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Old 04-20-2007, 10:57 AM
 
774 posts, read 2,488,782 times
Reputation: 737

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Quote:
Originally Posted by M TYPE X View Post
That is correct regarding inconvenience. Why don't you look at apartments east of Lincoln Avenue, in Urbana?
The Urbana apartments and houses are generally nice - I stayed on that side of town for 2 years and found it to be a nice contrast to the generally more party-type atmosphere on the Champaign side that is fun if you're an undergrad, but not the best environment for law school studying. I know that any apartment complexes run by Gabe's Place are horrible - they have a long-standing reputation of being the worst property managers on campus (i.e. not responsive to requests, poor maintenance of their buildings, screw people on their security deposits, etc.), so avoid them at all costs even if they have open units in good locations.
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Old 04-20-2007, 07:22 PM
 
Location: Midwest
1,903 posts, read 7,877,636 times
Reputation: 474
I toured some Gabe's Place dumps without the managers (saw the ads in the paper and the commercials on the radio, and went to look at the buildings advertised), and then went to the management office to speak with them. Completely uninterested in selling anything ... sign here, give us the money, and leave. Most slumlords fake a smile.

Quote:
Originally Posted by marksind View Post
My wife's got an aunt and uncle in Decatur who are going to go by this weekend and check things out, take some pictures of a few places, and hopefully give us a better feel for things.
Ah, the truth comes out.

My parents love Penn State, and my dad's aunt and uncle live in the mountains of Centre County. My brother was there for one year, although a large public research university was not for him. My favorite professor at UM was denied tenure and landed at Penn State. I would not even know about Penn State if it wasn't for these insights.
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Old 04-21-2007, 11:44 AM
 
Location: Seattle
39 posts, read 171,793 times
Reputation: 31
The fact that there's someone not too far away in case he has an emergency is a reason we feel comfortable with him going there. Also, the law school got rated #25 in the country in the latest U.S. News rankings, and they offered a pretty attractive scholarship grant. The ratings may seem like "who really cares?" but I've got a friend who's a partner with a big firm and asked him what he thought of our son's choices. He turned it over to their recruiting department. Firms tend to recruit locally, so they weren't familiar with Illinois. The head of recruiting said they'd talk to him based on Illinois' U.S. News ranking. Showed pretty clearly that when they don't know much about a school, that's the reference they turn to.
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Old 04-21-2007, 12:08 PM
 
Location: Chicago
38,707 posts, read 102,751,145 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marksind View Post
Showed pretty clearly that when they don't know much about a school, that's the reference they turn to.
And that's highly unfortunate because US News looks at my school with disdain, and yet our top graduates could probably litigate circles around top U of I grads simply because of the different emphases in the schools' respective cirricula. But nobody outside of Chicago legal circles knows this. If I try to take my degree (once I graduate) to New York or Washington, I'll probably get laughed out of the recruiter's office even if I graduate in the top 10% (which isn't gonna happen anyway).

One thing that really damages our ranking with U.S. News is our less-than-demanding admissions standards. This school gives a lot of people a chance who may not look on paper like they deserve it. But once you get in, you have to prove yourself, because our wash-out rate is pretty high by design. So while my school may be easy to get into, it's not necessarily easy to get out of with a degree in hand.

One of the schools I was accepted to was ranked in the bottom tier by U.S. News even though it has had the the highest first-time bar passage rate in the state of Michigan -- even beating out perrenial top-five-ranked University of Michigan -- every year since 2003 (the first year its students were eligible to sit for the bar), and even though a Supreme Court justice helped design its cirriculum, and even though its faculty -- which included Robert Bork -- are almost all graduates of top-tier law schools, many of them Ivy-league.

These are the kind of things U.S. News doesn't take into account, and it's unfortunate that their rankings are practically taken as gospel by people who should know better.
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Old 04-21-2007, 08:43 PM
 
Location: Seattle
39 posts, read 171,793 times
Reputation: 31
Default Rankings

Yeah, Drover, I agree with you. We talked with many lawyers before making our choice, and they all said that the quality of legal education at pretty much any accredited law school would be decent. One I know had (for whatever reason) gone to two law schools, SUNY in Buffalo, and Harvard. He said he didn't think the education at Harvard was any better. The difference, most said, is that if you go to a lesser-known or lower ranked school, your choices coming out are likely to be limited to the immediate area around that school. But they all also said that after a few years it's what you do in legal practice that matters.
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Old 04-22-2007, 11:38 PM
 
Location: Chicago
38,707 posts, read 102,751,145 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marksind View Post
One I know had (for whatever reason) gone to two law schools, SUNY in Buffalo, and Harvard.
A J.D. is not the highest law degree available. One has the option to get an L.L.M. (Legal Letters Masters) after earning a J.D. An L.L.M. typically takes an additional year and provides additional specialization in a particular field of law. It is not uncommon for someone to seek an L.L.M. from a different university that issued their J.D. (It seems strange that a Masters comes after rather than before a doctorate. This reflects that a Juris Doctorate used to be called a Bachelor of Laws. The ABA decided a few decades ago to re-designate the bachelors a doctorate to reflect the level of education required to attain the degree; but the Master's name was never changed.)

