Accepted to Harvard and Yale - Which One? Forum

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Wumbo

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Re: Accepted to Harvard and Yale - Which One?

Post by Wumbo » Tue Oct 09, 2018 3:15 pm

QContinuum wrote:
JohnnieSockran wrote:I was really hoping Wumbo was being sarcastic....

And yes, 99.9% of employers hiring a YLS or HLS grad are aware that Yale is the better and more prestigious school. If you don't understand that, then you've been living under a rock.

Why does it matter that only 50% of law students ever go on to practice law? We're not talking about ALL law students. I guarantee that the percentage of HLS/YLS students that go on to practice law is well, well above 50%.
Based on Wumbo's other posts, it looks like he's a HLS student who isn't planning on practicing law. Instead, he wants to become a full-time LSAT tutor. Which, nothing against LSAT tutors!, but decidedly isn't the kind of career path sought after by 99.9% of T13 graduates. I agree that in Wumbo's highly atypical situation, Harvard College's lay prestige may help with his marketing/branding to pre-law students and their parents (although I really think he'd get the same advantage with Yale College's lay prestige)..

I think Wumbo's main mistake is conflating his own unique career goals with those of the typical HLS/YLS student. For anyone actually wishing to practice law, YLS has a substantial edge over HLS..
Ad hominems and Strawmen are a bit unbecoming of a moderator, don't you think?

Non-legal career flexibility is not just a factor for LSAT tutors (which, as someone with a a firm offer at a lit boutique, is not necessarily my career plan, for the record). Most of my classmates are not at all set on practicing law long term (much less set on litigation, as you suggest later on in your post), which makes sense since neither school is exactly selecting for students interested in practicing, as HLS admissions are just a numbers game, and YLS (to the extent that it isn't also a numbers game) actively discourages students from writing about legal issues in their personal statement.

Nor is it the result of confusion over "Harvard College" lay prestige (In fact, pop culture exposure to and interest in HLS arguably far exceeds that of the college; see e.g., paper chase, 1L, legally blonde, suits, and the 2008 + 2012 presidential election, with only the latter having anything close to an analogue at YLS). Are fortune companies likewise confused about this prestige when they hire HLS grads as execs (not just CEOs, btw, though the latter is a good proxy for careers in business generally, and as shown earlier are much better for HLS grads) or consultants? The electorate when they choose HLS grads as politicians? (do they really think they're hiring a former gov concentrator from the college?)

That said, I actually agree with most of the rest of your pros and cons (though less so as applied to transfer students than 0Ls). I suppose it's just a matter of disagreement as to how students do/should weigh them.

QContinuum

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Re: Accepted to Harvard and Yale - Which One?

Post by QContinuum » Tue Oct 09, 2018 3:53 pm

JohnnieSockran wrote:Is there a feature for deleting/editing other users' posts? Lol that could make for some great strawman arguments (literally).
Moderators can do it, but doing so absent a violation of forum rules would be ultra vires. All moderation actions are also permanently logged, so there'd be an evidentiary trail of any abuse.

QContinuum

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Re: Accepted to Harvard and Yale - Which One?

Post by QContinuum » Tue Oct 09, 2018 4:22 pm

Wumbo wrote:
QContinuum wrote:Based on Wumbo's other posts, it looks like he's a HLS student who isn't planning on practicing law. Instead, he wants to become a full-time LSAT tutor. Which, nothing against LSAT tutors!, but decidedly isn't the kind of career path sought after by 99.9% of T13 graduates. I agree that in Wumbo's highly atypical situation, Harvard College's lay prestige may help with his marketing/branding to pre-law students and their parents (although I really think he'd get the same advantage with Yale College's lay prestige)..

