem!)Golden Gate, I am starting to feel a panic attack coming on. Dare I even wonder what Golden Gate's numbers would be...

Capitol hillbilly wrote:

drmguy wrote:I don't know if it's just ITE but yikes at SCU

Copy that. As someone who applied at USF, SCU, and even (ahem!)Golden Gate, I am starting to feel a panic attack coming on. Dare I even wonder what Golden Gate's numbers would be...

You should dare since you'd be spending 3 years there and a ton of money - I'm guessing their numbers would be somewhere in between SCU and Ave Marie. Look at the unemployment numbers for Hastings (which is towards top of the food chain in SF) and then just try to imagine GG at the bottom of the SF law school food chain. Yikes!

arhmcpo wrote:

Capitol hillbilly wrote:

drmguy wrote:I don't know if it's just ITE but yikes at SCU

Copy that. As someone who applied at USF, SCU, and even (ahem!)Golden Gate, I am starting to feel a panic attack coming on. Dare I even wonder what Golden Gate's numbers would be...

You should dare since you'd be spending 3 years there and a ton of money - I'm guessing their numbers would be somewhere in between SCU and Ave Marie. Look at the unemployment numbers for Hastings (which is towards top of the food chain in SF) and then just try to imagine GG at the bottom of the SF law school food chain. Yikes!

Also, for previous years GG in particular has atrocious attrition rates.

To the OP: You really do deserve an award (or at least a nice grant!) for this work, it's truly invaluable. I was about to pass up on my Lewis and Clark acceptance, in the "hope" that I would get the "opportunity" of attending USF or SCU. You sir, have probably added years to my life by helping in the decision to steer well clear of those "opportunities."

Yeah, this is amazing! Thank you so much!! I emailed it to all the admitted students I have met in the ASWs I have been to so far. Everybody needs to know!

I am clueless as to how this information is gathered, but I wonder if there is a way to find out how class rankings affect the kind of jobs people get. I mean, I know the general consensus is that if you are at a higher ranked school, you don't need to do as well as you would need to do in a lower ranked school to get the same NLJ 250 job or Article III clerkship. Still, it would be great to see those results in some more quantifiable, visual way like the graphs you have here and it would make the comparison of schools even more interesting.

Thanks again!

tagged (I can never find this in the search function) Great work OP

kwais wrote:tagged (I can never find this in the search function) Great work OP

You do realize this thread is stickied or that you could just click the link that says "Bookmark Topic" at the top of the page?

bk187 wrote:

kwais wrote:tagged (I can never find this in the search function) Great work OP

You do realize this thread is stickied or that you could just click the link that says "Bookmark Topic" at the top of the page?

nope, didn't realize any of that. thanks. hope I didn't offend

Maybe the most revelatory thing about this data (for me anyway) is that USNWR ratings are way more legitimate than I previously thought. There still seem to be some arbitrary and nonsense aspects to the whole tier structure... but it has a whole new meaning when approached after looking at all this data. I feel like NOT attending some of my previously sought-after schools is like dodging a bullet. Can't wait to see continuing updates for the TTTs.

It's amazing how different Santa Clara University looks on here:
--LinkRemoved-- vs. in the graphs above. I'm curious to hear why that is from you people who are able to grasp these "descriptive statistics" better than I can. Part of it must be that the 2008 economic environment fell off a cliff the next year. Part of it is also probably that Law School Transparency does not distinguish between full and part time employment, right? Even so, it's very interesting. The school goes from "pretty ok" in 2008 on LST, to "run like hell" in 2009 on our TLS hero's employment data graphs. Anyone want to comment?

Capitol hillbilly wrote:It's amazing how different Santa Clara University looks on here:
--LinkRemoved-- vs. in the graphs above. I'm curious to hear why that is from you people who are able to grasp these "descriptive statistics" better than I can. Part of it must be that the 2008 economic environment fell off a cliff the next year. Part of it is also probably that Law School Transparency does not distinguish between full and part time employment, right? Even so, it's very interesting. The school goes from "pretty ok" in 2008 on LST, to "run like hell" in 2009 on our TLS hero's employment data graphs. Anyone want to comment?

The biggest thing is that LST's 2008 figures don't include part-time employment (and the median salary only applies to those working full time), which is very significant for these California schools.
There has been a drop off, mainly because California was at the epicenter of the housing market collapse, plus the state is bankrupt and unable to hire many attorneys for public sector work.

Mas? mas..?

ADD kicked in and I'm working on another project atm... don't worry, its better (imo)

Great job, aliarrow!!

Can I make one suggestion (hopefully not offensive to you) for your new project? When you save the graphs, can you save them in a higher image format, that way they come up clearer in the post? I'm not sure if there are image size restrictions or formats that do not allow you to do this, but just a thought.

DeeCee wrote:Great job, aliarrow!!

Can I make one suggestion (hopefully not offensive to you) for your new project? When you save the graphs, can you save them in a higher image format, that way they come up clearer in the post? I'm not sure if there are image size restrictions or formats that do not allow you to do this, but just a thought.

