Preventative strike.

Firstity First after a long period of waiting!

"not deeply invested ... really touched." That's meaningful.

Generally, FIRST tier schools can suck it.

Oooh great, I go to a school that teaches me state law for three years so I can pass the bar in 4th place.

The Dean said that because unlike some other NY schools, Cardozo does not offer a bar preparation course of its own or require certain courses that are designed to increase bar pass rates.

New York isn't the only state where T2s are doing well. Georgia State, a T2 law school, had the highest pass rate for both first time test takers and all around test takers beating both UGA and Emory, both T1 schools. Georgia State also had the highest average MBE.

http://www.gabaradmissions.org/pages/barstats.htm

Not a brooklyn grad, but aren't those schools really competing for the 5th place spot behind brooklyn? Or maybe Hofstra? (Hofstra was joke for all the serious folks out there)

Anyone else notice that early attempts to be "first" are being barred. I wonder if Lat is experimenting with some sort of "first regulation." I like it! Unless, of course, it prevents me from winning.

Generally, FIRST tier schools can suck it.

"I'm not deeply invested in bar pass rates," said Cardozo Law Dean David Rudenstine.

O RLY? Don't you think that bar pass rates are something you should be deeply invested in, Deano?

"The Dean said that because unlike some other NY schools, Cardozo does not offer a bar preparation course of its own or require certain courses that are designed to increase bar pass rates."

-Is this what Cardozo gets you? What?

Oooh great, I go to a school that teaches me state law for three years so I can pass the bar in 4th place.

Not a brooklyn grad, but aren't those schools really competing for the 5th place spot behind brooklyn? Or maybe Hofstra? (Hofstra was joke for all the serious folks out there)

2:56 nailed it. T1 students learn all the same sh*t in 3 days from paula franceze. which is why, despite not being taught the test by st. john's for 3 years, we still have higher pass rates.

"The Dean said that because unlike some other NY schools, Cardozo does not offer a bar preparation course of its own or require certain courses that are designed to increase bar pass rates."

-Is this what Cardozo gets you? What?

BLS in 10th? :shakes head:

BLS in 10th? :shakes head:

Oooh great, I go to a school that teaches me state law for three years so I can pass the bar in 4th place.

I always find it funny when TTTs hang their hats on bar passage rates, as if their students are suddenly going to get more job offers or someone is actually going to think they're in the same league as T1s.

I'm not sure about other second-tier schools, but it was only a matter of time before Cardozo started to compete with the first-tier ones. Considering that the school is only thirty years old, its improvement has been meteoric.

I know someone from NYLS and all they do is prepare you for the bar. Conversely, I know someone at Cardozo, and it seems like they don't teach to the test at all, no prep courses, etc. I think that is encouraging. Maybe the higher pass rate will push Cardozo into T1, only 2 spots away last year.

Cardozo grads to tenuous grasps on respectability!

I don't know much about the bar exam methodology, but to me what is most remarkable about these numbers is not the tiny jumps up and down by the top ranked schools, but the vastly larger leaps up by some of the lower schools.

Cardozo went up 2%, and Cornell went down 2%. But when Hofstra goes up 12%, that is more interesting.

Labels matter and we have to use something to distinguish schools, but perhaps this is one place where the numbers will continue to converge.

I'm sorry but Fordham is much better than either Cardozo or St. johns.

The Cardozo "leap" is within what is known as the margin of error. Statisticians would call it not statistically significant.

If you look at LSAT numbers, Cardozo's incoming classes for the past few years rank somewhere around 25th nationally. Perhaps the bar-pass stats raise awareness of the quality of Cardozo's students.

"Hofstra University School of Law also surged, up to 85 percent from last year's 73 percent."

This is rad.

Fordham 2L:
How is Fordham much better than Cardozo? I'm applying to both schools and I do not really see much of a difference aside from USN rankings. Anything you can provide would be helpful. Thanks.

the chest-thumping about where you went to law school is a sure sign of small penis syndrome.

Fordham 2L:

While Fordham probably has a better name with judges and biglaw (result of the Dozo's relative youth), the caliber of students and Faculty at Fordham is absolutely no better than at Cardozo.

In fact, one may argue that the Fordham students may be more foolish, since they probably got a scholarship to Cardozo, from where they can get all the same jobs. They have essentially paid more for a marginally better school (it's not like we're talking about NYU or Columbia here).

