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arklaw13 wrote:

Scalvert wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:I've never seen the cutoffs change once they've been posted. Only thing that will be updated are the book awards when more profs add theirs to the list.

Ok! Before the semester started, I would've been very disappointed to know what my GPA would be, but I'm good - it's an ok base to build on.

It'll never be as high as you want. But it will cease to matter eventually. I'm only a year out and I couldn't even tell you what my GPA was.

is 3.85 for 3Ls and 3.838 for 2Ls typical? I'm amazed 20% of the class got a GPA that high.

Pure Applesauce wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:

Scalvert wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:I've never seen the cutoffs change once they've been posted. Only thing that will be updated are the book awards when more profs add theirs to the list.

Ok! Before the semester started, I would've been very disappointed to know what my GPA would be, but I'm good - it's an ok base to build on.

It'll never be as high as you want. But it will cease to matter eventually. I'm only a year out and I couldn't even tell you what my GPA was.

is 3.85 for 3Ls and 3.838 for 2Ls typical? I'm amazed 20% of the class got a GPA that high.

Yeah it can tend to be around there because a lot of the upper-level classes aren't curved as strictly. Generally more A's to go around.

And keep in mind that's just for the one semester. It doesn't mean that 20% of the class has that for a cumulative GPA.

arklaw13 wrote:

Pure Applesauce wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:

Scalvert wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:I've never seen the cutoffs change once they've been posted. Only thing that will be updated are the book awards when more profs add theirs to the list.

Ok! Before the semester started, I would've been very disappointed to know what my GPA would be, but I'm good - it's an ok base to build on.

It'll never be as high as you want. But it will cease to matter eventually. I'm only a year out and I couldn't even tell you what my GPA was.

is 3.85 for 3Ls and 3.838 for 2Ls typical? I'm amazed 20% of the class got a GPA that high.

Yeah it can tend to be around there because a lot of the upper-level classes aren't curved as strictly. Generally more A's to go around.

And keep in mind that's just for the one semester. It doesn't mean that 20% of the class has that for a cumulative GPA.

Right. Any guess for what the top 20% cumulative cut off is for a class? (3ls/2Ls)

Pure Applesauce wrote:
Right. Any guess for what the top 20% cumulative cut off is for a class? (3ls/2Ls)

Who the hell knows. The only thing that ever gets calculated cumulatively is top 10% after graduation for Coif. Couldn't even guess what that cutoff is. Probably varies quite a bit.

Looks like they reposted Dean's List cut off, and 2L cutoff is now 3.812

Would it be sensible to attend Vandy with the goal of working in California afterwards (my homestate)? I know the school has a rep as a super-regional for the South, but it looks like they send about 5%-6% of each class to CA. So I'm guessing a lot of that is self-selection because each class probably doesn't have more than 8% CA residents. Just based on their employment info I get the impression the school can get you back to your home market, but I'm not sure if that's confirmation bias on my part. Are the people heading to CA only getting back through BigLaw?

Gitaroo_Dude wrote:Would it be sensible to attend Vandy with the goal of working in California afterwards (my homestate)? I know the school has a rep as a super-regional for the South, but it looks like they send about 5%-6% of each class to CA. So I'm guessing a lot of that is self-selection because each class probably doesn't have more than 8% CA residents. Just based on their employment info I get the impression the school can get you back to your home market, but I'm not sure if that's confirmation bias on my part. Are the people heading to CA only getting back through BigLaw?

Depends on what exactly your goal is. If it's

Legal job in california >>>>>>>> everything else

then maybe not. If it's

Biglaw in california > Legal job in california > biglaw anywhere else >>>> legal job anywhere else

then maybe. It's hard to crunch the exact numbers becuase Vandy just doesn't get a ton of west coast students. We send very few people to LA, for instance. I think we've sent more people to Palo Alto and San Diego in the last few years than LA. Does that mean that you can't get LA from Vandy? Not necessarily. But all things being equal, if being in California is the most important thing to you, I would probably bick USC/UCLA over Vandy, all else being equal.

arklaw13 wrote:

Gitaroo_Dude wrote:Would it be sensible to attend Vandy with the goal of working in California afterwards (my homestate)? I know the school has a rep as a super-regional for the South, but it looks like they send about 5%-6% of each class to CA. So I'm guessing a lot of that is self-selection because each class probably doesn't have more than 8% CA residents. Just based on their employment info I get the impression the school can get you back to your home market, but I'm not sure if that's confirmation bias on my part. Are the people heading to CA only getting back through BigLaw?

