Why is everyone so anti T3? Forum

[citrus2010]

I understand that the higher ranked the school the smaller the mountain you have to climb. I'm a firm believer in going to the highest ranked school possible. That said, if TTT is the best you can get with a poor GPA (married with two kids and worked 50 hrs/wk through undergrad) is it really so bad?

I know people who have been unemployed for almost a year. I've lost my job twice and gotten new ones. It frustrates me that people are telling me to wait a year and retake the LSAT. I want to be an attorney! I don't want to wait a year and I'm not convinced that I can't be every bit as successful coming from a T3. Hard work? Yes. Doable? Yes.

Once placed in a successful firm I'm confident (not just looking through rose tinted glasses) that there are law jobs out there for the taking.

So... Why the negativity? Does everyone just expect things to be handed to them and if not, it's not worth it? Hard work is a fact of life. For those out there with JDs and looking at jobs you could have had as an undergrad, what is the real problem?

[Mosca]

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[haole_20]

I think you're overestimating the job market for attorneys. People on TLS are recognizing the scary fact that even with a top notch education it's going to be difficult to secure a good job.

[Kiersten1985]

For those out there with JDs and looking at jobs you could have had as an undergrad, what is the real problem?

DEBT

I'm pretty sure no one on this board is afraid of hard work. I'm confused about your statement "once placed in a successful firm." That's the hard part. If you're taking out loans to pay for a T3 school, you're going to have one hell of a time paying those loans back. Even if you graduate from a T14, it's going to take a lot of hard work to get where you want to be. Your chances of ever reaching your goal diminish GREATLY when your degree is from a T3. It's fact.

[hoopsguy6]

I understand that the higher ranked the school the smaller the mountain you have to climb. I'm a firm believer in going to the highest ranked school possible. That said, if TTT is the best you can get with a poor GPA (married with two kids and worked 50 hrs/wk through undergrad) is it really so bad?

I know people who have been unemployed for almost a year. I've lost my job twice and gotten new ones. It frustrates me that people are telling me to wait a year and retake the LSAT. I want to be an attorney! I don't want to wait a year and I'm not convinced that I can't be every bit as successful coming from a T3. Hard work? Yes. Doable? Yes.

Once placed in a successful firm I'm confident (not just looking through rose tinted glasses) that there are law jobs out there for the taking.

So... Why the negativity? Does everyone just expect things to be handed to them and if not, it's not worth it? Hard work is a fact of life. For those out there with JDs and looking at jobs you could have had as an undergrad, what is the real problem?

A T3 grad can definitely be every bit as successful as any Harvard grad. Most are not however. The ROI for a T3 education is very poor, yet many people seem convinced that they're going to get 100k jobs upon graduation. Hence the negativity.

[D. H2Oman]

My life is pretty shitty, I need someone to look down

[Aberzombie1892]

I understand that the higher ranked the school the smaller the mountain you have to climb. I'm a firm believer in going to the highest ranked school possible. That said, if TTT is the best you can get with a poor GPA (married with two kids and worked 50 hrs/wk through undergrad) is it really so bad?

I know people who have been unemployed for almost a year. I've lost my job twice and gotten new ones. It frustrates me that people are telling me to wait a year and retake the LSAT. I want to be an attorney! I don't want to wait a year and I'm not convinced that I can't be every bit as successful coming from a T3. Hard work? Yes. Doable? Yes.

Once placed in a successful firm I'm confident (not just looking through rose tinted glasses) that there are law jobs out there for the taking.

So... Why the negativity? Does everyone just expect things to be handed to them and if not, it's not worth it? Hard work is a fact of life. For those out there with JDs and looking at jobs you could have had as an undergrad, what is the real problem?

You can be successful coming from a T3 or T4.

It just depends on a wide array of factors though including, but not limited to:

1. Family connections
2. Friend connections
3. Grades
4. Rank
5. What you define as successful (some people define this as Wachell/Cravath, others define it in relation to Vault rankings, others define it as being home by 5 PM, and even others define it as simply being happy)

Honestly most people should look at "alternative careers" if they are not in the top 33% - "alternative careers" doesn't mean not practicing law.

Heck I found something very nice for my 1L summer that pays that doesn't involve working at a firm (and I wasn't top 10%).

