One of the hazards of allowing a thirty-something to blog is that you have to read posts that use phrases like "the straight dope." As we learned from my last post, however, sometimes the straight dope is exactly what you need to navigate the law school admissions process, and this time I am going to lay it out for you with regard to loan forgiveness programs.
To rewind a little bit, I mentioned in my last post the benefit of law schools adopting policies that are aligned with student interests. Recently, two Yale Law professors discussed this in an article in Slate, proposing that law schools ought to put "skin in the game" with regard to rising law school education costs. Loan forgiveness programs are one effort to do exactly that: by placing at least some of the burden of paying back student loans on themselves, law schools with such programs have to take into account the cost, as well as benefit, of raising the price of legal education. To this end, schools that offer loan forgiveness programs -- and particularly Yale, Harvard, and Stanford, which are the only law schools remaining in the country that operate on a purely need-based financial aid model -- ought to be commended (but usually aren't) for eschewing large, front-end, merit-based scholarships which are usually allocated on the basis of LSAT and GPA in favor of back-end grants allocated based on a student's actual earnings.
Loan forgiveness programs, of course, are not created equal. And unlike scholarship deadlines, understanding them is not always straightforward, since they involve many factors. In fact, it's very easy for a school to "hard sell" you on their program by cherry picking the one or two examples in which they look better than the others based on very specific situations and circumstances. But the story of a loan forgiveness program lies in the big picture: since most students don't know what their exact situation will be in three, five, or ten years, approaching a loan forgiveness program from a veil of ignorance point of view is usually your best bet.
To this end, when I guide students through how to meaningfully compare loan forgiveness programs, I make sure that they look at five critical factors taken together: 1) the amortization schedule used by the school; 2) the expected student contribution schedule; 3) the school's treatment of assets; 4) the length of eligibility; and 5) job coverage. Only by assessing all of these factors as a whole can you determine whether a particular loan forgiveness program will be a good fit for you. If any school tries to market its program by focusing almost exclusively on one factor -- like, say, its amortization schedule -- you should notice a strong, fishy smell wafting under your nose.
I say this because in recent years I've had many students coming to me -- usually after attending a peer school's admit program -- with major confusion about how Yale's program actually works, and in particular, about our amortization schedule (which is what I'll focus on in this post -- please see here for the full details on all of the other factors listed above). Yale uses a 15/5 amortization schedule, which means that for the first five years, we assume you are paying your loans on a 15 year repayment plan. For the second five years, we assume an accelerated 5 year repayment plan. At the end of 10 years, your loans would be paid off.
Why is this an issue? According to Harvard (which uses a straight 10-year amortization schedule):
Loan repayment assistance at some other schools is calculated on a longer repayment term, such as 15 years. By using an extended repayment term your benefits from the LRAP are smaller and you will make slower progress repaying your loans. In effect, it is like receiving assistance on 75% of your eligible loan debt instead of 100% of your eligible loan debt.
In other words, according to Harvard, the mere fact that "some other schools" are using a longer amortization schedule means that you will be getting less assistance from the school. Let's take a look at the actual numbers with this graph (based on an Yale's average debt of $107,000 at 7.9% interest):
Hmmm...if you pay attention to the light blue (Yale) and red (Harvard) bars on the graph, it turns out that in fact, at a certain income (in the graphed example it is $60K), you start getting less money from Harvard than you do from Yale, despite the fact that Harvard uses a more accelerated amortization schedule. In other words, even if you are, in fact, paying your loans back on a 10-year repayment schedule, there is a fixed income point after which Yale is actually financing a larger percentage of your loan than Harvard, in direct contravention to their claim.
How is this possible? Well, even though Harvard assumes that you owe more in the first five years, its steeper student contribution curve means that they also expect you to contribute more. Since the asistance you actually receive is based on the combination of these two factors, not just on the former standing alone, focusing just on the different amortization schedules is a red herring, and frankly, factually misleading.
(NOTE: For the same reason, the difference in assistance in the first five years between Stanford and Yale -- the yellow and light blue bars -- gets smaller over time as well, though not as quickly since Stanford's student contribution schedule is higher than Yale's but not quite as high as Harvard's.)
If you pay attention to the dark blue lines, which represent Yale's assistance in the second five years, the plot thickens. Many students don't understand what advantage a 15/5 amortization schedule can offer a student. The graph shows this pretty clearly. By assuming an increase in the amount owed in the second five years, Yale's loan forgiveness plan effectively raises the income ceiling on being eligible for loan assistance. Say, for instance, you are in your fifth year at a government job, making $85K a year. At this point, you are already receiving more assistance from Yale than either Harvard or Stanford. And let's assume that you're expecting a 5-10% salary increase -- which would be typical if you were up for a grade or step increase, which is likely at that stage. Under Stanford and Harvard's flat amortization schedule, you'd be out of their programs, because you'd be expected to contribute more than you are expected to owe at the new salary. By contrast, Yale's program allows you to not only take the salary increase (in the graphed example, up to a salary of $105K) and remain eligible for the program, but receive even more assistance than you were previously, as well.
This is important because the five-year mark is usually a critical turning point in many graduates' careers. Often, at that point, graduates find that they have the experience to command a higher salary (even in a public interest or government job), the need to do so (because of additional family and financial responsibilities), or both. Even at the lowest salary levels, you'll see that Yale benefits graduates at the five year point by offering dramatically more loan assistance than both Harvard and Stanford.
Stanford and Harvard might point out that if you are in a very low paying job, and if you know you are planning to be in that job for only 2 to 3 years, their program will help you pay down more debt. As a straight mathematical matter, this could be true -- as I counseled admits at our admit program, if you know you will be in this very limited situation, perhaps these other programs might be better for you. But be careful. First, there should be another big "if" added to the above qualifications, which is IF your job qualifies for loan repayment at all. Unlike Yale, which looks at loan forgiveness elgibility solely on the basis of income (whether you are a prosecutor, a CEO of a nonprofit, or a concert pianist...all of which we have supported on our program), Harvard and Stanford require you to meet specific job parameters in order to be on the graph, so to speak, in the first place. It is, of course, easy to offer more money if you make that money accessible to only a small sliver of students.