I think Wumbo's main mistake is conflating his own unique career goals with those of the typical HLS/YLS student. For anyone actually wishing to practice law, YLS has a substantial edge over HLS..
Ad hominems and Strawmen are a bit unbecoming of a moderator, don't you think?
Feel free to point to a single instance of me launching a personal attack against you.
Wumbo wrote:Non-legal career flexibility is not just a factor for LSAT tutors (which, as someone with a a firm offer at a lit boutique, is not necessarily my career plan, for the record). Most of my classmates are not at all set on practicing law long term (much less set on litigation, as you suggest later on in your post), which makes sense since neither school is exactly selecting for students interested in practicing, as HLS admissions are just a numbers game, and YLS (to the extent that it isn't also a numbers game) actively discourages students from writing about legal issues in their personal statement.
The crux of your argument seems to be that law schools don't select for students who want to become lawyers. This is simply wrong. Successful personal statements generally address the "why law?" question, and do so convincingly.

In addition, if we were to accept, for the sake of argument, your assertion that most law students do not want to become lawyers, that would point even more strongly to attending YLS over HLS. This is because Yale's LRAP (COAP) is tremendously flexible: It doesn't impose any employment restrictions on eligibility. https://law.yale.edu/admissions/cost-fi ... oap-unique So a LSAT tutor getting off the ground, for example, would be able to benefit from COAP. Someone who decided to become a chef or actor would be able to benefit from COAP. Someone who decided to launch their own business as an entrepreneur would be able to benefit from COAP. Harvard's LRAP (LIPP), in contrast, has significant restraints on qualifying employment. https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/sfs/lipp/e ... mployment/ Notably, "a position or enterprise which may require a graduate level degree (such as an MBA or PhD) but not specifically a JD has typically not met the [LIPP eligibility] requirement." https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/sfs/lipp/p ... mployment/ Too bad for the aspiring entrepreneur - no LIPP help for them.
Wumbo wrote:Nor is it the result of confusion over "Harvard College" lay prestige (In fact, pop culture exposure to and interest in HLS arguably far exceeds that of the college; see e.g., paper chase, 1L, legally blonde, suits, and the 2008 + 2012 presidential election, with only the latter having anything close to an analogue at YLS). Are fortune companies likewise confused about this prestige when they hire HLS grads as execs (not just CEOs, btw, though the latter is a good proxy for careers in business generally, and as shown earlier are much better for HLS grads) or consultants? The electorate when they choose HLS grads as politicians? (do they really think they're hiring a former gov concentrator from the college?)
  • Lay prestige is generally useless. The average Suits fan will not be in a position to hire a HLS or YLS grad.
  • Legally Blonde (the novel) was set at Stanford Law, which author Amanda Brown actually attended. When adapted for the big screen, the producers wanted to film the movie at Stanford, but Stanford declined. The producers then approached the University of Chicago, which also declined.
  • The electorate does not treat political candidates differently based on whether they went to Harvard or Yale.
  • Obama would not have lost to Romney had he attended Yale Law School instead of HLS.
  • As explained in my previous post, using CEO numbers as a comparison metric is fatally flawed. It'd be fatally flawed even for measuring b-school outcomes; it's all the more flawed for measuring law school outcomes.
  • Fortune 500 companies do not prefer HLS grads over YLS grads.

Wumbo

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Re: Accepted to Harvard and Yale - Which One?

Post by Wumbo » Tue Oct 09, 2018 8:25 pm

QContinuum wrote:
Feel free to point to a single instance of me launching a personal attack against you.
I never said anything about personal attacks. Ad hominem is simply trying to undermine an opponent's argument by appealing to personal characteristics as opposed to the substance of my argument, and insofar as your LSAT tutor comment was an attempt to undermine my argument, it was ad hominem. Insofar as it wasn't intended at that, it was simply an irrelevant comment.

As for strawmen, that just means misrepresenting my argument and attacking the misrepresented version as opposed to my actual argument. Perhaps this is on me for being unclear, but so many of your comments (including basically all of your bullet points) have nothing to do with the points I'm making.