[Kiersten1985]

Why do you want to be a lawyer and what are your career goals?

[Mr. Matlock]

.....and for the 2,356,894th time, no one is arguing that a T3 in an unsaturated market, with a scholarship, contacts, government aspirations w/contacts, lower overall state school price - ie U. of South Dakota, Florida, etc., is necessarily a bad decision. Just know what your getting yourself into and don't trust the schools to be 100% forthcoming with useful data. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!!!!

[cubswin]

For those out there with JDs and looking at jobs you could have had as an undergrad, what is the real problem?

DEBT

I'm pretty sure no one on this board is afraid of hard work. I'm confused about your statement "once placed in a successful firm." That's the hard part. If you're taking out loans to pay for a T3 school, you're going to have one hell of a time paying those loans back. Even if you graduate from a T14, it's going to take a lot of hard work to get where you want to be. Your chances of ever reaching your goal diminish GREATLY when your degree is from a T3. It's fact.

Creidted, as usual.

It frustrates me that people are telling me to wait a year and retake the LSAT. I want to be an attorney! I don't want to wait a year and I'm not convinced that I can't be every bit as successful coming from a T3. Hard work? Yes. Doable? Yes.

Italicized text sounds like a whiney child. No offense intended here, and you're probably more of an adult than I am.

Assuming your LSAT score sucks, I would still retake if I were in your shoes. Even if I had settled on a T3, I would certainly want the highest score I knew I could possibly achieve knowing that it could mean tens-of-thousands less in debt I would have to pay off. A T3 education probably isn't that that bad of an investment if your tuition is free and you aren't of the biglaw-or-bust mentality.

[PDaddy]

There's nothing wrong with TTT education wise, but the overall value does depend on your goals. If you want a prosecuting job, different ballgame. It's the ROI that has everyone disbelieving. Except for a handful of exceptions, such as Howard, TTT can get good paying or reasonably prestigious jobs for only 5% of its graduates, oftentimes even fewer.

Why pay the same tuition at Dayton, Akron or Valpo that you would have to pay at USC, with only a 2% prospect at a job paying over $125K at one of the former? It makes no sense.

And how would you like to graduate from a TTT and be this lady?

http://finance.yahoo.com/college-educat ... _education

[Mr. Matlock]

Also, don't be delusional thinking that there's that great of a difference between schools T2-T4. Minus a few outliers, the gap is minimal.

[deadlinguo]

Even if it were possible to be "every bit as successful" coming from a T3 as a T1 based on hard work alone (I'm not saying it isn't, or that it is), doesn't it make more sense to invest an extra year now if it'll save you more than a year later? Let's say you graduate from a T3 at the top of your class, are intelligent enough and work hard enough, and are eventually able to achieve the same result you would have had if you attended a T1. How much longer does it take? Three years? Four years? Personally I'd rather spend the extra one year up front to save time later.

[APimpNamedSlickback]

just when one's self-esteem begins to dip, along comes this gem of a thread.

op: please make this decision on the basis of a cold cost-benefit analysis rather than some fuzzy notion of wanting to be a lawyer. that is all. good luck.

[Renzo]

Two things:

Once placed in a successful firm I'm confident (not just looking through rose tinted glasses) that there are law jobs out there for the taking.

...

For those out there with JDs and looking at jobs you could have had as an undergrad, what is the real problem?

As to #1, are you assuming that you'll be able to find placement in a "successful firm" from a T3 school? If so, we need to start the discussion with that assumption.


As to #2, I used to work with a huge number of non-practicing attorneys. One really, really wanted a law job and couldn't get it. He hustled his ass off, even worked as a legal clerk (coughcoughslave) for a slip & fall, daytime TV firm for almost a year after graduation. He never found a real legal job, instead he took a non-tenure track community college teaching gig. The others all never really tried that hard because they realized they could make more money by returning to their pre law school jobs than they could working in the kind of small firms where it would be possible for them to get jobs. Oh, and every single one of them came from either a strong T1 or regionally strong T2 in a thriving midsize market.

[Nicholasnickynic]

Dear OP,

You say you are willing to do hard work, but you are not willing to retake the LSAT? I'm guessing because it would be too much work?