Second, as noted above, Yale's average debt is $107,000. By contrast, Harvard's average debt, as noted on their website, is $125,000. (I could not find Stanford's average debt published anywhere.) Although the tuition among the three schools is similar, the cost of attending can vary, since a significant portion of the student budget -- and what you will be borrowing -- will be based upon your cost of living. Whatever you have to say about New Haven, it's cheaper than both Cambridge and Palo Alto. So even if you expect to get an additional $2-3K extra for a few years on the back end, look at your bottom line debt at all the schools and see if it's just making up for the fact that you're paying $15-20K more to go there in the first place. If so, then the "extra" money is just a wash. (Keep in mind that starting in the 2012-2013 academic year, subsidized federal loans are no longer available, so everything you borrow on the front end will accrue interest throughout your three years in school increasing your total debt even more.)
If amortization schedules, graphs, and math have left your eyes glazed over, I'll give you a shortcut to compare which program is the most comprehensive, accessible, and generous. Simply ask each school to answer the following questions:
1. How many graduates do you currently support with loan assistance? Yale: 398
2. How much money do you spend each year on loan forgiveness? Yale: $3.6 million
3. What is your average grant amount per year? Yale: $9,809
(Hint: Stanford is roughly the same size as Yale and Harvard is about 2.5 times larger.)
Good luck!
It's that time of the year again when we get inundated with emails from applicants letting us know that they have scholarship deadlines and that they "must" receive a decision from Yale or that they will be required to withdraw their application in order to accept the scholarship. I addressed this last year in the wake of a new rule promulgated by the Law School Admission Council, which specifically states that law schools may not require applicants to withdraw from schools from which they have not yet received a decision as a condition of accepting a scholarship or any other type of offer. I thought that this would clean things up in the world of sketchy admissions practices. Sadly, it looks like to the contrary, even more schools have joined the fray this year.
So let's cut to the chase. It is highly likely that the law school offering you a scholarship is a member of the Law School Admissions Council, and has agreed to follow its Statement of Good Admissions and Financial Aid Practices, and benefits from other law schools following those same practices. Therefore, if you are offered a scholarship and have not yet heard from Yale, you do not need to withdraw your application from Yale. Period. So, if you would take the money being offered to you if Yale was not an option, please follow these steps:
1. Accept your scholarship offer by the deadline, and if required, withdraw from any school that has already given you an offer of admission.
2. If you subsequently get into Yale, review our financial aid package and decide immediately whether you will accept. If you choose to accept, contact the law school that offered you the scholarship and explain that you just received an offer from a law school from which you had not heard when you accepted the scholarship, that you are choosing to deposit there, and that you want to withdraw.
3. If you are criticized, belittled, harassed, threatened, or made to feel bad in any way, ask the admissions/financial aid person with whom you are dealing at that school to give me a call. I'll take it from there.
The popular guilt-trip law schools use to rationalize their behavior is that allowing students time to hear from all law schools disadvantages other students who won't get a chance to receive the same scholarship if the first awardee turns it down after the deadline. Yeah -- save the drama for your mama. I've spoken with faculty who have served on the selection committees for some of these scholarships and who have assured me that these schools have A-lists, B-lists, C-lists, and D-lists of alternative candidates for the scholarships. And even if they didn't, are these schools really suggesting that out of the 600-1,500 students they accept each year, there isn't a single qualified applicant to whom they can offer the scholarship after April 2? Really?
Let's take a poll: Readers, how many of you would refuse to consider a scholarship of $150K if it were offered to you on, say, May 1?
*crickets chirping*
That's what I thought.
Before we get bogged down in "the rule" and whether law schools are technically complying with it, let's take a Yale Law School approach to LSAC's Statement of Good Admissions Practices and ask what the purpose of having such a statement is in the first place. Having read through the Statement pretty carefully, I believe that the purpose of the Statement is to encourage law schools to adopt best practices to ensure that their interests are aligned, to the maximum extent possible, with the interests of the applicants. This is especially important when talking about money, especially in today's legal market: with students going to law schools, taking on undischargeable debt (and people, even with a "full ride" you'll be taking on debt unless you have significant assets going in), and often graduating without a job or any way to pay it back, it is in applicants' collective interest to be able to consider the full range of law school choices open to them, compare financial aid packages, employment statistics, and loan repayment plans, and make an informed decision of the place that will be best suited to their interests and talents in both the short and long run. Allowing students to keep active applications from schools that have not yet rendered a decision furthers this goal by giving students a chance to actually evaluate -- and act upon -- all of their options. In short, the spirit of the Statement is to allow students to have -- as the LSAC puts it -- "an uncoerced choice among various law schools."
By contrast, policies that require students -- either explicitly or implicitly -- to prematurely withdraw from schools that have not yet given them a decision reduces the range of options available to applicants, including those that might be better for them individually. Such policies actually go one nefarious step further: they can hurt the students' chances at the schools they most want to attend. The way it works is this: School X tells students that they have to withdraw all of their applications in order to accept a scholarship. In a panic, and thinking that they can get a decision from another school earlier, students contact School Y to say they have just won a major scholarship that they are planning to accept unless they get favorable news. Basically, School X has just forced part of its applicant pool to "out" itself to other, probably more competitive, schools as students who have significant scholarship offers and will therefore be more difficult to recruit. What do you think that does to their chances of admission at School Y? It's not really a factor at Yale, since we have a decentralized (and very transparent) review process: we take the best applicants we can and let the chips fall where they may (and more than 80% of the time they fall in our favor). We also offer only need-based financial aid, so we don't negotiate with money. However, for a school that might be more concerned about its yield, or that offers merit aid and realizes that it will need to match or exceed the scholarship to land that student, outright rejecting the student might be a better option in light of the information the student volunteered up. Basically, the School Xs of the world are banking on the fact that you'll either do what they say and withdraw your outstanding applications, or that you'll shoot yourself in the foot trying to get a quick answer from their competitors.
I have no doubt that my counterparts at other schools will characterize my above advice as "unethical," suggesting that I am encouraging future law students to break promises. Whatever. I personally question the integrity of admission practices that exploit law applicants' fear, anxiety, and vulnerability and incentivize them to self-sabotage in the admissions process. It seems to me that law schools, as gateways to the profession, ought to be modeling professional responsibilty, honesty, and acting in the interests of their client -- in this case, YOU. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing unethical about my advice because there's nothing unethical about acting in accordance with the standards and policies a law school has voluntarily and publicly agreed to adhere to, policies that are in place to protect your interests. Don't let a law school bully you into believing otherwise.
