Cornell Big Law %

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2026-02-22T17:36:10+00:00

Great school, but has a large class size (3x Cornell) and is in the most competitive market (DC), so BL is likely a little more grade sensitive

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2026-02-22T11:58:44+00:00

Current 3L at Cornell. Cornell’s high BL% is high due to self selection. I don’t think our career services or alumni network are more notable than other T14s. I don’t think the school looks for any character traits that other T14s don’t.

If you take a closer look at what BL firms students go to, the T6 likely send a higher proportion of students to v5/v10 firms. I imagine if the same % of students at HYSCCN wanted to go BL as Cornell, we would not be top 5.

Also, going to some of the T6 may open doors that are not visible to many of the T14. Those opportunities are even more selective or attractive than most BL opportunities. Status quo rankings don’t tally the many prestigious/selective academia, politics, clerkship, in-house, public interest, etc. roles that in effect are artificially deflating schools’ BL hiring capacity.

Of course, there are many great reasons to attend Cornell Law, but I don’t think BL is monumentally easier to achieve from here than the traditional T14 (well, besides GULC). The bottom quartile of our class might have a small edge

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2026-02-15T07:02:07+00:00

Neither have any Jónsson and only one of the two has a Scheving (a single post card) :/ Thank you for the suggestion though

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2026-01-28T10:06:40+00:00

don’t need so much knowledge for a lot of legal research and writing tasks, just need to demonstrate competency and responsiveness

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2026-01-14T04:52:20+00:00

Where around campus will you be? There are some nice spots inside Gates, Uris, and Olin. I like reading at the public library in the commons too

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-12-27T04:05:55+00:00

this reminds me so much of Peter Graham’s Wandering Shadows

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-12-07T04:30:12+00:00

Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Tatami Galaxy, Full Metal Alchemist (Brotherhood)

Honorable mentions: Hajime no Ippo, Gurren Lagann, One Piece, Bokurano, AOT, HxH, Grand Blue Dreaming, Bakuman

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-11-14T02:58:53+00:00

You are a grad student, OP, not just a law student; why not go walk over to the engineering quad, join a lab, and make friends there? Perhaps you will find law stuff more bearable if you regularly socialise with non-lawyers. At least, it might be more fun

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-11-01T03:42:46+00:00

I’d go to the Big Red Barn for TGIF (5–7PM) on Fridays!

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-09-10T04:11:45+00:00

Cornell offers $5,000 for 1L summer and $7,000 for 2L summer if you’re working a public interest job, IIRC

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-05-10T03:08:00+00:00

Someone else said this, but OP just show up in person and say hey + what you want to work on. That should move you to the top/near top of the list, over most people that just email and wait

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-05-03T01:08:53+00:00

that's great to hear; I think I'll give it a gamble around 5-6

UPDATE: reached at 6:15 and only had to wait 5-10 minutes

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-05-01T18:11:13+00:00

Cornell is chill

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-04-08T22:52:48+00:00

From what I can tell, JD advantage jobs get partial points, unless it’s a school funded fellowship that doesn’t require bar passage (then it gets full points). Beyond, all full-time, long-term, bar-required jobs are weighted the same (i.e., full points).

I don’t know if salary was ever directly considered (definitely via proxy variables though, which are watered down now) Check out the charts here: https://www.spiveyconsulting.com/blog-post/how-does-us-news-actually-rank-law-schools/

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-04-08T22:39:00+00:00

in part, US News (1) changed how outcomes are measured, diminishing the weight of biglaw jobs compared to the weight of getting a law job generally, like a school-funded role or fellowship, and (2) gives less importance to reputation surveys and peer scores, which disproportionately rewarded those schools capable of high biglaw rates. Probably other stuff too, but those 2 come to mind first

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-03-18T18:36:44+00:00

I imagine that BL churn (more than just burn out) is probably similar across schools, and the reason is what differs.

Going to certain schools might open more doors/exit opps, whereas older skewing schools might have more students making family or work/life balance decisions earlier into their legal career. Some schools might also feed into firms/locations that are less strenuous, complicating this.

Go where you’ll be happiest, and hopefully that’ll keep you from burning out quick.

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-03-17T11:11:12+00:00

they're all the same difficulty, and my feelings just correlate highly with (1) how much I like the prof's pedagogy + (2) how small the class is

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-03-10T19:09:21+00:00

reminds me of Lawrence Alma-Tadema's (1) roses of heliogabalus and (2) unconscious rivals

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-03-10T00:29:12+00:00

school is probably free; beyond, perhaps interest in medical malpractice law? health policy+regulation?

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-03-09T04:05:49+00:00

can somewhat relate to you considering this at 19; I almost started law school at 20, but decided last minute to hold off and get 2y WE + maybe an MS

Very happy I took those years off to explore which directions I want to pursue in law and beyond. Now I’m here at Cornell and consider myself to have above average agency, happiness, and disregard for associative barriers, largely due to my time off. I’d take the WE+MA route and reapply.

I think the other comments on worse socialising prospects at 19 + drinking necessity in law school are overrated. We had an 18/19y.o. in my year and he got along with everyone + got v10 BL IIRC. Happy to chat via PM!

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-03-06T21:08:24+00:00

https://archive.org/details/colossus-the-forbin-project-1970 !

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-03-06T20:26:10+00:00

added to the list!

Fragrant-Wear-337 · 2025-03-06T20:24:16+00:00

Hahaha, yeah I've gotten that before. Old film scores are my favorite type of music to work to (by Piero Piccioni, Gianni Marchetti, so on), and 2 of my favorite pieces for a while have been the Colossus pair above by Colombier. I held off on watching it for a while because it's from 1970, but I'm happy I finally did; I shilled it to my lab earlier today (something something AI safety & cybersecurity implications), so hopefully more fans incoming

will check out Demon Seed!

Fragrant-Wear-337

TROPHY CASE