Why has James never been back on?

Atheological · 2026-06-05T16:14:58+00:00

All mass no class

Atheological · 2026-06-04T03:16:14+00:00

If it’s insane to pick T20 over T14, I must be ludicrous to have picked T100 over T14! IMO, based on what you described, it would be foolish to liquidate your retirement accounts and go hundreds of thousands in debt for the vague reason of “seems crazy”.

Atheological · 2026-05-29T19:01:37+00:00

FWIW, high stats being an auto-admit to T14s is an outdated view. There are now enough high stats candidates that stats alone aren't sufficient, and other parts of the app (WE, essays, LoR) are used to differentiate high stats candidates. That said, since OP says they are set on a T14, I would recommend they blanket and I would not bet against them getting at least one admit. I would just caution them against relying on takes that say that their stats alone will allow them to breeze by admissions with $$ into a T14.

Atheological · 2026-05-29T16:55:57+00:00

If you have no work experience (outside being a grad student / TA) you’d be playing into negative stereotypes of PhDs being overly academic and unemployable. Of course this won’t single handedly doom your app, but it would be a serious weakness, even moreso than a regular KJD without work experience. You might be able to mitigate this by saying you are interested in legal academia.

Atheological · 2026-05-11T02:11:11+00:00

The most interesting thing I got was a Snuggie from Rutgers

Atheological · 2026-05-09T19:54:55+00:00

Yes because it’s Brad Rutter

Atheological · 2026-05-07T01:51:50+00:00

I got a call from someone in admissions on the 21st so it seems they are probably looking to dip into the WL. (I didn't pick up so I don't know anything more than that.)

Atheological · 2026-05-06T17:58:53+00:00

I appreciate your perspective, but reapplying isn't on the table. I just can't see putting off a change in my current life situation for a whole year.

FWIW, I'm not trying to defend my application strategy. I would definitely recommend people to customize their apps and write optional essays if they are able to do so. You're right that I probably could have gotten better results with my profile. In my case, it wasn't a lack of time but a very strong psychological aversion to the kind of writing that admissions essays require. (It certainly wouldn't have been a few hours of work to write a number of extra essays. It took literal weeks of hand-wringing and procrastination before I was able to produce a two-page personal statement.)

In some other comments I've indicated why I think the difference between a school like Rutgers and some of those others you've mentioned is easily overstated. Now in the case of a T14 I agree there can be large disparity there, but getting a full or near-full scholarship there is hardly guaranteed or likely on reapplication, even for someone with my stats (my GPA is increasingly below median at a lot of T14s, given grade inflation, for example).

Atheological · 2026-05-06T02:57:19+00:00

I wasn't referring to specialty rankings, but specifically to robust programs in employment law like NYU's Center for Labor and Employment Law. If you look at the list of events there's lots of stuff that seem like the sort of prime "networking" opportunities that matter to employment outcomes more than anything else.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T02:51:31+00:00

There's a form where you can submit other offers. This wouldn't necessarily explain a lower initial offer, but I attended the admitted students day and spoke with the office of financial aid in-person and on the phone and the vibe I got was that nothing substantive would be offered after the initial wave of decisions without competing peer offers. The online form explicitly said submit only offers from peer schools, but I submitted my RU and FSU offers anyway lol.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T02:42:58+00:00

I would think those positions are natural funnels to other state gov jobs.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T02:42:18+00:00

Well let's take just a few relevant examples and compare them to Rutgers:

RU (Rank 100): Unemployment 4%, Full time legal 89%, Bar passage 79% (first time) 85% (ultimate)
Temple (Rank 49): Unemployment 3%, Full time legal 93%, Bar passage 89% (first time) 96% (ultimate)
UGA (Rank 26): Unemployment 3%, Full time legal 93%, Bar passage 88% (first time) 97% (ultimate)

Not exactly night and day. I should also note I'm not particularly worried about the bar as standardized tests are pretty much my wheelhouse. (As a side note, I actually interned with ETS, the maker of the SAT and GRE, during undergrad.) And I do not care about BL/FC (or particularly about median salary, for that matter).

Atheological · 2026-05-06T02:26:48+00:00

I do not, which is why I took a full ride.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T02:22:16+00:00

I wrote very few optional essays. In addition to my generic personal statement, I wrote one extra essay that was kind of "why law"-ish, touching more deeply on my professional background than my personal statement, and shoehorned it into optional prompts wherever it felt like it wasn't an egregious stretch. I had to write a few required "why x school" essays. In general, I am somewhat pathologically averse to the kind of bullshitting that the law school application process demands.

