lsa16 wrote:Anon.y.mousse. wrote:Looks like I'm the only one who walked away from ASW feeling like it made me much more likely NOT to attend than making my decision to attend easier!!
Would love to hear why if you want to share
Yeah! Maybe it will be useful for other people who couldn't go to hear a different perspective. I feel like I should open by saying that I completely expected to fall in love with UChi and it has been my top choice/school that I've been most excited about since the beginning of the cycle. I was honestly more nervous for the Chicago interview than I was for Harvard's because I wanted to get into Chi so badly. So my expectations were high and I had probably built it up more in my head than I should have, and that's not Chi's fault. Also should open by saying that I liked UChi and enjoyed my visit and I could go there and be perfectly fine, it's not a matter of something I think the school did wrong or is objectively bad about it. I think the school itself was exactly as advertised, and it's a personal fit issue on my end more than anything else.
That being said, my overall impression of the school can be summed up as "cold." More institutionally than personally, because I had pleasant and friendly interactions with administrators/admitted & current students. It felt to me like the school had no real personality other than being a place of academic & professional excellence, which is undeniable but "smart" and "rigorous" are not really personalities in my opinion. I guess I'm looking for some place that will feel homey in some way given the insane amount of time that you spend there over three years, and I didn't get that sense from UChi. I realize it's a professional school and so for some people that may not matter or they got a different feeling from it, but it was just missing for me.
Also, I don't have BigLaw goals so although the strength of a school's brand and reputation is important to me like it is for BigLaw people, their superior placement into BigLaw firms isn't a huge selling point for me. I understand the argument that being one of only a handful of people PI/gov focused means that you can take advantage of even more of the resources/attention/institutional support available for those students than at other schools where there are more people competing for them, but I heard "keep an open mind" about BigLaw a couple of times over the weekend when really, I know that's not what I want to do. It's important to me to have at least some other classmates who are striving for the same types of jobs I want, especially when the current students talked about how much 2Ls and 3Ls helped in their own job searches. I had a lengthy discussion at one event with a 3L who didn't flat out tell me not to come after explaining my career goals, but told me that I was asking the right questions and that I should seriously consider going elsewhere.
Finally, didn't get the sense from any students that they've loved their time at UChi. I think everybody is appreciative of how amazing the school's reputation is and the academic rigor, to the extent that that can be quantified and is superior to other schools, and appreciative of the fact that the employment outcomes are fantastic, but I walked away thinking that people liked UChi more for what it's done for them professionally than for the time they've spent there in and of itself, both academically and in terms of the relationships they've built with their classmates. On some of the alumni panel at other schools I've heard the sentiment that time at X school "is some of the best three years of their lives" and that they would choose to go to X school again in a heartbeat/wish they were still there, and while one person answered affirmatively that they would make the same choice of school again, it was hesitantly.
Thankfully I'm in a position where I can afford to be nitpicky and maybe choose to care about somethings that other people find irrelevant, because I have another option that makes a lot of sense financially and doesn't have some of the same downfalls (although I know it has its own!). I love the city of Chicago and overall liked the school. I'm sure that Chi is the right fit for a lot of people, I'm just not sure I'm one of them!
). There was a weird amount of discussion regarding the conservative reputation Chi has. If you're wondering, what I came away with is that yes, there is a higher percentage of conservative professors and students, but that the majority is overwhelmingly liberal. Different percentages were thrown around, but people kept saying "yeah, it's more like 10 percent conservative rather than the 5 percent at peer schools." The Federalist society also has a lot of outside funding at Chicago, so a lot of the lunchtime speakers come from them, which could add to the perception. At the end, I actually preferred the idea that a higher percent of my classmates might actually have a different political leaning than I do. I also came to really enjoy the idea of a small class size after seeing how many of the students my host knew and was able to talk to/get along with. Coming from a small school, I loved the vibe! And while Chicago tends to have lower placement in PI, I talked to a few students in PILS and they mentioned that 1) it's definitely growing, and 2) in the meantime, all the resources/opportunities for those interested in PI go to those few of them, meaning that they get far more opportunities than they might at a different school.
