<p>JHS - you beat me to it. Maroon8, I wanted to thank you again for providing a current perspective, but there are some holes in your analysis. </p>
<p>To reiterate what JHS said, there are still quite a few BIG top law schools. Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Georgetown all are in the 450-550 range in terms of class size. Indeed, out of the top 15 or so schools, only 4 (Chicago, Cornell, Yale, and Stanford) are around 200 students. </p>
<p>On another note, my big problem with your analysis is that you essentially assert that, if TOP chicago students applied to law school, we’d have strong placement. The top students at any top college do just fine. I’m more curious about what happens to the merely good students. As the Yale data indicates, an “average” yale applicant is still going to a top 10 law school (if not a top 5-6 law school). If you do a quick search for Princeton’s stats or another similar school, you quickly begin to see that, at many of Chicago’s peer schools, going to a top 10 law school is THE NORM. Nearly the MAJORITY of applicants in a given year are going to a great law school at Yale or Princeton or Harvard. </p>
<p>It’s now been well documented that Chicago does great feeding its own law school, but outside of that, there seems to be some suspect placement statistics. </p>
<p>If you go here: [url=<a href=“http://members.lsac.org/Public/MainPage.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2FPrivate%2FMainPage2.aspx]LSACNet.org[/url”>http://members.lsac.org/Public/MainPage.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2FPrivate%2FMainPage2.aspx]LSACNet.org[/url</a>]</p>
<p>You can then roll your mouse over the “Data” heading, and click on “Top 240 ABA Feeder Schools.” As you can see, about 220-250 Chicago students apply to law school every year. Now, yes, maybe as a pool, stronger students at Yale are committed to law school than at Chicago, but nevertheless, if you have roughly comparable student bodies to start, even if "weaker’ Chicago students commit to law school, you’d think you’d see a rough correlation in law school placement between Yale and Chicago. </p>
<p>Yale’s “average” law applicants still do extremely well, whereas I’d think Chicago’s “average” applicants struggle a good deal more. </p>
<p>To break this down further, lets say out of the 240 or so students applying to law school every year from Chicago, about 180 decide to go. To stay in proportion to the numbers Yale produces, Chicago would need to send about 6-7 students to EACH of the top 14 or so schools (i.e. about 50% of the students go on to a top 14-15 law school). </p>
<p>I just don’t think Chicago has these numbers. For someone currently in the college, PLEASE, set up a quick appt with the pre-law advisor, and just run down the list of matriculants. Does Chicago roughly send about 6-7 students a year to each of the top law schools? I’d doubt it. </p>
<p>My reasoning for this is that Yale, etc. still facilitate superb opportunities for the “average” applicants. The “average” law applicant from Chicago would struggle more - partly because of the “undue challenges” the Maroon described in the op-ed. As Maroon8 suggests, Chicago’s placement record probably isn’t “that great,” but a reason for this to me would be, while the “average” Chicago pre-law hopeful probably isn’t terribly behind his/her counterpart at Yale, the Yale student benefits from a more grade-inflated environment (i.e. an AVG. 3.58 GPA), and is savvier about the process. </p>
<p>Again, if someone could quickly see the placement stats in the pre-law advisors office, this would settle the debate very quickly. If Chicago’s sending ~20 kids to Chicago law, but then only 2-3 kids to each of the other top schools (which I strongly believe is still the case), well, that’s simply not good enough. Keep in mind, Yale isn’t just heavily feeding Yale and Harvard Law - yale undergrad is still sending insane numbers to other top law schools (11 to Michigan, 11 to Penn, 20 to Columbia, 12 to Stanford, 11 to Georgetown, etc. etc.). There is actually quite a healthy range in just how many top law schools wind up getting Yale undergrads.</p>