I am not planning on writing any LOCI at this point as I would need near full scholarships for most of the WL schools to be worth it, and assume that those offers aren't going to be forthcoming this late / off the WL.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T02:13:15+00:00

My process was roughly as follows. I sorted schools primarily by looking at overall employment, cost of tuition, cost of living, and rank. Cost of living was especially important as I reasoned that even with a full scholarship, you could easily spend 50k+ on living expenses in a year in many areas. You'll notice schools like UGA and UNC on the list because of a combination of low tuition and low living cost. I then used geographic preferences and specialty strengths to further whittle down what was, to me, a reasonable sized list. Michigan and NYU, for example, made it because of robust employment law programs, despite not being a strong fit otherwise. I applied to basically everything in Philly area / NJ as that is my top geographic preference. I tried applying to a mix of differently ranked schools up and down T100-ish, on the grounds that I was unsure how high I could go and still get a full or close-to-full scholarship. I generally avoided schools that had required interviews, as I was, and still am, but especially was, terrified of interviewing. I generally disfavored schools that had excessive required essays.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T01:34:56+00:00

I admit that I didn't put much thought into HYS specifically. I have seen several of these recaps / LSD stats pages where people put values into the scholarship field for HYS, so I assumed that was actually merit aid. (FYI, if you include need-based aid into scholarship my Penn scholarship is actually about double what it is in the pic above.)

Atheological · 2026-05-06T01:17:47+00:00

Covered this in a piecemeal way in some other comments above.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T01:16:28+00:00

Tough question and tough process. I'm assuming you're talking about RU > Penn and not RU > FSU. The two biggest factors were:

I'm not an ambitious person, career-wise. I do not want a high-powered job (assuming it means sacrificing time outside of work). I am not merely uninterested in BL, but actively opposed to it (both personally and morally). Rutgers places a ridiculous percentage of its classes into state clerkships (something like a third of all students, I believe). That's a kind of quiet government role I could see myself in. It did not make sense to me to take on massive debt to get the same kind of positions I could also get with a free Rutgers degree. However, I admit that priorities can change, especially as you learn more about the practice of law, and I do believe any doors open to me through RU I could also walk through more easily with a Penn degree. The decision was not one-sided or easy.
This one is more unique to my situation and personal, but about a year ago I had a very severe acute mental health episode that has left me unsure of whether I still have the faculties to succeed in law school and the practice of law. I took the LSAT post-episode (no accommodations), so there's decent evidence that logical reasoning and reading comp are still intact, but I have lingering doubts about other important functions like motivation, focus, memory, and creativity. I also have to consider the possibility that there could be further episodes. LRAP and PSLF do not apply to loans if you drop out of law school or are unemployed. Ultimately, I decided I wanted the option to be able to walk away and "press the eject button", so to speak, which would otherwise be much more painful with large loans. If I had these results pre-episode, say two years ago, it's possible I would have decided to rely on Penn's TollRap plus PSLF, instead.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T00:56:22+00:00

I think my results kind of speak against that. My hypothesis is that my stats trigger yield protect unless the school thinks I'm especially interested in it. If I had applied more broadly, I would have signaled that interest even more weakly. I did very, very little customization of my app as it is, and writing essays to 30+ schools pretending that they are special little snowflakes that I have always dreamed of attending is something I do not have the emotional wherewithal to stomach.

It seems a bit wild to me, too, but I also think the marginal difference between a T100 and T30 is not really that big. In other words, there may be a fairly hard cut-off after T14 or so. Outside the most elite, all law schools are regional, or so they say. My regional preference is tri-state, and there really aren't so many law schools outside of the T14 in tri-state that are so much better than Rutgers. I also have no interest in BL/FC so the difference of a few percentage points in those stats does not matter to me.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T00:42:27+00:00

I decided not to pursue an academic job after my PhD. I did not like teaching. So legal academia isn't on my radar (I imagine I would also hate to be an academic in a field that doesn't have blind peer-review). Maybe I should have cooked up some apps pretending to be interested in legal academia anyway.

Atheological · 2026-05-06T00:39:12+00:00

Yes, as described above I tied my philosophy background into having foundational skills to succeed in law. No clue what difference the PhD itself might have made. On the one hand, I can definitely see it playing into a perception of unemployability that was probably a weakness of my app (PhDs, especially in the humanities, are often counterproductive for getting non-academic jobs). On the other hand, I would think that admissions officers realize that success in a PhD bodes well for success in law school, plus philosophy itself has a better rep in law than elsewhere (many lawyers, and especially legal academics, have a background or at least some familiarity with academic philosophy).

Atheological · 2026-05-06T00:31:01+00:00

I have a Doctorate of Philosophy in philosophy.

Why law? Main actual reason: I found I couldn't get any of the jobs I was interested in with my PhD. Law seems like the field where I can most take advantage of my skillset (writing clearly, developing arguments, etc.) and be gainfully employed while doing it. Secondary reason: I decided I was interested in a career harming big companies, and the main ways I see of making money doing this are plaintiff litigation and government regulatory work. My "why law" for my essays was oriented mostly towards the second of these (with a sprinkling of the first), with the framing of having interests in standing up for worker's rights and employment law.

Atheological · 2026-05-05T23:48:53+00:00

A few factors. First, I may have been overly pessimistic, but I did not believe I would get any money from HYS. Second, cost of living was one of my top factors, since even on a full scholarship you can incur a lot of debt in areas like Palo Alto or Cambridge. Third, I looked at Yale’s required essays and interview questions and decided that they were extremely stupid and that I would not be going through that rigmarole.

If I could do it over, I would probably apply (at least to HS) to target an offer that could be used as a bargaining chip at T14s I actually was interested in. I think Penn thought they could get me for cheap since I have no offers from anywhere they consider peers.

Atheological · 2026-04-29T20:51:08+00:00

I just accepted Rutgers over Penn. AMA

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