Quote:
He said he didn't think the education at Harvard was any better.
That may be, but Harvard just plain has a higher caliber student body because it is far more selective; consequently, while its cirriculum may not be much different from SUNY-Buffalo, Harvard will have a more academically rigorous environment because the student body is much more competitive and academically talented. We all jump through roughly the same hoops; it's just that some hoops are higher than others. A Harvard degree signifies that you're a cut above the rest not necessarily because you got out of Harvard, but because you got in.

Quote:
But they all also said that after a few years it's what you do in legal practice that matters.
Maybe if you're moving into an in-house or mid-level government position. However, that's generally not the case among high-level government positions, large firms and many mid-size firms. Many will still ask you if you were on law review even if you've been practicing for 20 or 30 years. You'd think the private law firms in particular would be far more interested in the size and bankability of the client base you're bringing with you into the firm, but believe it or not, your academic achievements have a lot of potential to define your career until the day you retire.
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Old 04-22-2007, 11:45 PM
 
774 posts, read 2,488,782 times
Reputation: 737
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drover View Post
And that's highly unfortunate because US News looks at my school with disdain, and yet our top graduates could probably litigate circles around top U of I grads simply because of the different emphases in the schools' respective cirricula. But nobody outside of Chicago legal circles knows this. If I try to take my degree (once I graduate) to New York or Washington, I'll probably get laughed out of the recruiter's office even if I graduate in the top 10% (which isn't gonna happen anyway).

One thing that really damages our ranking with U.S. News is our less-than-demanding admissions standards. This school gives a lot of people a chance who may not look on paper like they deserve it. But once you get in, you have to prove yourself, because our wash-out rate is pretty high by design. So while my school may be easy to get into, it's not necessarily easy to get out of with a degree in hand.

One of the schools I was accepted to was ranked in the bottom tier by U.S. News even though it has had the the highest first-time bar passage rate in the state of Michigan -- even beating out perrenial top-five-ranked University of Michigan -- every year since 2003 (the first year its students were eligible to sit for the bar), and even though a Supreme Court justice helped design its cirriculum, and even though its faculty -- which included Robert Bork -- are almost all graduates of top-tier law schools, many of them Ivy-league.

These are the kind of things U.S. News doesn't take into account, and it's unfortunate that their rankings are practically taken as gospel by people who should know better.
I really think that unless you go to a top 20 law school, it's extremely tough to find many opportunities outside of your law school's immediate geographic region. I went to DePaul for law school and did well enough to find a job in a large Chicago law firm, but it's unfortunate that a ton of my classmates that I know would be spectacular in any atmosphere didn't get such opportunities since they weren't in the top 10% of the class. The upshot is that at places outside of the elite law schools, you actually have more pressure to perform to get top first year grades since that's the only way that you can compete for the top jobs. Meanwhile, the top law schools generally place almost their entire classes into the top firms, so class rank doesn't have nearly as much effect on those students. Unfortunately, the large law firms continue to be very traditional in their hiring practices, so I think that they're missing out on a lot of great potential candidates.
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Old 04-22-2007, 11:52 PM
 
Location: Chicago
38,707 posts, read 102,751,145 times
Reputation: 29967
Yep, I know all about it. Nary a week goes by when I don't sit down, do the math in my head, and wonder if the realistic return is worth the investment. Especially at my age, it doesn't intuitively add up. Yet after only one year I'm far enough along and have spent enough money that I don't have much choice but to see it through to the end and find out.
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Old 04-28-2007, 12:30 PM
 
Location: central IL
68 posts, read 566,762 times
Reputation: 55
i live in savoy, in kobuck apts if you wanna look them up . the bus (yellow line) runs behind my apt & it only takes 15 min to get to campus. that's at the union, the main hub of campus. it stops in front of the law school even before that. & it runs every 30min. last semester that's all i depended on & i thought it was fine. sterling apt in savoy is the stop right before my apt. that only adds about 5 min to the trip.
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Old 04-28-2007, 07:28 PM
 
Location: Seattle
39 posts, read 171,793 times
Reputation: 31
Default Savoy

Thanks for the info. We've settled on an apartment in Champaign, about a mile and a quarter from the law school. No in-person inspection, but the landlord has a good reputation and the Champaign police say none of the dozen calls to the complex in the past 12 months have been for drugs or anything involving violence. Once he's there he'll be able to assess options for the next year.
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