You could, if you are very brave, stand up to the law school yourself. You could let the law school offering you the scholarship know that you are accepting the scholarship, but as per the LSAC's Statement, you will not withdraw your outstanding applications. Then smile sweetly and see what they do. Either they won't do anything, or they'll pull your scholarship. At that point, you should give David Segal from the New York Times a call, or maybe David Lat from Above the Law. Tell them what happened, and forward a copy of LSAC's Statement to them along with your email exchanges with the school (or your secretly recorded phone conversations -- according to The Berkman Center, one-party recordings are legal in New York, but not Illinois, FYI). And ask them to call me for a quote. I would looooooooove to see these scholarship shenanigans exposed on the front page of the Times, or in a legal blog. The Truth is never afraid of the light of day, my friends. Bring it.
Since I was a student here, New Haven has really blossomed when it comes to dining. There were good restaurants here a decade ago, but not of the variety and quantity that exist today. When I first moved back, I didn't really believe it when I heard that the dining scene in New Haven is quite good. But now that I have had a chance to explore some new restaurants, I find that what I initially heard and what I now tell prospective students and admits is true -- there are some great restaurants in New Haven.
Recently, when I was missing Miami, I decided to try Zafra, one of the Cuban restaurants in town. New Haven Restaurant Week, with its incredible deal on lunch and dinner, lured me there ($16.38 for a prix fixe three-course lunch and $29.00 for a three-course dinner). After seeing their Restaurant Week menu online, I decided to check it out.
And it did not disappoint. I started out by having a chicken and chorizo soup. Because I am not much of a soup eater, I was least excited about this course at the outset. It proved to be quite delicious, however, and possibly the best of the three courses. I then moved on to picadillo and arroz con frijoles. I love black beans and rice with picadillo, which is a stewed ground beef dish, and I certainly crave it now that I can't get it as readily as in Miami. Zafra's Picadillo and black beans were quite tasty and worth a second visit. To top it all off, I had the tres leches dessert, a traditional Cuban moist cake made with three kinds of milk -- evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream (tres leches is not just traditional to Cuba but is also a popular dish in other Latin American countries). Even though I had barely any room left, I managed to stuff my face with the huge piece that came with the meal. It was not as good as the tres leches that I have had in some Miami restaurants, but it was still good enough to eat until the last bite. How can anything soaked with all that cream not be fully consumed?
Zafra is walking distance from the law school, which is why I chose it for lunch. It opened in the spring of 2011 and is Connecticut's first rum bar. The mojito drinks sound delicious!! Too bad I couldn't try them for fear of having a baby with birth defects.
Zafra is not the only Cuban restaurant in New Haven. Another choice, also within walking distance of the law school, is Soul de Cuba. I have not yet tried it, but certainly will next time I crave some arroz con frijoles and tres leches.
I've been procrastinating about writing on the blog, because the more time that passes since my last post, the more embarrassed I am to come back. "Fell off the wagon" doesn't really do justice to the THREE posts we've been able to manage this entire season -- as Craig suggested last week, "We fell off, got run over, and have been lying in a ditch since November" is a better metaphor. But, be that as it may, we're back, and will try to keep it up until the end of this cycle.
Now, though I come up with a lot of blog ideas during the admissions season, I usually refrain from writing them because they more often than not involve things one should or should not do in one's application. It seems kind of unfair to spring that on an applicant in, say, January, when their application might be out of their hands already. So I normally tuck the idea away for the following summer or fall (and then forget about it until I see the mistake again the next cycle).
I'm going to make an exception this one time because I've noticed that MANY applicants this year are applying without submitting two academic letters of recommendation. This may not necessarily be a trend; this year I changed my practice to read the letters of recommendation first, before the rest of the application...as a way of putting off the visual disaster that is the FlexApp for as long as possible (yes, I'm looking at you, LSAC). So maybe I'm just noticing it more this year. But trend or not, a failure to submit two academic references is serious Bad Idea Jeans.
I often tell applicants that applying to Yale Law School is a lot like playing blackjack. The odds are on the house, there's more than a little luck involved, but there are a few basic rules you can follow to increase your chances significantly. One of those rules is to submit two references from faculty members who have taught you in a class. Let me put that another way: Your chances of admission to Yale Law School go down drastically if you submit only one or no academic letters of recommendation. Or let me break it down even further: Your letters of recommendation will make or break your application.
[Commence mass applicant freak-out.]
I realize this goes against what you have been hard-wired to believe, namely, that your admission depends almost exclusively on your LSAT and GPA. I remember reading on some admissions consulting blog that your letters of recommendations don't really matter, so you shouldn't spend too much time figuring out who will write them (which could explain why I'm skeptical of admissions consultants). To be fair, this could be true for some law schools . I imagine that a school that admits a very large number of people might focus more on numbers, and use the recommendations just to ensure that the student isn't a serial killer or something. Well, at Yale, we like to ensure that you are not a serial killer and that you are a joy to teach.
The two issues in play here are 1) numbers and 2) process. In terms of numbers, I send the top 20% of the applicant pool on to the faculty to be reviewed. That's around 700 applications, all of which are comparable in terms of grades, scores, writing ability, leadership, saving orphans, etc. These 700 files have to be whittled down by another 75%. Process-wise, the people doing the whittling down are professors. They think everyone looks great. So how do they make distinctions among all these amazing files? They look at what their colleagues have to say about you. Do you ever wonder why someone with a 3.95/178 gets rejected but someone with a 3.81/172 gets in? It's because of comments like these (these are actual or close approximations to verbiage from LORs of students who have been accepted in the past):
"[Applicant] is hands down the single best undergraduate I have ever taught in my 37 years of teaching. Period."
"[Student A] and [Student B], both of whom I taught, are currently at Yale Law School. [Applicant] is better than both of them put together."
"At that point in the discussion I almost sat down and let [Applicant] teach the class -- s/he could have done a better job."
"Any admissions officer who doesn't admit [Applicant] is -- and I beg your pardon -- an idiot."