QContinuum wrote:
  • Lay prestige is generally useless. The average Suits fan will not be in a position to hire a HLS or YLS grad.
  • Legally Blonde (the novel) was set at Stanford Law, which author Amanda Brown actually attended. When adapted for the big screen, the producers wanted to film the movie at Stanford, but Stanford declined. The producers then approached the University of Chicago, which also declined.
  • The electorate does not treat political candidates differently based on whether they went to Harvard or Yale.
  • Obama would not have lost to Romney had he attended Yale Law School instead of HLS.
  • As explained in my previous post, using CEO numbers as a comparison metric is fatally flawed. It'd be fatally flawed even for measuring b-school outcomes; it's all the more flawed for measuring law school outcomes.
  • Fortune 500 companies do not prefer HLS grads over YLS grads.
None of these combat my points, and few even engage with them. Your previous position on prestige was that HLS was basically only prestigious in people's minds because of their confusion with "Harvard College," which, as my examples show, is obviously not the case. The fact that Legally Blonde was written by a Stanford Law grad and was going to be "filmed" on Uchicago (it wasn't filmed at HLS, either, btw, they just wanted to use the name) is a red herring, since (a) it doesn't strengthen your college prestige point, and (b) my point was both about interest in and exposure to the school, and the film taking place at HLS is a strong example of the latter, regardless of how it got made (not to mention the fact that you just glossed over the other 3 examples, each of which alone individually demonstrates my point).

If you want to now argue that HLS is prestigious but that it "doesn't matter", then that's fine, but acknowledge that you're making a different point.

Also, the CEO metric is relevant because, as I explained in a previous post, it's a good proxy for business careers generally (that is, if a school has CEOs it's more likely to have more execs in general). Also, especially since most big companies are multinational now, they are in fact more likely to hire HLS grads than YLS grads, for the same reason that they are more likely to hire HBS grads than YBS grads (also, because of the greater alumni network, the HLS grad is more likely to know someone in the company)
QContinuum wrote: In addition, if we were to accept, for the sake of argument, your assertion that most law students do not want to become lawyers, that would point even more strongly to attending YLS over HLS. This is because Yale's LRAP (COAP) is tremendously flexible: It doesn't impose any employment restrictions on eligibility. https://law.yale.edu/admissions/cost-fi ... oap-unique So a LSAT tutor getting off the ground, for example, would be able to benefit from COAP. Someone who decided to become a chef or actor would be able to benefit from COAP. Someone who decided to launch their own business as an entrepreneur would be able to benefit from COAP. Harvard's LRAP (LIPP), in contrast, has significant restraints on qualifying employment. https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/sfs/lipp/e ... mployment/ Notably, "a position or enterprise which may require a graduate level degree (such as an MBA or PhD) but not specifically a JD has typically not met the [LIPP eligibility] requirement." https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/sfs/lipp/p ... mployment/ Too bad for the aspiring entrepreneur - no LIPP help for them.
I definitely never said most law students were aspiring entrepreneurs, though you make a good point that may in fact change my mind. I said earlier that I don't know enough about Yale's LRAP to comment, but if it's the case that it's significantly better for students than LIPP if they want to go certain non traditional routes (I do know several friends doing or planning on doing JD-advantage jobs that would seem to contradict that quote, but it's certainly possible that the options are more restricted than YLS), then I would actually concede that Yale offers better downside protection than HLS, and potentially change my overall prescription, as well.

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Re: Accepted to Harvard and Yale - Which One?

Post by QContinuum » Tue Oct 09, 2018 11:49 pm

Wumbo wrote:I never said anything about personal attacks. Ad hominem is simply trying to undermine an opponent's argument by appealing to personal characteristics as opposed to the substance of my argument, and insofar as your LSAT tutor comment was an attempt to undermine my argument, it was ad hominem. Insofar as it wasn't intended at that, it was simply an irrelevant comment.
I believe you misunderstand what "ad hominem" means. The term's definition is "an argument directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining," i.e., a personal attack. I never suggested there was anything wrong with wanting to become an LSAT tutor.
Wumbo wrote:As for strawmen, that just means misrepresenting my argument and attacking the misrepresented version as opposed to my actual argument. Perhaps this is on me for being unclear, but so many of your comments (including basically all of your bullet points) have nothing to do with the points I'm making.
It's difficult to engage with you in this discussion, because you keep shifting the goalposts. To name just one example: You attacked the use of clerkship placement to compare law schools, arguing that not every student wants to clerk. Then you turned right around and proposed using CEO placement to compare law schools, despite the fact that far, far fewer HLS/YLS students want to become CEOs than want to clerk.