I got into both, and am glad that I came to Cardozo for the $25 g's and the same Vault Top15 job.

Cardozo is not really a TTT. It has lots of smart Jewish kids who don't roll on Shabbos and enjoy that about their school. Their average LSAT pretty high - especially compared to similarly ranked schools.

Fordham isn't tier 3?

Fordham: 100 years old
St. Johns: 80 years old
Brooklyn: 100 years old

Cardozo: 30 years old

Let's see what happens over the next 70 years...

"the chest-thumping about where you went to law school is a sure sign of small penis syndrome."

Says the graduate of a TTT that's now KFC's Employee of the Month.

"Source: Statistics provided by individual law schools."

OUCH. Right there you can gauge some of the problems with this survey.

Cardozo to Tier 1! (It's inevitable)

Cardozo 2L (and 3:21) -- While Cardozo is a very respectable school I don't think it is fair to say that the same jobs are available to both sets of students. At Fordham anyone in the top half of the class has their pick of numerous top firms, while I think Cardozo students generally need to be in the top 10% to get the same opportunities. And given how arbitrary law school grading can be I don't think the students who forgo a scholership to Cardozo to go to Fordham can be considered foolish given that by going to Fordham their chances of making 160 (plus bonus, plus special bonus) once they graduate are roughly 40% higher than they would be had they gone to Cardozo.

Fordham 2L, I think the differences between Fordham and Cardozo are vastly overstated. Both are regional schools and you need good grades at both to get a market job (versus NYU/Columbia). But if you attend Fordham you likely turned down a large scholarship from Cardozo, so I understand that you need to put down the school to justify the massive debt you're accruing.

"'the chest-thumping about where you went to law school is a sure sign of small penis syndrome.'

Says the graduate of a TTT that's now KFC's Employee of the Month."

Says the graduate of a first tier who probably, despite his degree, still has small penis syndrome

Whatever you think about who's #1, #2, etc. can we all agree that Touro sucks?

It would be interesting to do some sort of comparison between the financial resources of the individual students, and their bar passage.

I agree there is probably a correlation with this -- now if you can correlate that with the schools they go to, well, these numbers don't mean much then.

"'the chest-thumping about where you went to law school is a sure sign of small penis syndrome.'

Says the graduate of a TTT that's now KFC's Employee of the Month."

Better than being the worst employee at KFC.

3:29 - actually i graduated from Penn in '03 and work at a top-10 shop. and apparently i have a bigger penis than you.

"Better than being the worst employee at KFC."

Who, incidentally, is also probably a TTT grad.

In Texas, the school with the highest passing rate year in and year out is T2 Baylor, not UT. Largely this is because Baylor requires certain courses -- especially in the area of Texas Procedure (which is its own test section on Day 1 here).

Bar passages rates aren't always about the quality of education (not that Baylor's a bad school, but I don't think anyone would put it up there with UT).

Cornell is worthless. It's amazing that people think it's in the top ten. Nobody wants to go there, nobody wants to teach there.

The real reason that people say t-14 instead of t-15 is everybody secretly discards cornell and bumps everyone else up one slot.

3:21,

I was offered a full ride at Cardozo, but turned it down to go to Fordham.

I say with no hesitation that I do not regret my decision.

The fact of the matter is that people like 3:24(1) are the exception to the rule at Cardozo. Conventional wisdom is that you need to be top 10-15% at Cardozo (or Brooklyn, St. Johns) and Law Review to have a serious shot at BigLaw.

At Fordham, however, a solid 1/3 of the school will land BigLaw jobs, including myself.

You can't spell "Benjamin Cardozo" without "Bozo"

If you're worried about passing the bar, you probably aren't going to a top school anyway.

You can't spell "Benjamin Cardozo" without "Bozo"

I've got nothing against Cardozo, it's a good school. But anyone who is looking to get into biglaw and turns down Fordham for 'Dozo is an idiot.

Unless you're int the top 15% in 'Dozo, you're not gonna be making 160 after you graduate.

Fordham 2L:

Valid point. I don't doubt that big law goes deeper into the talent pool at Fordham. And yes, grading has a definite element of arbitrariness. But the talent pools are probably the same. So yeah, if you don't have confidence in your ability to come through, and don't mind spending the extra $$$ for what is essentially expensive job insurance (which doesn't insure anything but greater odds of getting a job if you don't do well), then go to fordham.