Over the top? Possibly. But these are the kind of subjective evaluations you are up against. Even in the screening stage, if I know that you don't stand a chance of being admitted by the faculty -- because, for example, in spite of your pretty good numbers you have offered little or no corroboration of your academic ability from professors who have taught you -- I may not send you on at all. It really depends on how good the rest of your application is (though to be honest, it's even more of a red flag if you have a straight-A average and couldn't manage to come up with two faculty references...it makes me wonder whether you are hiding something, like a serious personality defect or crippling social disorder).
If you're reading this post and realized that you didn't submit two academic references, mild to moderate panic would be appropriate. You should then try to get a second letter. If your application is already complete, it is possible -- and likely -- that your application has already been reviewed as is, but the second letter can be helpful in the event that I go back to your file for any reason or if you are placed on the wait list.
NOTE: If you DID submit two academic letters, you do NOT need to submit additional ones at this point. I'm sure some economist could graph this out for me, but there is an optimal number of LORs for Yale and it's somewhere around 2.4. This is because of the "meh" factor. If you submit two references that are stellar, and then one that is just "meh," you immediately bring down the impact of the two great ones. There are some students who manage to find three professors who knock it out of the park for them, but many fall into the "meh" trap. Unless you are absolutely certain that your third recommendation is going to be beyond amazing, just sit tight. And please don't send more than three...that's just overkill.
One final observation. I've noticed that I get mixed reviews whenever I try to give honest application tips and insider advice. For example, in a recent discussion on TLS about my post a few years ago stating emphatically that there is no correlation between when you are admitted and whether you are an auto-admit or admitted by faculty, a poster asked, "Does she really expect us to believe that?"
It's funny -- it had never occurred to me that I could use this blog as a vehicle for mass deception about Yale's admissions process. Though I can see how the image of me sitting at my desk, laughing maniacally about throwing applicants "off the trail" while stroking a very mean and fluffy cat, might fit in with your experience of the law school admissions process generally. I kind of like the image myself. Sadly, the reality is that I'm usually slogging through admissions files while eating a stale hummus wrap from the dining hall, taking occasional breaks to check email and compulsively buy Groupons. Besides, even if I wanted to, it wouldn't be a good idea for me to lie about the admissions process on a blog read by several members of Yale's own faculty. Especially after I just wrote a post entitled, "Please Don't Lie." (For what it's worth, about 20% of faculty are done reading before the winter break, so you could be an auto admit OR a faculty admit even if you are admitted in December.)
But, whatever, I'm just the messenger, people. *shrugs*
Yes, I've been away from the blog for a while, and my plans for a fall P.S. Boot Camp II got waylaid in light of recruitment travel, flexapp issues, and life in general. Usually, when I come back on the blog after the summer I try to write some cleverly-titled post that offers some humor to kick off the admissions season. And as you know, I do troll through discussion boards to see what you guys are wondering about so I can be responsive. I was therefore disappointed to find, in my first troll through the online discussions, that some people are discussing whether or not to lie on their Yale Law School applications. So, although I have written about this before, let me be blunt:
People who lie make me angry. And you won't like me when I'm angry.
Specifically, some students are discussing whether or not to lie on the question on our application that asks whether or not you have taken a test preparation course. I explained our rationale for this question (and the one asking about any assistance you received in preparing your application), but it appears that some students believe that by saying they didn't take a course, when in fact they did, they will somehow gain an advantage in our admissions process.
Leaving aside whether or not this is true, let's just cut to the chase. Lying on an application -- ANY application (job, law school, government forms, etc.) -- is REALLY STUPID. Once you sign your name to anything which you certify to be true, when you know that it isn't, you have pretty much committed yourself to living under a sword of Damocles for the rest of your life. That's because, even if the underlying "lie" is very minor, and may not have been material to anything to begin with, the act of deliberately falsifying a document with the intention to mislead the recipient is a huge blemish on your character, and if your lie is ever discovered, you are basically screwed. Why? Well, obviously, providing false information is lying. And giving false information in order to gain an unfair advantage is cheating. And if you obtain a seat at Yale by lying and cheating...that's stealing. Your 179 LSAT is not going to be so impressive if we discover that you are a liar, a cheat, and a thief. And stupid.
You may be wondering how we would ever know. I'll be honest, unless my spidey senses go up when reading an application, I generally don't go around digging for dirt on people. But my friends, you would be shocked at the amount of random information that comes flowing into our office about various applicants, from sources other than themselves. There's more information than you realize about you out there...particularly if you've, you know, been out in public and interacted with people, for example in a law school test preparation class. Anyway, if and when it's appropriate, we do cross-check information we discover with the information provided on the student's application. In 98% of the cases, the information checks out. In the 2% that don't...well, those people get pulled from our pipeline and receive a ding letter. Pretty simple.
That's, of course, if we're being nice. Yale, like every other law school, has the option to report any instances of applicant miconduct -- which includes providing inaccurate or miselading information on your application -- to LSAC's Misconduct Committee. The Misconduct Committee's investigation is limited to only an objective finding of whether the alleged misconduct occurred; in other words, your subjective intent -- whether your error/omission was intentional -- is not a part of the inquiry. If there is a finding of misconduct, a copy of the investigative report and the Committee's findings are permanently attached to your LSDAS report and sent to every other law school to which you have applied or will apply to. For the rest of your life.
The information you provide in your application also follows you into law school. So, for example, a discovery in your third year that you lied on your application can be grounds for disciplinary action in your law school, not certifying you for the bar, and even revoking your admission at that time. And finally, even if you skate through law school and the bar undetected, when you are sitting for your polygraph to get your Top Secret clearance to become the Special Assistant to the Director of Homeland Security or whatever, and your polygrapher asks, "Have you ever lied on an application?" (this is the one of the more specific follow-ups to the initial "Have you ever lied?" question for the polygraph), you'll ping.
Which only brings home how dumb it is to lie on your application, especially about something like taking a test preparation course. I mean, lying is bad no matter how you do it, but someone who, say, forges an entire LSDAS report is dumb in a "Holy crap I can't believe he tried to get away with that!" kind of way. A person who lies about taking a test prep course is dumb in a terrorist who tried to get back his Ryder truck deposit after blowing it up kind of way. There's stupid, and then there's stupid.
Anyway, it's your choice. I'll be back with some condensed Personal Statement tips, as well as a new series that will be exploring our employment numbers in details. And I'll be starting to read apps this week!