You also continuously misrepresent my assertions re: Harvard's prestige. I have never asserted that Harvard Law is not prestigious. Of course Harvard Law is prestigious. My assertion is simply that, from the POV of anyone in a position to hire a HLS/YLS graduate, Harvard Law is less prestigious than Yale Law. To counter this, you conflate lay prestige and professional prestige, and conflate Harvard Law with Harvard College/Harvard University as a whole. You cite the layperson on the street in a foreign country. You cite nonlawyers in the US. You even cite a list of movies with fictional lawyers who attended Harvard! All of these people, you say, would fall all over themselves upon hearing the Harvard name. But is the layperson on the street really impressed by the "Law" part of Harvard Law, or the "Harvard" part of Harvard Law? I assure you the layperson on the street would be similarly impressed by someone claiming to be a Harvard-trained veterinarian. The layperson would have no clue that Harvard hasn't had a veterinary school since 1901.

The layperson, in comparing Harvard Law with Yale Law, wouldn't really be comparing the respective law schools. The layperson, by definition, lacks any field-specific knowledge. The layperson would compare Harvard Law and Yale Law simply by comparing the reputation of Harvard as a whole with that of Yale as a whole (and both institutions' reputations are largely based on their respective undergraduate Colleges). I do not dispute that the layperson on the street would consider Harvard a more prestigious brand than Yale - but such a layperson would not be in a position to hire a HLS/YLS graduate.
Wumbo wrote:None of these combat my points, and few even engage with them. Your previous position on prestige was that HLS was basically only prestigious in people's minds because of their confusion with "Harvard College," which, as my examples show, is obviously not the case. The fact that Legally Blonde was written by a Stanford Law grad and was going to be "filmed" on Uchicago (it wasn't filmed at HLS, either, btw, they just wanted to use the name) is a red herring, since (a) it doesn't strengthen your college prestige point, and (b) my point was both about interest in and exposure to the school, and the film taking place at HLS is a strong example of the latter, regardless of how it got made (not to mention the fact that you just glossed over the other 3 examples, each of which alone individually demonstrates my point).
The Legally Blonde trivia is relevant because it indicates that even Harvard's lay prestige isn't as dominant as you imply. If the layperson on the street would fail to be impressed by any name other than Harvard, the filmmakers wouldn't have planned on making Elle a Stanford Law student or a Chicago Law student before settling on Harvard as their third choice.

What were your other three examples? That Fortune 500 companies allegedly prefer to hire HLS grads over YLS grads? That the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections turned on Obama being a HLS alum, instead of a YLS alum? That the electorate prefers to elect HLS grads over YLS grads? (Do you not realize that with the country's current elite-bashing mood, a politician from Big State U would probably have the edge over a Harvard grad?) These are not "examples"; they more resemble completely uncorroborated, pie-in-the-sky assertions.
Wumbo wrote:If you want to now argue that HLS is prestigious but that it "doesn't matter", then that's fine, but acknowledge that you're making a different point.
That completely misrepresents my previous posts. My assertion is that lay prestige doesn't matter, not that prestige period doesn't matter. I have consistently pointed out in my posts throughout TLS that the legal industry is one of the most prestige-driven industries out there. Law school prestige is critically important. And Yale beats Harvard on the law school prestige front.
Wumbo wrote:Also, the CEO metric is relevant because, as I explained in a previous post, it's a good proxy for business careers generally (that is, if a school has CEOs it's more likely to have more execs in general).
CEOs positions are so rare and becoming a CEO requires so much luck that using CEO placement to extrapolate to corporate hiring more generally is likely to be completely off base more often than not.
Wumbo wrote:Also, especially since most big companies are multinational now, they are in fact more likely to hire HLS grads than YLS grads, for the same reason that they are more likely to hire HBS grads than YBS grads (also, because of the greater alumni network, the HLS grad is more likely to know someone in the company)
Companies are more likely to hire HBS grads than Yale SOM grads because HBS is a better business school. The inverse is true of HLS and YLS.