Yours Truely,
TheIrony

[im_blue]

Dear OP,

You say you are willing to do hard work, but you are not willing to retake the LSAT? I'm guessing because it would be too much work?

Yours Truely,
TheIrony

TITCR. The amount of work and luck it would take to place top 5-10% of your T3, which is what you'd need to get a decent job, is much more than just retaking the LSAT and getting a few more questions right.

[thickfreakness]

I know people who have been unemployed for almost a year. I've lost my job twice and gotten new ones. It frustrates me that people are telling me to wait a year and retake the LSAT. I want to be an attorney! I don't want to wait a year and I'm not convinced that I can't be every bit as successful coming from a T3. Hard work? Yes. Doable? Yes.

Taking a year off to re-prep for the LSAT isn't a bad decision if you can move up schools. Plenty of people do it with good results. One year isn't a huge sacrifice for the longer term gains you're getting out of that year spent out of law school. Rushing into a T3 school is a bad idea because....

Once placed in a successful firm

...this doesn't happen very much from T3 schools. It's just the way things are. Prestige is very important for good jobs, and good jobs are quite rare.

So... Why the negativity? Does everyone just expect things to be handed to them?

Not at all. Even those at elite schools still have to work hard to get the best opportunities. You don't sit down at OCI, remind the interviewer what school he's at, and then put your feet up on the table until they shower you with money. The problem with T3 schools is that there's no OCI to speak of, and your resume isn't going to get picked out of the pile unless it's got a better name on it.

[PDaddy]

TTT would be a lot more attractive if they'd cut their tuition. There are some really good TTT schools that would be fun to go to. But they want to charge like T1 schools while offering little of the "security" that T1's can offer. And most T1's outside the top-20 can only partially "guarantee" (and I use the term loosely in this economy) good paying jobs to about 25-35% of their students, BigLaw to about 15-20%.

[Stringer Bell]

I'm thinking that this is a flame. If it is not and you really are worried about taking care of your family, my advice would be to look into nursing.

[citrus2010]

nursing? not challenging. taking you in court? priceless.

[APimpNamedSlickback]

nursing? not challenging. taking you in court? priceless.

i am of the opinion that people use "lol" way too often. you could be sitting behind the computer with a dead serious frown, and still post lol if something looks like its sort of amusing.

but when i say LOL @ the above, its because i actually laughed man. you're on the train to absolute life pwnage and that, my friend, should be challenging enough for you.

if you're serious, think harder about what you're doing before you end up screwing your family

[ATOIsp07]

nursing? not challenging. taking you in court? priceless.

i am of the opinion that people use "lol" way too often. you could be sitting behind the computer with a dead serious frown, and still post lol if something looks like its sort of amusing.

but when i say LOL @ the above, its because i actually laughed man. you're on the train to absolute life pwnage and that, my friend, should be challenging enough for you.

if you're serious, think harder about what you're doing before you end up screwing your family

says the man attending Harvard...

[APimpNamedSlickback]

nursing? not challenging. taking you in court? priceless.

i am of the opinion that people use "lol" way too often. you could be sitting behind the computer with a dead serious frown, and still post lol if something looks like its sort of amusing.

but when i say LOL @ the above, its because i actually laughed man. you're on the train to absolute life pwnage and that, my friend, should be challenging enough for you.

if you're serious, think harder about what you're doing before you end up screwing your family

says the man attending Harvard...

i dont understand the logic of this.

i think at their tuition levels, t3s don't represent a good value. such isnt the case for most of the tier one however.

[ATOIsp07]

nursing? not challenging. taking you in court? priceless.

i am of the opinion that people use "lol" way too often. you could be sitting behind the computer with a dead serious frown, and still post lol if something looks like its sort of amusing.

but when i say LOL @ the above, its because i actually laughed man. you're on the train to absolute life pwnage and that, my friend, should be challenging enough for you.

if you're serious, think harder about what you're doing before you end up screwing your family

says the man attending Harvard...

i dont understand the logic of this.

i think at their tuition levels, t3s don't represent a good value. such isnt the case for most of the tier one however.

The point is that YOU of all people don't need to saying anything or even seem like you're remotely being condescending. If you attend a Top3 institution, you really don't need to come on this thread and comment in the fashion that you did (granted, you are a self-admitted unabashed numbers whore).

Modesty may be a better suit for you.