UPDATE: As a follow-up to this post and an example of how anything you put down on paper could be verfied years (and decades) later, here is a current story from the Yale Daily News.
I love the fall! That was one thing I missed when I moved back to Miami. The leaves are always green there, which is nice, but doesn't get you into the spirit of the holidays the way a New England fall can. So now that fall is in full swing, for those of you that want to appreciate the colors and see what Connecticut has to offer, I want to tell you about a part of CT I knew nothing about when I was a student and only discovered after I moved back- the Connecticut River Valley.
It is an easy drive, about 30 miles, from New Haven with several charming towns to explore for a day. You can start off in Essex by exploring the shops at Essex Village. The Connecticut River Museum, which highlights the history and biology of New England's largest river, is also in Essex. Or you can take the Essex Steam Train and River Boat Ride, which takes you for a ride on a 1920's steam train and then onto a boat to cruise up the river. I have yet to do this or one of the other CT River cruises, but I have heard it is a great way to spot eagles, especially in the winter months.
What I've done when I have explored the area is simply drive and stop at the various cities. When leaving Essex for instance, rather than taking Route 9, it is worth driving along some of the smaller roads that boarder the river just to see the river and the fall colors.
The next stop up the river from Essex is Chester, which again has some cute shops to explore. You can also get a bite to eat or a drink at River Tavern. I had a wonderful meal there last winter and recommend it.
From Chester, I would also recommend crossing the river. One option is to take the Chester-Hadlyme Ferry, which runs during the daytime between April 1 and November 30. The toll is $3 per vehicle. The other option is to cross the bridge to East Haddam, which will take you right by the Goodspeed Opera House. The Goodspeed, like the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, sometimes puts on musicals before they appear on Broadway. Next to the Opera House is the Gelston House, another great place to stop for a bite to eat or a drink.
Once you pass East Haddam, you can explore the other side of the river as you head back to 95. One stop along this route is Gillette Castle. I must confess that I have not yet visited, but I hear it is an interesting place. The castle looks like a medieval fortress from the outside and has all sorts of oddities inside custom built by the original owner, such as unusual doorknobs and locks and a system of mirrors for surveillance.
So for those of you that want a study break or an excuse to enjoy the fall, I recommend a drive up 95 to the Connecticut River.
Greetings from New Haven! School has started, the new class has settled in, and we're busy with recruiting trips and webinars. Although it doesn't seem possible to us in the Admissions Office (weren't we just reviewing applications?), the new admissions season has started.
Before we began the search for the Class of 2015 we had the opportunity to welcome the Class of 2014 to the Law School. The school year opened with a weeklong orientation program designed to introduce new students to the study of law, the legal profession, and life at Yale Law School. Dean Robert Post's convocation address to the Law School's 200th(!) class of students kicked off a week filled with lectures, picnics, the Cupcake Truck, and the annual student organization fair.
The 205 students of the first-year class hail from 8 countries, 38 states, and 74 undergraduate institutions. They have lived and worked in 71 countries and read and speak 39 languages. 20% of the Class of 2014 joined us immediately after finishing their undergraduate studies, 45% have been out of college for one or two years, and the remaining 35% have three or more years of post-college experience. They hold 41 advanced degrees in such diverse subjects as Economics, Theology, and Biochemistry. Before joining us at YLS, the Class of 2014 pursued a variety of jobs, activities, and careers, including:
- economists at the Council of Economic Advisors and the Federal Reserve Bank of NY;
- policy advisors to the Canadian Liberal Party, British Conservative Party, and the Liberian Liberty Party;
- co-author of a book with James Carville;
- logistics planner to Force Command at NATO;
- researcher for George W. Bush's presidential memoir;
- concert violinist and student of Itzhak Perlman;
- international Sanshou champion; and
- nationally-ranked Scrabble player.
Visit our class profile page for more facts about the Class of 2014.
If you're interested in joining our 201st class, check out our recruiting schedule to see if we will be visiting your area or hosting a webinar with your school. Should your travels bring you to New Haven, you are welcome to drop by the Law School for a tour or to sit in on a class.
We know many of you are anxious to begin working on your Yale Law School application. It took us longer than we expected to adapt our application to LSAC's new flex app format. Our application will be available later this month and we'll tweet, blog, and post when it's ready. In the meantime, check out "Ask Asha" for helpful advice and information on personal statements, the 250-word essay, and other aspects of the Yale Law School application process.
Now that (203) has awoken from its summer slumber, we're working on a list of ideas for blog posts for the coming year. If you have questions about past posts or ideas for future posts, please contact us at 203blog@yale.edu. We're excited to begin the admissions season and we welcome you to (203)!
As I have come to learn this past month, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas is a New Haven summer staple. Although the Festival was new to me, it began 15 years ago and is now established as a significant arts festival.
The Festival offers a broad array of events from concerts, plays, dance shows and musicals to art talks, walking tours and food tastings. But the best part is that 80% of the events are free. In fact, the opening night kicked off with the Connecticut premiere of cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble—a free event!! The concert took place on the New Haven Green. Sadly, I couldn’t make it to hear Yo-Yo Ma play.
But, I did get to participate in some exciting events. I took the free walking tour “Gardens & Gargoyles: Explore Yale Courtyards” organized by the Yale Visitor Center. We visited several of the courtyards that are within Yale’s residential colleges. For those who don’t know, Yale’s residential college system is a distinctive feature of the College. Before freshman year, all incoming undergraduates are assigned to one of Yale's twelve residential colleges and students remain affiliated with their residential college for all 4 years.
The tour started in the courtyard of Calhoun College, where the guide explained the residential college system and I had a flashback to the sorting hat scene of Harry Potter. The tour then moved through Old Campus to Branford College, continued to the Sterling Memorial Library and its courtyard, and finished at Yale Law School where we discussed some of the stone sculptures depicting lawyers, judges, and scholars. In addition to learning about residential college traditions, we were also shown the tricks employed by architect James Gamble Rogers to make the buildings he constructed appear aged. For instance, he splashed acid on stone walls and purposely cracked and then repaired window panes to simulate age.