In reality, there are tiers of nyc schools:

1: NYU, Columbia
2: Fordham, Dozo, Brooklyn
3: NYLS, St. John's, etc.

In my opinion, choosing between the group 2 schools should more or less be a function of scholarship $$ they are throwing your way.

BTW, Dean Chalmers is kind of scummy.

3:37,

I didn't know KFC is a top 10 shop. Congrats!

3:39, did Cornell reject you?

Why do people continue to fight over who's law school is better, is because of their lack of I.Q. or small weanie? Those of us in Greg Tolands gym class certainly know the answer to that....

"At Fordham anyone in the top half of the class has their pick of numerous top firms." Fordham 2L, I don't know what top 1/2 students you're talking to, but I have friends who attend Fordham and they say this is definitely not the case. It is absolutely false to say that the top 10% of Cardozo = the top 50% of Fordham in terms of employment options. But again, whatever makes you feel better about that $150K+ monkey on your back. I for one will be enjoying my biglaw salary without having to worry about paying back loans!

Okay, here's the deal in Fordham vs. Cardozo

1) Cardozo's curriculum over-emphasizes NY Law and NY Practice so they students study a lot more of it starting in 1L year . . . whereas at Fordham, I have yet to take a course where New York State law is emphasized whatsoever

2) "foolishness" - I'd say most Fordham students that I've met turned down scholarships from Cardozo, BK, and St. johns, and Rutgers...and were also waitlisted at NYU/Columbia.
however, that does not make them foolish, it makes them savvy and risk-averse. Sure, if you take the full ride to Cardozo and end up in the top 10%, you're golden...especially if you're on Law Review.
However, if you take the scholarship, and end up int the 34% percentile at Dozo, you not only lose your scholarship, but are effectively shut-out wit BIGLAW at OCI and are screwed and probably won't get a shot at BIGLAW again until you get your LLM from NYU.

However, at Fordham, I know quite a few kids hovering aroudn the 50% percentile who got BIGLAW jobs paying 160 at firms like Stroock, SRZ, CWT, Mckee, Sidley, Dewey, etc....granted, those aren't v10 firms, but its better than nothing...

Bottom line - the gamblers who took their scholarships at went to dozo and ended up in top 10-15% fared well and should thank their lucky stars....the rest are scrwed.
One of my buddies here at Fordham, he's a 2L and his sig. other is a 3L at Cardozo...she was in like top 40% or something, she lost her scholarship and at the midpoint of 3L year, she still has not found a job and didnt work anywhere her 2L summer....

Since when is a bar pass rate proof of a first-rate law school? At my swearing-in almost 30 years ago, the guy sitting next to me that so many of the people from "my law school" failed. Which was "his" law school? Harvard.

Will you come off it, 3:24? They're not even fucking Jewish, man . . . Man, they' re fucking Polish Catholic . . . Maybe they converted when I married Cynthia, but five fucking years ago they were divorcedand it's all a part of their sick Cynthia thing, man. Taking care of her fucking dog. Going to her fucking synagogue. They're living in the fucking past.

Both are great schools and offer great opportunities in NY. I noticed in my 2L year at Cardozo that many people who were in the top 25% got multiple interviews with big firms in NY. Whether they got the offer or not depended on their personality at that point, but from the career services list of big firm employment last summer, there were at least a handful of people outside of the top 15% working at big firms. At least 2 people from that list were actually top 50% or lower.

But I also noticed during my summer that MANY MANY Fordham people got biglaw jobs despite only being top 50% or top 1/3rd of their class. Fordham has been around a lot longer with a much bigger network of alumni in NY. But give it time and I bet in 10 more years Cardozo's reputation in NY will have dramatically improved (despite how well received it is already after only 30 years).

I love how 3:40(3) (and almost everyone else in their comments) forgot about Cornell.

Cornell to inclusion in top-of-mind NY law schools!

In response to Fordham 2L,
It's just not true, though it may have been in recent years, that you need to be in the top 10% at Cardozo in order to land a BigLaw job. This year, just from people I know at the school it seems like atleast 20% of the class has already landed summer associate positions at BigLaw firms. These stats will only get better in the future when going to Fordham will more clearly be a big waste of money (unless Cardozo stops handing out the money).