Multinational companies still hire employees separately in each country they operate in. A Fortune 500 company hiring for a U.S. position won't care about the prestige perceptions of the layperson on the street in Eastern Europe.
Wumbo wrote:I definitely never said most law students were aspiring entrepreneurs
When did I ever assert that you claimed most law students were aspiring entrepreneurs?
Wumbo wrote:, though you make a good point that may in fact change my mind. I said earlier that I don't know enough about Yale's LRAP to comment, but if it's the case that it's significantly better for students than LIPP if they want to go certain non traditional routes (I do know several friends doing or planning on doing JD-advantage jobs that would seem to contradict that quote, but it's certainly possible that the options are more restricted than YLS), then I would actually concede that Yale offers better downside protection than HLS, and potentially change my overall prescription, as well.
You don't need to take my word for it - I included links to the relevant docs in my previous post.

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Wumbo

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Re: Accepted to Harvard and Yale - Which One?

Post by Wumbo » Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:56 am

QContinuum wrote:
Wumbo wrote:I never said anything about personal attacks. Ad hominem is simply trying to undermine an opponent's argument by appealing to personal characteristics as opposed to the substance of my argument, and insofar as your LSAT tutor comment was an attempt to undermine my argument, it was ad hominem. Insofar as it wasn't intended at that, it was simply an irrelevant comment.
I believe you misunderstand what "ad hominem" means. The term's definition is "an argument directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining," i.e., a personal attack. I never suggested there was anything wrong with wanting to become an LSAT tutor.
What you quoted sounds exactly like the definition I described, which is not at all necessarily a "personal attack." Regardless, now that I clarified what I meant (i.e. that I wasn't accusing you of a personal attack), it seems pretty petty to say that I simply "misunderstand" the definition of a phrase as opposed to engaging with what I actually meant, which is that speculating as to my personal motivations is totally separate from evaluating my actual argument. This seems like a textbook case of just wanting to score points as opposed to caring about what your interlocutor is trying to say.

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what the utility is of carrying on this discussion at this point (not trying to blame you, as I definitely have contributed to the derailment of the discussion). I've already acknowledged that I'll look into the LRAP policy for Yale, and that I would be willing to change my mind with new information, though in the meantime I have other shit to do besides arguing over the filming of legally blonde.

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Re: Accepted to Harvard and Yale - Which One?

Post by JohnnieSockran » Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:53 am

Wumbo wrote:
QContinuum wrote:
Wumbo wrote:I never said anything about personal attacks. Ad hominem is simply trying to undermine an opponent's argument by appealing to personal characteristics as opposed to the substance of my argument, and insofar as your LSAT tutor comment was an attempt to undermine my argument, it was ad hominem. Insofar as it wasn't intended at that, it was simply an irrelevant comment.
I believe you misunderstand what "ad hominem" means. The term's definition is "an argument directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining," i.e., a personal attack. I never suggested there was anything wrong with wanting to become an LSAT tutor.
What you quoted sounds exactly like the definition I described, which is not at all necessarily a "personal attack." Regardless, now that I clarified what I meant (i.e. that I wasn't accusing you of a personal attack), it seems pretty petty to say that I simply "misunderstand" the definition of a phrase as opposed to engaging with what I actually meant, which is that speculating as to my personal motivations is totally separate from evaluating my actual argument. This seems like a textbook case of just wanting to score points as opposed to caring about what your interlocutor is trying to say.

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what the utility is of carrying on this discussion at this point (not trying to blame you, as I definitely have contributed to the derailment of the discussion). I've already acknowledged that I'll look into the LRAP policy for Yale, and that I would be willing to change my mind with new information, though in the meantime I have other shit to do besides arguing over the filming of legally blonde.
Gotta start outlining for finals...or preparing your next lesson plan (ad hominem, lol).

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