As part of the Festival, I also attended another free event “Identity, Politics, and Rights in the Art and Practice of Justice” at the Yale Center for British Art—a talk by our own Professor Judith Resnik. In her presentation, Professor Resnik provided a historical overview of the iconography of justice, discussing how Lady Justice with her scales and sword has become associated with law and courts around the world and how the embodiment of justice has changed as equal rights have expanded. It was fascinating to see how depictions of Lady Justice developed throughout history and how she is depicted in court buildings around the world. Following the presentation, Professors Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis discussed their book Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms.
I topped off my festival experience with a food tour of State Street. The tour started with an appetizer and a glass of wine in the lovely outdoor patio of L’Orcio seen in the picture below. Having traveled in Italy, I was impressed by the authenticity of their menu. We then moved on to a main course at a Mexican restaurant called Mezcal. Here I was curious, as I have yet to find an authentic Mexican restaurant in the area. After tasting the chicken enchilada with mole sauce that was served to us at Mezcal, however, any doubts I had vanished. Although I am not a huge fan of mole, I loved their mole sauce and enjoyed a second helping. The tour ended with a cooking demonstration at Chestnut Fine Foods where we learned how to make gazpacho and French bread. Like on a cooking show, when the demonstration ended, the oven beeped and out came perfectly golden French bread rolls for us to try. Fresh from the oven—delicious!
As usual, we went AWOL in mid-April following our Admitted Students Program. That's always a busy time for us, as the tables are turned and it's time for us to woo admitted applicants. I'm pleased to say that our season was successful and that we have a class in place to enter this fall. For those of you wondering about wait list activity, we've had a little movement but not much. Craig will be tweeting if there is anything significant to note for those of you still waiting to hear.
In the meantime, I got a query on the 203 Blog email about transfer applications. So, I'm kicking it old school and doing a traditional Ask Asha post for those of you considering applying for transfer this summer:
Dear Asha,
I am writing today to ask for your advice. I am considering applying as a transfer student during the upcoming admissions cycle. In planning your next series of PS Boot Camps, is there any chance of an entry for those of us considering a transfer application? I greatly enjoyed your blog over the past year and credit it with some of my success at other schools.
All the best,
W.B.
Dear W.B.,
Thanks! I am more than happy to offer some thoughts on writing your P.S. as a transfer student. First, though, let me just reference my post about applying for transfer generally: the process is different (and a bit more straightforward) than our regular, first-year admissions process, so it's probably worth reading over.
The calculus for writing a P.S. for transfer is a bit different than writing one when you apply to law school generally. As I've noted before, when I review a first-year law school application, I expect students to have some idea of why they are applying to law school, but I'm aware that they might not know exactly what they want to study or do career-wise. After you've been in law school for a year, though, you should have a better idea of the law-related things that interest you, so your transfer P.S. should be a little more specific and substantive in terms of what you've learned so far and what you hope to gain by transferring to another school.
A common mistake transfer applicants make in applying to Yale is to simply say that they want to transfer because of Yale's "ranking," or because it is just a better school than the one they currently attend. While I appreciate the honesty, this doesn't make for a particularly compelling personal statement. (It's kind of like telling someone you want to date them only because they are really, really attractive. I mean, I suppose that's flattering in a lame, shallow sort of way, but you're probably going to strike out...especially if the person is, in fact, really, really attractive). You need to show a little more depth in your personal statement, by articulating exactly what you find compelling about Yale compared to where you are. I'd caution you against just listing a bunch of courses or clinics you want to take -- rather, you should explain what areas, questions, and topics have piqued your interest in law school (either in class, readings, or outside activities) and how they fit in with the resources Yale has to offer. This helps the Admissions Committee get a sense of how you think and whether you'd be a good fit for Yale and vice-versa.
(NOTE: Personal reasons, such as wanting to be on the East Coast, or near family or a significant other, are not going to carry much weight in the admissions decision on your application. You may want to note such reasons in a short addendum to your application, but I would encourage you to focus your Personal Statement in the ways outlined above.)
The other part of your application that is going to carry a significant amount of weight is your law school recommendations (we require two). We use these references to place your grades in context and also to determine what kind of student you are. A common mistake on this front is to make one of your two required recommendations from a legal writing instructor -- most students do this because they've usually had much more one-on-one interaction with their legal writing instructor than with their other professors, and so the instructor usually knows them well. There's nothing wrong with this per se, but the Admissions Committee generally likes to have at least two letters from one of your first year core subject area professors, who can speak to your ability to keep up with the subject material, contribute to class discussion, and think through difficult concepts (a third letter from your legal writing instructor is fine). Letters from professors who went to YLS -- who as you probably know are ubiquitous in the legal academy -- are often especially helpful, since they usually discuss why the applicant would fit into the academic and cultural experience here. But don't go stalking a Yale alum just for this purpose -- just pick professors from classes in which you have performed very well and you'll be on the right track.
That's pretty much it. In general, there's much less mystique in our transfer admissions process than in our first-year process. We're really just looking for the top students from a variety of law schools across the country who will contribute to and make use of the opportunities we have to offer. If you think you fit the bill, give it a shot!
--Asha
Originally posted April 6, 2011.
In my last post, I referenced some law schools' practice of giving "exploding" scholarship offers, requiring students to accept a major, full-tuition scholarship offer within a matter of days. Well, as usual, we've been inundated in the past few days with panicked applicants with these offers, who have not yet heard from us and are for some reason under the impression that by accepting such a scholarship, they will need to withdraw their applications from Yale.
Now I am sure it has not been any law school's intention to mislead you, but this is where you can start honing your lawyerly skills by carefully reading what your offer says and doesn't say. You see, believe it or not, as law applicants you have some rights, of sorts. Specifically, the Law School Admission Council publishes a Statement of Good Admission and Financial Aid Practices, by which all member schools agree to abide. If you read the Statement carefully, you will see that item number 6 under "Application Procedures" states the following:
After April 1, except under binding early decision plans, every accepted applicant should be free to accept a new offer from a law school even though a scholarship has been accepted, a deposit has been paid, or a committment [sic] has been made to another school. To provide applicants with an uncoerced choice among various law schools, no excessive nonrefundable deposit should be required solely to maintain a place in the class. (Emphasis added.)
What that means, 203 readers, is that you may accept a scholarship offer -- even one that requires you to place a deposit, sign a contract, or make some other symbolic gesture of commitment -- and still keep active any applications at schools from which you have not yet received a decision. Further, if you subsequently receive an offer from one of these other law schools, you may accept that offer, any prior commitments notwithstanding.