Okay, here's the deal in Fordham vs. Cardozo

1) Cardozo's curriculum over-emphasizes NY Law and NY Practice so they students study a lot more of it starting in 1L year . . . whereas at Fordham, I have yet to take a course where New York State law is emphasized whatsoever

2) "foolishness" - I'd say most Fordham students that I've met turned down scholarships from Cardozo, BK, and St. johns, and Rutgers...and were also waitlisted at NYU/Columbia.
however, that does not make them foolish, it makes them savvy and risk-averse. Sure, if you take the full ride to Cardozo and end up in the top 10%, you're golden...especially if you're on Law Review.
However, if you take the scholarship, and end up int the 34% percentile at Dozo, you not only lose your scholarship, but are effectively shut-out wit BIGLAW at OCI and are screwed and probably won't get a shot at BIGLAW again until you get your LLM from NYU.

However, at Fordham, I know quite a few kids hovering aroudn the 50% percentile who got BIGLAW jobs paying 160 at firms like Stroock, SRZ, CWT, Mckee, Sidley, Dewey, etc....granted, those aren't v10 firms, but its better than nothing...

Bottom line - the gamblers who took their scholarships at went to dozo and ended up in top 10-15% fared well and should thank their lucky stars....the rest are scrwed.
One of my buddies here at Fordham, he's a 2L and his sig. other is a 3L at Cardozo...she was in like top 40% or something, she lost her scholarship and at the midpoint of 3L year, she still has not found a job and didnt work anywhere her 2L summer....

3:17 - Actually a statistician would tell you that you don't know what you're talking about. Margin of error applies when you are trying to extrapolate from a representative sample. For example, if you poll 5,000 Americans to find out who they like for president, you're going to have a margin of error because you're only asking a sample of the larger population group. The larger the sample the smaller the margin of error. Since this data covers 100% of the population (of first time test-takers) from each school there is no margin of error.

I went to a top 5 school, have an enormous penis and a kick ass apartment.

3:43, nah, sounds like a Cornell law grad rejected him.

Cardozo's curriculum doesn't emphasize New York law or practice.

3:47 - 20% of your class? You're proud of that?

FU 2L wrote: "1) Cardozo's curriculum over-emphasizes NY Law and NY Practice so they students study a lot more of it starting in 1L year." What? This is news to me. Did you just make that up?

Did you know that you can't spell "Loyola Second Year" without "Anally Sore Decoy" ?

Au contraire -- margin of error is indeed significant here. Assuming nothing really changes at a school from year to year you would expect deviations of a percent or two -- not always going to get exactly the same percentage because one or two students more or less are inevitably going to fail. But if a lot more students fail or a lot more pass-- it is more than just a natural fluctuation of a random sample from year to year -- it is a significant change. Hofstra's 12 point change was statisticially significant. Cardozo's/Cornell's 2 point change was not.

"3:29 - actually i graduated from Penn in '03 and work at a top-10 shop. and apparently i have a bigger penis than you."

It speaks volumes about your own perceived self worth that you anonymously talk shit on a "blawg" while allegedly possessing such credentials.

Poor flame or absolute and total loser.

...also, I think around 250-300 firms interviewed at Fordham this past year....I think it was pretty much every NY Vault 100 firm (except for Wachtell)....plust non-Ny firms with significant Ny offices....and I'm pretty sure that every firm interviewing at Fordham paid between 145 and 160. So with about 200 firms interviewing at Fordham and only about 400 kids doing OCI, kids have a pretty good shot of making at least 145 on avg (firms like buchanan and carter Ledyard interview at Fordham and pay 125-135)....so its just a better numbers option
We also have a ton of firms here interviewing for their Boston, DC, Miami, TX, LA, SF, London, Paris, and ASian offices....