No problem, I'm always open to criticism.

This doesn't really apply to the new project though.
I'll open it up for beta testing to anyone on this board:
--LinkRemoved--

This was created by me a couple days ago, I thought it'd be a fun tool.
The database is only populated with information for the first 5 89 schools, pick any other school and it wont evaluate that school.

It obviously still has a lot of work to be done, mostly cosmetic work on the site and results page, but if you guys wanna try it and let me know what you think (and if its worth spending the time to populate my database of schools) it would be greatly appreciated

aliarrow wrote:I'll open it up for beta testing to anyone on this board:
--LinkRemoved--

Hmm, I got:

You should attend Boston College based on your preferences.

So it seems to be working for me

What did you use for "prestige," US News rankings? I'm not sure that's terrible helpful, or even an accurate proxy for something as amorphous as "prestige", which is too regional to really count for most choices (i.e., which of WashU or GW will be more prestigious depends on where in the country you are/want to be).

aliarrow wrote:

DeeCee wrote:Great job, aliarrow!!

Can I make one suggestion (hopefully not offensive to you) for your new project? When you save the graphs, can you save them in a higher image format, that way they come up clearer in the post? I'm not sure if there are image size restrictions or formats that do not allow you to do this, but just a thought.

No problem, I'm always open to criticism.

This doesn't really apply to the new project though.
I'll open it up for beta testing to anyone on this board:
--LinkRemoved--

This was created by me a couple days ago, I thought it'd be a fun tool.
The database is only populated with information for the first 5 89 schools, pick any other school and it wont evaluate that school.

It obviously still has a lot of work to be done, mostly cosmetic work on the site and results page, but if you guys wanna try it and let me know what you think (and if its worth spending the time to populate my database of schools) it would be greatly appreciated

While this worked out marvelously, I don't quite follow how you came up with some of the NLJ250 percentages. Did you use an average? A certain year?

Also, for COA--at least for the schools I used--if you type in any scholarship info, the results generate the cost of tuition for 3 years and not the total cost of attending.

Awesome work though, seriously.

spacepenguin wrote:

aliarrow wrote:

DeeCee wrote:Great job, aliarrow!!

Can I make one suggestion (hopefully not offensive to you) for your new project? When you save the graphs, can you save them in a higher image format, that way they come up clearer in the post? I'm not sure if there are image size restrictions or formats that do not allow you to do this, but just a thought.

No problem, I'm always open to criticism.

This doesn't really apply to the new project though.
I'll open it up for beta testing to anyone on this board:
--LinkRemoved--

This was created by me a couple days ago, I thought it'd be a fun tool.
The database is only populated with information for the first 5 89 schools, pick any other school and it wont evaluate that school.

It obviously still has a lot of work to be done, mostly cosmetic work on the site and results page, but if you guys wanna try it and let me know what you think (and if its worth spending the time to populate my database of schools) it would be greatly appreciated

While this worked out marvelously, I don't quite follow how you came up with some of the NLJ250 percentages. Did you use an average? A certain year?

Also, for COA--at least for the schools I used--if you type in any scholarship info, the results generate the cost of tuition for 3 years and not the total cost of attending.

Awesome work though, seriously.

It is useful in every way except accounting for the cost I think. It downplays cost a bit but it might be how I weighted my options. It picked the option I was leaning towards before I went on visits so good job though (or good job me lol).

It does add COL + tuition if you have the Include COL box checked (coa per year as given already has the scholly deducted, that isnt clear on the site)

I used 09 NLJ numbers for consistency since all other data is for class of 09 (the % might be slightLy different from law.coms because I took the raw # and divided by how many grads the schools reported to US News.


And I Used US News scores as a proxy for prestige. I agree it isnt the best. I was originally going to make up my own prestige system, but I figured thatd cause a shit storm. Maybe Ill start a thread and see if we can all agree on a prestige scale.

aliarrow wrote:It does add COL + tuition if you have the Include COL box checked (coa per year as given already has the scholly deducted, that isnt clear on the site)

I used 09 NLJ numbers for consistency since all other data is for class of 09 (the % might be slightLy different from law.coms because I took the raw # and divided by how many grads the schools reported to US News.


And I Used US News scores as a proxy for prestige. I agree it isnt the best. I was originally going to make up my own prestige system, but I figured thatd cause a shit storm. Maybe Ill start a thread and see if we can all agree on a prestige scale.

My bad, totally didn't see that the scholarship info was supposed to be per-year.

And if anyone is curious -
Cost Scoring:
The cheapest school is automatically given a score of 100, then the more expensive schools are given a lower score based on how much more they are.
If there isn't a major difference and all schools are pretty expensive then you won't see much variability in the cost scores.
If one school is 60k and the others are 200k it'll really punish those expensive schools.

according to lawschoolpicker i should be attending the university of arkansas- when i want to work in the mid atlantic. humm??

Hey guys, I finished up the database - so I gave this its own thread.