I will add that my understanding of this portion of the Statement is that it extends to offers made off the wait list. That is, if you are placed on a wait list at a law school, you may remain on that school's wait list even if you have deposited or accepted a scholarship somewhere else -- because a wait list decision is neither an offer nor a rejection, it's effectively a "no decision." If at any point you are offered a spot off the waitlist, that would be a "new offer" that you are free to accept -- again, notwithstanding any scholarships you might have accepted at another law school.
Who knew?
I hope that this will help those of you facing some difficult choices as a result of not having heard from us yet. We are expecting to have all (initial) offers of admission finalized this week, so a few more people will be hearing from us shortly!
UPDATE: For more on reading the fine print in scholarship offers, check out this New York Times article by David Segal: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/business/law-school-grants.html?pagewanted=1
Saturday's performance of Romeo and Juliet by the Yale Repertory Theatre was my introduction to Yale's well-known theatre. I knew about Yale Rep's reputation while I was a student here, but I never managed to attend a production. That was a mistake, only realized in retrospect when the offerings of a world-class university are no longer at your disposal.
For those of you that have never heard of Yale Rep, here are some important highlights. The Rep is a professional theatre that produces both new plays as well as interpretations of the classics. It was founded in 1966 by Robert Brustein, then dean of the Yale School of Drama. When it comes to new work, Yale Rep has produced over 100 premiers. Two have won Pulitzer Prizes, four have been nominated finalists, eight have received Tony Awards after transferring to Broadway and more than 40 have received Tony Award nominations. Eleven Yale Rep productions have gone on to Broadway and countless others have been produced at theatres across the country. Yale Rep also received the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre in 1991. And, of course, not to mention all of the well-known actors who have performed at Yale Rep, such as Meryl Streep.
So there you have it -- how can I have missed this when I was a student? Although I may have been a fool my first time around, I am happy that many of our law school students are taking advantage of Yale Rep. One of our students, in fact, won a part in Romeo and Juliet and made her Yale Rep debut as part of the cast -- for those who missed it, here's a link to her blog post about the experience.
This production of Romeo and Juliet was a modern take on Shakespeare's classic. The parts of Romeo and Juliet were played by a former and current Yale MFA student, and the set was also designed by a third-year student. Although the fight sequences felt a little staged, and I was not a huge fan of the gorilla costume worn by Romeo, the performances were engaging and a treat.
After Romeo and Juliet finishes its run on April 2, the final production of the 2010-11 season will be the U.S. Premiere of Autumn Sonata by Ingmar Bergman. The 2011-12 season promises to be every bit as exciting as this one with three world premiers -- check it out.
I wrote a few years ago in my post, The
$42,000 All-You-Can-Eat Buffet, about the abundance of free food at the Law School. Three years later everything I
mentioned in the post, except the price, still holds true. To help illustrate the importance of free
food at YLS, here's a clip
from last year's Yale Law Revue, our annual sketch comedy show. Sustainability (which I also wrote
about a few years ago) and free food came together recently in a fun way
when the YLS Green Team organized a vegetarian cook-off in support of Meatless
Mondays in the Dining Hall.
Members of the Law School community were encouraged to
compete for the title of YLS's Top Vegetarian Chef by entering their favorite
vegetarian entrée recipes in the cook-off.
A panel of students, faculty, and staff reviewed the submissions. The top eight recipes then went on to the
final round of judging. In the final round, the
contestants had to prepare their dishes for evaluation by our resident panel of
foodies. The entire school was also
invited to sample the dishes and vote on their favorites. Below are some photos of the event. Please excuse the poor quality; I'm still
working on taking decent shots with my iPhone.
In the end, only one person's cuisine could reign
supreme. First-year student Jonathan
Siegel wowed the judges with his entry: roasted butternut squash with harissa
vinaigrette. For his culinary
skills and creativity, Jonathan won a $50 gift certificate and will have his
dish added to regular rotation in the Dining Hall. Congratulations to Jonathan, YLS's first Top
Vegetarian Chef!
I am a fan of the University of Michigan's A2Z blog, written by Dean Sarah Zearfoss, whom I've quoted before in my posts (and who co-organized our blog panel last May). My admiration has only increased with her recent posts deconstructing on Michigan's employment statistics, which has so far had two installments and alludes to a third. Mainly, I'm impressed with Dean's Z's formidable math skills and her good humor in response to people correcting her on decimal point placement. Perhaps at some point I'll try to post similar data, but in the meantime, I'll just link to the Yale Daily News (a suitable authority in these parts), which basically says that Yale grads are doing fine on the job market.
I do, however, want to explore our statistics in a specific career field -- academia. This, of course, is a risky post to write, since one of the reasons some admitted students think that Yale will not be a good fit for them is because they have no interest in teaching. Despite Yale's dominance in legal academia (more on this below), law teaching is a relatively small percentage of the various career routes taken by YLS alumni. In fact, the dirty little secret about Yale Law School is that the vast majority of our graduates actually practice law. Shocking, I know. And the people who don't practice law or go into academia end up doing cool things like winning a million dollars on Survivor, being named one of People magazine's Sexiest Men Alive, and becoming the Deputy Chief of Consumer and Government Affairs at the FCC. OK, that was actually the career trajectory of a single grad, but you get the idea.
So law teaching. Every year I counsel a handful of admits who are absolutely certain that they want to become law professors, but aren't sure whether to come to Yale. Usually, these students have been awarded a prestigious, full-tuition scholarship -- we'll call it the JoeSchmoe Scholarship -- at another law school. JoeSchmoe Scholars, I am told, get special perks to help them in preparing for a teaching career: access to seminars, workshops, and conferences; the opportunity to work on legal writing projects; and one-on-one guidance from members of the faculty. Oh, and they have three days to make a decision or the scholarship "explodes."
It's hard to be rational with people who are making major life choices under duress, but I try. I usually first point out that the so-called "perks" offered to the JoeSchmoes are resources offered to every student at Yale as a matter of course. No titles of nobility here: all students get to know faculty very well, starting in their first term; all students write (at least) two piece of substantial legal scholarship with one-on-one faculty guidance; and all students have access to workshops and conferences at the School. In particular, all students are free to attend the Law Teaching Series, a year-long series of faculty-led sessions which guide students through each step of the process into legal academia, from preparing a research agenda to what a "job talk" is -- these alternate with workshops where students present their own papers to faculty and peers. The advantage, by the way, of having these opportunities open to all students is that aspiring academics get to engage in a dialogue with a large swath of their colleagues, rather than the same few people over and over again...yielding more refined ideas and better scholarship.