No question cardozo is improving and will continue to improve but the fact is they are throwing money to take top students who otherwise would not have come to Cardozo - as someone who turned down Cardozo - I dont regret it - fordham's main issue has always been crappy facilities and crappy financial aid/scholarship. Fordham students go to Fordham BECAUSE they couldnt get into Columbia or NYU - face facts. Most Cardozo students (excluding Jewish students who wanted to go to a jewish school) go to Cardozo because of the moeny thrown their way or becasue they couldnt get int Fordham and by extension COlumbia or NYU. Top cardozo students like any other top student from anotehr school get the same opportunities - but its how deep you go in to the class - most people who go to law school say they ARE GOING to be top 10-20 - guess what in a ranked system - ONLY top 10-20 get those opportunities - everyone is a gunner but only a few will make it - call it an expensive insurance program ---but reality is I guarantee you 80-90% of students at cardozo said the same thing about having assurance in their own ability to get top 10-20 AND didnt MAKE it. Get real...

Why dont some Cardozo folks get on this board and talk about their other classmates who have effectively been blocked from applying for jobs becasue of their rank in their own schools systems or reprimanded by adminstration because they applied.

Cardozo system is set up so that the top 10-20 can make it out and keep building the school but the bottom get SHAFTED by employers AND THEIR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION. Whatever the bottom get is based on some serious ass hustling and NOT their schools prestige. But thats the case anywhere outside top --?

I know too many Dozo folks to actually believe some BS some top cardozo grads are giving.

No question cardozo is improving and will continue to improve but the fact is they are throwing money to take top students who otherwise would not have come to Cardozo - as someone who turned down Cardozo - I dont regret it - fordham's main issue has always been crappy facilities and crappy financial aid/scholarship. Fordham students go to Fordham BECAUSE they couldnt get into Columbia or NYU - face facts. Most Cardozo students (excluding Jewish students who wanted to go to a jewish school) go to Cardozo because of the moeny thrown their way or becasue they couldnt get int Fordham and by extension COlumbia or NYU. Top cardozo students like any other top student from anotehr school get the same opportunities - but its how deep you go in to the class - most people who go to law school say they ARE GOING to be top 10-20 - guess what in a ranked system - ONLY top 10-20 get those opportunities - everyone is a gunner but only a few will make it - call it an expensive insurance program ---but reality is I guarantee you 80-90% of students at cardozo said the same thing about having assurance in their own ability to get top 10-20 AND didnt MAKE it. Get real...

Why dont some Cardozo folks get on this board and talk about their other classmates who have effectively been blocked from applying for jobs becasue of their rank in their own schools systems or reprimanded by adminstration because they applied.

Cardozo system is set up so that the top 10-20 can make it out and keep building the school but the bottom get SHAFTED by employers AND THEIR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION. Whatever the bottom get is based on some serious ass hustling and NOT their schools prestige. But thats the case anywhere outside top --?

I know too many Dozo folks to actually believe some BS some top cardozo grads are giving.

3:55 - i'm sorry to have caused such envy. perhaps you went to a TTT AND have a small penis - ?

"Margin of error" does apply here if you are trying to determine whether anything has changed at a school from year to year. Even if nothing changes and the results are truly "random", there is still going to be a deviation of a couple of percentage points every year. But if the change goes up 12% (see Hofstra), that's probably significant -- i.e., more than the inevitable fluctuations of a random sample.

Let's settle this little spat- Cornell, Fordham, Cardozo = incredibly shitty TTTs.

No one at Cardozo is blocked from applying to jobs or reprimanded for doing so.

Sorry but if biglaw is your goal, there are far more FLS lawyers than Cardozo lawyers. So, regardless of "quality" of students or faculty, or bar passage rates, it makes no sense to choose Cardozo. The name of the school sticks with you quite a while and I think it's not worth the roll of the dice just to save some bucks in tuition.

FU 2L,

That is a good summation of the situation. Cornell is not nyc, so it was not included in the list. (I also don't see why someone would want to go there over even Fordham, but that is another topic).

The lower portion of the Fordham class does better with big law, but my experience this year is that top 25% or top 1/3 at dozo is fairing well. Granted, a lot of that is a function of what was a hot legal market at the onset of OCI.

From Prof. Leiter's rankings:
75th Percentile

Fordham University
167 3.74

Cardozo
166 3.72

25th Percentile
Fordham
163 3.41

Cardozo
161 3.23

So the bottom of your barrel is better than the bottom of my barrel. But that's not what we're striving for, is it?

End of the day, neither is NYU or Columbia, so your rep as a practitioner has to carry you professionally, not the degree on the wall.