Depends on what exactly your goal is. If it's

Legal job in california >>>>>>>> everything else

then maybe not. If it's

Biglaw in california > Legal job in california > biglaw anywhere else >>>> legal job anywhere else

then maybe. It's hard to crunch the exact numbers becuase Vandy just doesn't get a ton of west coast students. We send very few people to LA, for instance. I think we've sent more people to Palo Alto and San Diego in the last few years than LA. Does that mean that you can't get LA from Vandy? Not necessarily. But all things being equal, if being in California is the most important thing to you, I would probably bick USC/UCLA over Vandy, all else being equal.

PM'd you with more in-depth questions.

Hey all, thanks for taking questions. So I see from the Career Services statistics that more graduates (roughly a quarter of the class) end up in Tennessee than any other state (makes sense, obviously). I'm just curious as to where in Tennessee those folks end up? That is, is it fair to say that most of those grads stay in the Nashville area? Or are a lot of people ending up in Memphis, Chattanooga, or middle-of-nowhere-Tennessee? I imagine there's no data on these specifics, so I'm open to hearing anecdotes. I guess I'm just trying to gauge how common/feasible it is to end up with a job, BL or otherwise, in Nashville; I'm very into the idea of having a career in Nashville, less enthused about other cities in Tennessee and the South.

no exit wrote:Hey all, thanks for taking questions. So I see from the Career Services statistics that more graduates (roughly a quarter of the class) end up in Tennessee than any other state (makes sense, obviously). I'm just curious as to where in Tennessee those folks end up? That is, is it fair to say that most of those grads stay in the Nashville area? Or are a lot of people ending up in Memphis, Chattanooga, or middle-of-nowhere-Tennessee? I imagine there's no data on these specifics, so I'm open to hearing anecdotes. I guess I'm just trying to gauge how common/feasible it is to end up with a job, BL or otherwise, in Nashville; I'm very into the idea of having a career in Nashville, less enthused about other cities in Tennessee and the South.

it's going to be primarily Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, and Chatanooga. I don't know of anyone in my year who went to a small city.

Nashville jobs are hard to get. If you don't have any ties to the city, you better have top grades and a lot of luck.

arklaw13 wrote:

no exit wrote:Hey all, thanks for taking questions. So I see from the Career Services statistics that more graduates (roughly a quarter of the class) end up in Tennessee than any other state (makes sense, obviously). I'm just curious as to where in Tennessee those folks end up? That is, is it fair to say that most of those grads stay in the Nashville area? Or are a lot of people ending up in Memphis, Chattanooga, or middle-of-nowhere-Tennessee? I imagine there's no data on these specifics, so I'm open to hearing anecdotes. I guess I'm just trying to gauge how common/feasible it is to end up with a job, BL or otherwise, in Nashville; I'm very into the idea of having a career in Nashville, less enthused about other cities in Tennessee and the South.

it's going to be primarily Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, and Chatanooga. I don't know of anyone in my year who went to a small city.

Nashville jobs are hard to get. If you don't have any ties to the city, you better have top grades and a lot of luck.

Thanks for the response. Thoughts, then, on attending w/o any real ties to any considerable market (grew up in small town NE, went to a small town LAC)? Assuming I'm hoping for BL but not opposed to small/mid sized firm work, what's the path of least resistance location wise coming out of Vandy (i.e., for a median student w/o ties, which market is best to target/where are those students likely to end up)? Sorry if these questions are too specific/particular!

no exit wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:

no exit wrote:Hey all, thanks for taking questions. So I see from the Career Services statistics that more graduates (roughly a quarter of the class) end up in Tennessee than any other state (makes sense, obviously). I'm just curious as to where in Tennessee those folks end up? That is, is it fair to say that most of those grads stay in the Nashville area? Or are a lot of people ending up in Memphis, Chattanooga, or middle-of-nowhere-Tennessee? I imagine there's no data on these specifics, so I'm open to hearing anecdotes. I guess I'm just trying to gauge how common/feasible it is to end up with a job, BL or otherwise, in Nashville; I'm very into the idea of having a career in Nashville, less enthused about other cities in Tennessee and the South.

it's going to be primarily Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, and Chatanooga. I don't know of anyone in my year who went to a small city.

