Friday, January 12, 2007

Admitted Students Event

This week I attended an admitted students event at my third choice school (the only school to which I have been admitted so far). Although the event itself was relatively short (three hours), it was a long day for me. I drove my son to my sister-in-law's house 1.5 hours away so my mother-in-law could watch him, then took the train (1 hr) into the city. Because it was the middle of the day the trains were running very infrequently and I had to take a train that got me there an hour early in order to get there in time. With my extra time I got lunch at a sushi place (I have been craving sushi since I was pregnant).

The event itself was not terribly enlightening. There were several speakers who talked very briefly about financial aid, their public interest programs and career services. And several speakers claimed that their school was friendly and not at all like "The Paper Chase" (which I haven't seen) or One L (which I haven't read). That was kind of meaningless to me, not only because I am not too familiar with those works, but because, first, of course they are going to say that, they are trying to convince me to attend their school, and, second, I don't really care if it is friendly or not, I am not going to law school to make friends. If I do make friends while I am in law school, that's great, if I don't that's fine too. Anyway, someone who recently transfered from this school to my number one school was exclaiming about the friendliness of students at my number one school, so number three may not even be the leader in friendliness. Number three school also claims to be service-oriented, however only 1% of the class of 2005 are working in public interest law. Compare this with 6% of the class of 2005 at my number one school.

After the speakers we went on a brief tour of the school. It seemed pretty small, but I haven't yet seen any other law schools to compare it to. After the tour was a light buffet and a chance to talk with a few faculty, staff and students. I grabbed a few bites and left so I could get back home at a reasonable time (given the 1 hour train raid and 1.5 hour drive). So anyway, after the event number three school is still in third place for me. Money could change things though, we'll see.

(In case anyone is wondering, I am not so much trying to keep the schools I am applying to secret -- I have given them away multiple times through links -- I just don't necessarily want anybody searching for those schools to find my blog just yet.)

2 comments:

Marie Ann said...

I wanted to comment on the service orientation of the schools. I found you via your link to me (athenamat). F*LS has a small but dedicated PI program. I liked this because I got really individual attention even as a 1L and really got help pursuing PI stuff. BUT hardly anyone is in that program! That's a lot of pressure on you when you're the only one of your friends pursuing a career in PI. There is a lot of pressure to conform whether or not people overtly tell you to work in the private sector.

As for NY*U, they DO have a much bigger developed PI program. They have a very very generous loan repayment program. Lots lots of students go thru this program. This was hard for me to deal with because I felt like nobody cared what I was doing. If they lost me to the private sector, oh well, there were ten other PI hopefuls to take my place. But there were lots and lots of events and ways to get involved if you were aggressive about it.

Anyway, totally unsolicited advice but I thought I would input since you linked to me.

saramel said...

Marie,

Thanks so much for your advice, I really appreciate it, especially from someone like you who has the unique perspective of having gone to two of the schools I am considering.