FU 2L,

That is a good summation of the situation. Cornell is not nyc, so it was not included in the list. (I also don't see why someone would want to go there over even Fordham, but that is another topic).

The lower portion of the Fordham class does better with big law, but my experience this year is that top 25% or top 1/3 at dozo is fairing well. Granted, a lot of that is a function of what was a hot legal market at the onset of OCI.

From Prof. Leiter's rankings:
75th Percentile

Fordham University
167 3.74

Cardozo
166 3.72

25th Percentile
Fordham
163 3.41

Cardozo
161 3.23

So the bottom of your barrel is better than the bottom of my barrel. But that's not what we're striving for, is it?

End of the day, neither is NYU or Columbia, so your rep as a practitioner has to carry you professionally, not the degree on the wall.

Having just gone through the large firm recruiting process here at 'Dozo, I've observed that the "you gotta be in the 10-15%" line is quickly become inaccurate.

And I do say "quickly," b/c, a few years ago, 10-15% may have been the cutoff. Every year seems to get better: Current 2Ls seem to have better reports than current 3Ls.

Evidence: The vast majority of students on lesser journals than Law Rev - likely in the top 33% - were able to find some biglaw job (big law being defined as NYC 160K pay scale). Not all, but most. Conversely, a healthy number of students outside of the top third landed jobs, as well. There is no longer a hard-and-fast cut off...employers are more willing to dig deeper.

Of course, this is not only a function of Cardozo's rep, but the hot legal hiring market (until this past month or so). Furthermore, I acknowledge that Fordham is still ahead on law firm hiring...from what I hear, top 50 percent should be able to get a job, compared to Dozo's top 33 percent (with both schools these are very rough estimates, as described above).

But I will say that we are closing on Fordham in terms of law firm hiring - certainly faster than any other NYC school - and we have almost caught up in terms of average LSAT score (b/c Cardozo woos students away with scholarships, while Chalmers at Fordham tends to be cheap). It is no longer fair to lump Cardozo with St. Johns, and perhaps even Brooklyn.

Ohh, yea, and the NY Practice comment...I have no clue what that's about. We have no NY Practice requirement, although it may be smart for the bar. Civ Pro is entirely geared around federal practice. Common law 1L classes encompass all state practice, obviously.

Schlarships: I'd take Fordham over Cardozo at 10K, It's a toss-up at 15K, and Cardozo over Fordham at 20K.

FU 2L: "1) Cardozo's curriculum over-emphasizes NY Law and NY Practice so they students study a lot more of it starting in 1L year."

Completely and utterly wrong. In three years at the dozo, I took exactly one course that emphasised NY Law and NY Practice. It was called, unsurprisingly, "New York Practice." Was New York law was mentioned in other classes? Yeah, when and where it was appropriate, e.g. Palsgraf, just like any other law school.

FU 2L,

That is a good summation of the situation. Cornell is not nyc, so it was not included in the list. (I also don't see why someone would want to go there over even Fordham, but that is another topic).

The lower portion of the Fordham class does better with big law, but my experience this year is that top 25% or top 1/3 at dozo is fairing well. Granted, a lot of that is a function of what was a hot legal market at the onset of OCI.

From Prof. Leiter's rankings:
75th Percentile

Fordham University
167 3.74

Cardozo
166 3.72

25th Percentile
Fordham
163 3.41

Cardozo
161 3.23

So the bottom of your barrel is better than the bottom of my barrel. But that's not what we're striving for, is it?

End of the day, neither is NYU or Columbia, so your rep as a practitioner has to carry you professionally, not the degree on the wall.

Having just gone through the large firm recruiting process here at 'Dozo, I've observed that the "you gotta be in the 10-15%" line is quickly become inaccurate.

And I do say "quickly," b/c, a few years ago, 10-15% may have been the cutoff. Every year seems to get better: Current 2Ls seem to have better reports than current 3Ls.

The vast majority of 2L staffers on lesser journals than Law Rev - likely in the top 33% - were able to find some biglaw job (big law being defined as NYC 160K pay scale). Not all, but most. Conversely, a healthy number of students outside of the top third landed jobs, as well. There is no longer a hard-and-fast cut off...employers are more willing to dig deeper.