Nashville jobs are hard to get. If you don't have any ties to the city, you better have top grades and a lot of luck.

Thanks for the response. Thoughts, then, on attending w/o any real ties to any considerable market (grew up in small town NE, went to a small town LAC)? Assuming I'm hoping for BL but not opposed to small/mid sized firm work, what's the path of least resistance location wise coming out of Vandy (i.e., for a median student w/o ties, which market is best to target/where are those students likely to end up)? Sorry if these questions are too specific/particular!

The bigger markets are always going to be easier than the small ones just because of the number of jobs. Being from NE, you could conceviable try for NYC, Boston, or Philly with little to no resistance re: ties (not that you'd get any resistance from NYC firms anyway - they don't care). For other big cities, some reasonable explanation for wanting to be there can be enough. I've heard Chicago tends to be pickier than other big cities, but I don't know that for a fact.

If you want smaller markets like Nashville, you need to come up with a good reason why. You're not going to end up working in Chatanooga by accident. The reason a quarter of the class ends up in TN is largely self-selection. There are some people from TN who end up going elsewhere, and people not from TN who end up in TN without planning that as a 0L, but they probably tend to cancel each other out.

arklaw13 wrote:

no exit wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:

no exit wrote:Hey all, thanks for taking questions. So I see from the Career Services statistics that more graduates (roughly a quarter of the class) end up in Tennessee than any other state (makes sense, obviously). I'm just curious as to where in Tennessee those folks end up? That is, is it fair to say that most of those grads stay in the Nashville area? Or are a lot of people ending up in Memphis, Chattanooga, or middle-of-nowhere-Tennessee? I imagine there's no data on these specifics, so I'm open to hearing anecdotes. I guess I'm just trying to gauge how common/feasible it is to end up with a job, BL or otherwise, in Nashville; I'm very into the idea of having a career in Nashville, less enthused about other cities in Tennessee and the South.

it's going to be primarily Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, and Chatanooga. I don't know of anyone in my year who went to a small city.

Nashville jobs are hard to get. If you don't have any ties to the city, you better have top grades and a lot of luck.

Thanks for the response. Thoughts, then, on attending w/o any real ties to any considerable market (grew up in small town NE, went to a small town LAC)? Assuming I'm hoping for BL but not opposed to small/mid sized firm work, what's the path of least resistance location wise coming out of Vandy (i.e., for a median student w/o ties, which market is best to target/where are those students likely to end up)? Sorry if these questions are too specific/particular!

The bigger markets are always going to be easier than the small ones just because of the number of jobs. Being from NE, you could conceviable try for NYC, Boston, or Philly with little to no resistance re: ties (not that you'd get any resistance from NYC firms anyway - they don't care). For other big cities, some reasonable explanation for wanting to be there can be enough. I've heard Chicago tends to be pickier than other big cities, but I don't know that for a fact.

If you want smaller markets like Nashville, you need to come up with a good reason why. You're not going to end up working in Chatanooga by accident. The reason a quarter of the class ends up in TN is largely self-selection. There are some people from TN who end up going elsewhere, and people not from TN who end up in TN without planning that as a 0L, but they probably tend to cancel each other out.

Exactly the kind of answer I was looking for, thanks again! It seems like job location at Vandy is much more about where the student is putting in the effort to end up (so long as the have the grades to boot), as opposed to having a more natural landing spot for grads like other super-regionals (a la UCLA to SoCal, UT to Houston/Dallas). Fair to say?

no exit wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:

no exit wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:

no exit wrote:Hey all, thanks for taking questions. So I see from the Career Services statistics that more graduates (roughly a quarter of the class) end up in Tennessee than any other state (makes sense, obviously). I'm just curious as to where in Tennessee those folks end up? That is, is it fair to say that most of those grads stay in the Nashville area? Or are a lot of people ending up in Memphis, Chattanooga, or middle-of-nowhere-Tennessee? I imagine there's no data on these specifics, so I'm open to hearing anecdotes. I guess I'm just trying to gauge how common/feasible it is to end up with a job, BL or otherwise, in Nashville; I'm very into the idea of having a career in Nashville, less enthused about other cities in Tennessee and the South.

it's going to be primarily Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, and Chatanooga. I don't know of anyone in my year who went to a small city.