This often elicits some hand wringing, but the JoeSchmoes are usually still hooked on the whole "full tuition" thing. Fair enough -- no need to take on unecessary loans. Plus, law professors make pretty substantial salaries, particularly at the top schools. So if you could land the same law teaching job with no debt, then you would, in the end, be better off. So the question is: Is there a meaningful difference in the teaching opportunities that would be available to you coming out of Yale, compared to another school?
Enter Professor Brian Leiter. Leiter, who is a professor at the Univerity of Chicago, compiles detailed statistics on the leading producers of law professors in the country. You can view his most recent rankings of the institutions producing the most law professors here, which includes only people who have graduated from law school since 1995 (thereby providing the most current snapshot of legal academic talent). If you look closely at the tables, you'll notice a few things:
1. In absolute numbers, Yale is in a league of its own, placing more graduates since 1995 -- by a huge margin -- in both the top 43 law schools and the top 18 law schools than any other law school in the nation.
2. Accounting for its size (the "per capita" number), Yale is in a different universe when it comes to law teaching placement. You can look at it like this: Yale graduates in the last decade and a half have been over four times as successful in landing law teaching positions at the top 18 law schools as graduates of Harvard, Stanford, and Chicago; roughly twenty times as successful in landing such jobs as graduates of Columbia, Berkeley, and Virginia; and about forty times as successful in getting these jobs as graduates of NYU, Northwestern, and Michigan.
3. Almost every school on the list has hired more graduates of Yale than its own. (For a separate but related topic on this point, see this post.)
I have to admit that I was a bit stunned myself when I saw Leiter's numbers. The staggering odds favoring YLS grads in academia brought to mind images of the Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona...I mean, how is that even fair? It's not. But it does explain why, in an attempt to capture more of the market, law schools try to attract the best legal scholarly talent (usually through scholarships) and emulate Yale's pedagogical approach to these select students. At this point, however, there's still a lot of catching up to do, and -- to answer the pertinent question -- there remains a very meaningful difference in the law teaching opportunities coming out of Yale compared with other schools.
After a week of more record snow (and shoveling), I decided
to reward myself with a fun night out—well, for a 30+ year-old, a night out
usually signifies happy hour and dinner so don’t expect anything wild. Although, stay tuned because Asha and I
have plans to go salsa dancing in the coming month.
Last Friday, I decided to check out 116 Crown, a bar that
wasn’t around when I was a student.
And I gotta say I was impressed.
The décor and ambiance are modern and trendy with a sophisticated, yet
relaxed vibe. It was definitely a
cool place to grab a drink and some appetizers.
I opted for a glass of wine, but that was a mistake—not
because the wine selection wasn’t good, but because the mixed drinks looked
amazing. We were sitting at the
bar watching the drinks being made and they looked really delicious. I am going back for some of those. Check out the cocktail menu online.
We also ordered a plate of cheeses and salami, which was
very good. They have large plates in
addition to starters, sandwiches, and pizzas. Most of what I saw in
neighboring tables looked good. I whiffed a
plate of truffle fries that came by and I am going back for some of that
too.
Make sure to check out some of their specials, which I found
online. They offer ½ price wine
bottles on Sundays. And they also
offer cocktail classes—I wouldn’t mind learning how to make some of those
delicious-looking cocktails (which I am sure also taste delicious based on
comments I overheard).
So if all else fails on a winter day, or you don't feel like taking part in any winter activities (and you are of age), head over to 116 Crown for a drink like I did.
January at the Law School is guaranteed to bring three things: quiet, applications, and snow. In fact, it's snowing as I write this post.
I enjoy winter, but I realize it's not everyone's favorite time of year. For those of you uneasy about spending three years in a place with four seasons, don't despair. It doesn't snow as much in New Haven as it does in other parts of the Northeast and temperatures are usually warmer along the Long Island Sound than they are further inland. During my time at the Law School I don't recall any reported cases of hypothermia and at last check all of our students from warmer climes were accounted for.
Contrary to the opinion of my friends from more temperate locales, life doesn't stop at 40 degrees (I'm looking at you Californians). Most of the fun things to do we discuss in our blog continue in the winter, even the farmer's market! If you're into winter activities, there's a lot to do in New Haven, Connecticut, and New England.
There are many skiing options in the area. Connecticut has four ski resorts and some of the best skiing in the country is located a few hours away in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont. Snowboarders are also welcome at many of the resorts.
On campus, there's the Yale Alpine Skiing Team, the Nordic Skiing Team, and the Snowboarding Club. These are club sports in which law students are welcome to participate on either a recreational or competitive basis. During a recent snowstorm the Nordic Ski Team members were seen skiing to class, so you may find this group to be of practical use.
If your interests tend more towards ice than snow, Yale Club Ice Hockey (not to be confused with our women's and #1-ranked men's varsity teams) has recently played in the Metropolitan Collegiate Hockey Conference. For those looking to wear less protective gear, the Collegiate Figure Skating Club welcomes members of all skill levels for its weekly practices.
The Eero Saarinen-designed Ingalls Rink, commonly known as the Whale, serves as the home for ice-related activities at Yale. There's arguably no better place the world for the modern architecture enthusiast to skate. Depending on weather conditions and how the person plowing the street in front of the Law School was feeling, you may also find good skating right on Wall Street.
If you prefer less formal wintertime outdoor activities, you're sure to find participants for your fort building or Dalek sculpting projects. For the risk takers, the only thing more daring than eating the dining hall food is partaking in Yale's tradition of sledding on the trays on which it is served. You might even find yourself caught in the crossfire of an impromptu snowball fight in the Law School courtyard, like the one caught on camera at the top of this page.
I hope this post has given you some ideas on how to spend some of your wintertime in New Haven. Of course, if you prefer to spend the winter huddled under blankets with your thermostat set on 90 degrees that's fine too. Just be prepared to venture out every day for class: Yale hasn't had a snow day since 1978.
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