Of course, this is not only a function of Cardozo's rep, but the hot legal hiring market (I think summer assoc. recruitment was largely unaffected by the market hit). Furthermore, I acknowledge that Fordham is still ahead on law firm hiring...from what I hear, top 50 percent should be able to get a job, compared to Dozo's top 33 percent (with both schools these are very rough estimates, as described above).

But I will say that we are closing on Fordham in terms of law firm hiring - certainly faster than any other NYC school - and we have almost caught up in terms of average LSAT score (b/c Cardozo woos students away with scholarships, while Chalmers at Fordham tends to be cheap). It is no longer fair to lump Cardozo with St. Johns, and perhaps even Brooklyn.

Ohh, yea, and the NY Practice comment...I have no clue what that's about. We have no NY Practice requirement, although it may be smart for the bar. Civ Pro is entirely geared around federal practice. Common law 1L classes encompass all state practice, obviously.

$$$ vs. job security: I'd take Fordham over Cardozo at 10K, It's a toss-up at 15K, and Cardozo over Fordham at 20K.

Fordham students = rejected/WL from NYU/Columbia

Brooklyn Cardozo Students = rejected/WL from Fordham

Happy?

...I'm surprised no one has said anything about cardozo's sheisty use of scholarship money to lure in students away from fordham....

From what i understand from kids at Dozo...it works like this...

You get a scholarship, BUT, keeping that scholarship is contingent on remaining in the top 33% of the class....

HOWEVER - at least 35% of incoming students get merit-based-contingent scholarships

FURTHERMORE - it seems that the kids with scholarships are clustered into many of the same sections...

THEREFORE - a large proportion of the scholarship recipients lose their scholarships....which is how dozo engineered it (I think BK does the same thing)

So, sure, if you are lucky enough (at a school like cardozo, it's luck), to keep your scholarship AND get a BIGLAW job, then you're set for life pretty much....but if you're unlucky, like the at least 80% of dozo students shut out of BIGLAW< then you're scrwed for life...

FYI...I turned down a full-ride at St. Johns, Cardozo, and BK to attend Fordham with only a 5K Scholarship (which i received AFTER i'd already accepted)....

ummm 2L i interviewed with a partner from cardozo who could not hide his disdain for his alma mater...he was quite sheepish actually - i was surprised.

anyways...thats not what I hear from outside TOP 20 DOZO kids... may be the kids sitting in the golden chairs should listen to the bottom 80 who are carry their financial butts to go to the school on scholarship.

also you may have to consider that kids in your own school will less likely express their displeasure or hardluck to other dozo kids becasue of embarrassment or sheer bitterness - either way - they have no problem sharing their frustration with kids outside the school.

Look, no one is saying that Cardozo is the most awesome school in NYC and that their grads are guaranteed jobs no matter how crappy their grades are. But as someone who had both options and chose Cardozo over Fordham, my only point was that I don't think the differences are significant enough to justify paying full-price for Fordham. That's all.

I'm not denying that Some Dozo kids fare very well, but the deck is stacked against them..

i'd really like to know how many NY V100 firms interivew at Dozo and how many they actually take....

In terms of representation at NY BIGLAW firms, based on raw numbers, Fordham is more on the same level with NYU/columbia/and even yale (which sends a ton of its grads to gov't/clerkships) than with Dozo/BK...

I got nothing but love for Fordham. Why don't we all turn our attentions to the fact that Cardozo beat out Cornell - a T14 IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL.

Hey Cardozo 2L! - just click the button once, you 'dozo.

Sheesh - obviously you went to 'dozo . . 'dozo. Hahahaha!

I hope fordham admin peruse this comments page....

GIVE US MORE MONEY!!!

Nuff said......

4:08 - Yeah, pretty much. But those of us that have good jobs really don't care!

Cardozo '09

I think you're wrong. Even when the difference between attending Fordham over Cardozo is a full scholership I think anyone would be crazy to turn down Fordham... I think it is a fact that students in the botton of the class at Fordham are not shut out of Big Law the way students in the bottom of the class at Cardozo are. And as I said earlier, it is not necessarily a function of hardwork or intelligence that will determine whether you make the top 10 or 15% at any law school.

Seton Hall and Rutgers both throw money at people like nobody's business. If you can't get into Fordham, Jersey is the place to be.

At least if you don't land top grades, the Jersey firms reach pretty deep into the class. Better than the bottom 75% of cardozo students that are all left with nothing after BigLaw doesn't pan out.