Nashville jobs are hard to get. If you don't have any ties to the city, you better have top grades and a lot of luck.

Thanks for the response. Thoughts, then, on attending w/o any real ties to any considerable market (grew up in small town NE, went to a small town LAC)? Assuming I'm hoping for BL but not opposed to small/mid sized firm work, what's the path of least resistance location wise coming out of Vandy (i.e., for a median student w/o ties, which market is best to target/where are those students likely to end up)? Sorry if these questions are too specific/particular!

The bigger markets are always going to be easier than the small ones just because of the number of jobs. Being from NE, you could conceviable try for NYC, Boston, or Philly with little to no resistance re: ties (not that you'd get any resistance from NYC firms anyway - they don't care). For other big cities, some reasonable explanation for wanting to be there can be enough. I've heard Chicago tends to be pickier than other big cities, but I don't know that for a fact.

If you want smaller markets like Nashville, you need to come up with a good reason why. You're not going to end up working in Chatanooga by accident. The reason a quarter of the class ends up in TN is largely self-selection. There are some people from TN who end up going elsewhere, and people not from TN who end up in TN without planning that as a 0L, but they probably tend to cancel each other out.

Exactly the kind of answer I was looking for, thanks again! It seems like job location at Vandy is much more about where the student is putting in the effort to end up (so long as the have the grades to boot), as opposed to having a more natural landing spot for grads like other super-regionals (a la UCLA to SoCal, UT to Houston/Dallas). Fair to say?

I'd say that's true to a certain extent, although self-selection obviously plays a role in the other regional schools as well. California is a big market, and Texas is pretty big and growing as well. Vandy doesn't have one large market it feeds into (lumping all of Cali and TX together for comparison, which is not really the case)- its regional strength is more dissipated among many different southern markets. I don't know whether Vandy is better at placing students outside of its regionally-advantaged markets than UCLA is at placing outside of SoCal or UT outside of TX. Vandy probably does place more outside of its regional markets than UCLA/UT do, but this could be entirely due to self-selection. It's really hard to know. Theoretically, I think a median student at all three schools would have roughly the same shot at landing a NYC biglaw job. But I don't whether that's actually true or not.

Anyone have any thoughts on taking Kay for evidence?

The Abyss wrote:Anyone have any thoughts on taking Kay for evidence?

i took her for crim law and she's terrible as a teacher. her slides were disorganized, incorrect (admittedly) and not helpful in studying. her exams are bad and include no model answers. great, great person though--very cool and sweet person! just a bad teacher lol

almost everyone i know is trying to take evidence with Cheng, who is universally praised. i fear that may mean that cheng will be hard to get into, and i may not be able to take him in the spring. but i can tell you for sure i won't take evidence with her at all.

do_me_a_favor wrote:

The Abyss wrote:Anyone have any thoughts on taking Kay for evidence?

i took her for crim law and she's terrible as a teacher. her slides were disorganized, incorrect (admittedly) and not helpful in studying. her exams are bad and include no model answers. great, great person though--very cool and sweet person! just a bad teacher lol

almost everyone i know is trying to take evidence with Cheng, who is universally praised. i fear that may mean that cheng will be hard to get into, and i may not be able to take him in the spring. but i can tell you for sure i won't take evidence with her at all.

Yeah, this is basically what I heard from you folks that had her for Crim. Would like to take it with Cheng but don't want to wait until Spring. Ugh, doesn't George usually teach Evidence as well?

I'm wondering if anyone knows what the deal with the 2 different professional responsibility sections is. One currently has 20 seats total and is labeled as limited enrollment, the other has 120. Is the smaller section set up as a seminar or is it some other difference in how the 2 sections are structured? Thanks in advance.

jumbocolumbo wrote:I'm wondering if anyone knows what the deal with the 2 different professional responsibility sections is. One currently has 20 seats total and is labeled as limited enrollment, the other has 120. Is the smaller section set up as a seminar or is it some other difference in how the 2 sections are structured? Thanks in advance.

Honestly I don't think it matters. Every PR class sucks, and it will probably your least favorite class of law school. I took a smaller section, and it was no different than the larger one, except that it was at a more convenient time.

arklaw13 wrote:

jumbocolumbo wrote:I'm wondering if anyone knows what the deal with the 2 different professional responsibility sections is. One currently has 20 seats total and is labeled as limited enrollment, the other has 120. Is the smaller section set up as a seminar or is it some other difference in how the 2 sections are structured? Thanks in advance.

Honestly I don't think it matters. Every PR class sucks, and it will probably your least favorite class of law school. I took a smaller section, and it was no different than the larger one, except that it was at a more convenient time.

Additionally, the smaller section is already filled.

How can you tell if your class has an exam vs a paper?

AlexandraHope wrote:How can you tell if your class has an exam vs a paper?

Look at the syllabus or ask a 2L/3L

arklaw13 wrote:

Gitaroo_Dude wrote:Would it be sensible to attend Vandy with the goal of working in California afterwards (my homestate)? I know the school has a rep as a super-regional for the South, but it looks like they send about 5%-6% of each class to CA. So I'm guessing a lot of that is self-selection because each class probably doesn't have more than 8% CA residents. Just based on their employment info I get the impression the school can get you back to your home market, but I'm not sure if that's confirmation bias on my part. Are the people heading to CA only getting back through BigLaw?

Depends on what exactly your goal is. If it's

Legal job in california >>>>>>>> everything else

then maybe not. If it's

Biglaw in california > Legal job in california > biglaw anywhere else >>>> legal job anywhere else

then maybe. It's hard to crunch the exact numbers becuase Vandy just doesn't get a ton of west coast students. We send very few people to LA, for instance. I think we've sent more people to Palo Alto and San Diego in the last few years than LA. Does that mean that you can't get LA from Vandy? Not necessarily. But all things being equal, if being in California is the most important thing to you, I would probably bick USC/UCLA over Vandy, all else being equal.

A professor told me last semester that Vanderbilt students have a higher California bar passage rate than Stanford graduates. I have no data to back this up but also have no reason to assume he's lying to me (he also took [and passed] the California bar). I know several people with California ties who went back to Cali from Vanderbilt and didn't have any real issues. In some respects, going out of state can give you an advantage when you want to go back home. Once they've had their fill of USC/UCLA students, hiring from a different school can add a little diversity.

c28 wrote:

arklaw13 wrote:

Gitaroo_Dude wrote:Would it be sensible to attend Vandy with the goal of working in California afterwards (my homestate)? I know the school has a rep as a super-regional for the South, but it looks like they send about 5%-6% of each class to CA. So I'm guessing a lot of that is self-selection because each class probably doesn't have more than 8% CA residents. Just based on their employment info I get the impression the school can get you back to your home market, but I'm not sure if that's confirmation bias on my part. Are the people heading to CA only getting back through BigLaw?

Depends on what exactly your goal is. If it's

Legal job in california >>>>>>>> everything else

then maybe not. If it's

Biglaw in california > Legal job in california > biglaw anywhere else >>>> legal job anywhere else

then maybe. It's hard to crunch the exact numbers becuase Vandy just doesn't get a ton of west coast students. We send very few people to LA, for instance. I think we've sent more people to Palo Alto and San Diego in the last few years than LA. Does that mean that you can't get LA from Vandy? Not necessarily. But all things being equal, if being in California is the most important thing to you, I would probably bick USC/UCLA over Vandy, all else being equal.

A professor told me last semester that Vanderbilt students have a higher California bar passage rate than Stanford graduates. I have no data to back this up but also have no reason to assume he's lying to me (he also took [and passed] the California bar). I know several people with California ties who went back to Cali from Vanderbilt and didn't have any real issues. In some respects, going out of state can give you an advantage when you want to go back home. Once they've had their fill of USC/UCLA students, hiring from a different school can add a little diversity.

Depends on what year of bar passage he's talking about. Last numbers I see are for c/o 2015 and they went 7/14, so probably not that year. Also, bar passage rate doesn't mean anything in terms of employment.

I don't know enough about the hiring practices of CA firms to comment on whether, class rank being approximately equal, some at USC/UCLA is more likely to get an interview from a given firm. I tend to think that there is something to the notion that being one of only a handful of applicants from a given school can help set you apart as compared to the firm's regular feeder schools, but that also probably depends on the firm.