PS - When I was deciding between law schools (UVA, Fordham, Dozo, BK, St. Johns), I made a spreadhseet comparing how many graduates from each school were working in the NY offices of the V100 firms (it took for ever)

The final result, was that, UVA and Fordham, on average, had 25 graduates in the NY offices of the V100....Cardozo had 12, Bk had 8, St. Johns had 4.

Granted...some firms had way more Dozo grads than Fordham grads, and same for St. Johns too, but the average, and trend...is obviously that firms take about twice as many Fordham grads as Cardozo grads...

I invite anyone else to do the same analysis as me and see what your results are

NYLS to Fordham: Suck it.

4:19 - yeah, but then you're working at a Jersey firm.

Fordham 2L, ok, whatever, this is dumb. You're entitled to your opinion as am I. However, I'm very happy with my decision to turn down Fordham for a full-scholarship at Cardozo and I have plenty of friends who feel the same way. And I'm pretty sure we're not crazy.

...so will any Dozo students defend/explain their schools schuystery use of disappearing scholarships?

Got a fed clerkship while being in the top 1/3 in my class. Booyaka shot!

P.s. FU law has the FINEST girls of any NYC law school, including carbozo.

FU 2L,
Fordham also has almost twice as many law students each year as Cardozo.

But to your earlier question...the OCI provides a spreadsheet of 2007 prior biglaw employment (no i won't cut and paste it here) which lists students who accepted offers at big firms. There were about 75+ names on the list, and two of my friends (one went to Goodwin Proctor and the other went to Orrick last summer) were not on the list because they forgot to e-mail OCI before the list was compiled.

So I'd estimate that at least 80 students in my class worked at big firms last summer out of 250(?) total.

FU 2L: I commend you for doing that analysis - that's pretty damn impressive. And that actually sounds about right.

I know, it's not much consolation for disgruntled Cardozo students now...But I do think that Cardozo is on the brink. It is such a young law school, and we are just now starting to see Cardozo grads make significant partnership positions that give them recruiting weight (e.g. being a partner on the firm's recruiting committee). The first 15-20 years of its existence didn't create many biglaw-ers, and you're just now starting to see alot of the 'Dozo biglaw pioneers becoming bigshots in firms. That's why I say that Cardozo has vastly improved in the last few years alone. And that's why I predict a sharp upturn in its big law hiring rates, and I hope against any plateuing.

Cardozo '09

I agree. Best of luck and I hope to see you at the next NYC law school mixer.

4:25, I don't quite know what there is to explain or defend. Do you think the school gives us a memo informing us of their nefarious plans? Yes, there are rumors on the internet that Cardozo stacks certain sections with scholarship kids. There are also rumors that Brooklyn does the same thing. However, each year every section thinks their section is the "scholarship section" so I don't really buy it. For the record, I don't know anyone who lost their scholarship after 1L.

I wont knock a full scholarship! FREE is always great and better than paid in most situations - but dont confuse your "golden" situation for the rest of your brethren who have to do some SERIOUS ass scrambling to find something comparable or anything for that matter.

Your gamble paid off - but it was a gamble that was limited to a FEW who could see it worked out...

Great situation but dont froget what that trade off was - lower prestige ... which is what in this assbackward profession unfortunately counts as the marker of achievement.

Even I believe its stupid - but thats the system.

FU 2L: What is the point of that exercise? UVa is a completely different animal than Fordham and the other schools. The reason UVa's numbers were at all close to the other schools on your list was because most UVa grads choose to go to places like DC, Atlanta, LA, and SF. If you go to UVa, your chances at NY biglaw are much higher than they are at Fordham. Given all the other reasons to go to UVa over Fordham, you made a very bad decision.

Don't forget. This 2007 term there is a Cardozo grad clerking at the US Supreme Court. Cardozo has now had 2 Supreme Court clerks in its 30 year history of being a law school. So I think that SCOTUS clerkships, (while the ABILITY to get one from Cardozo is slim to none) speaks volumes of the prestige that Cardozo is steadily gaining nationwide.

Also...I didn't receive any scholarship :(. But I can confirm that there is a GPA cutoff to maintain the scholarship. I don't remember what it was for my year, but my friend's roommate who was a 2L this year said it was around a 3.35-3.4. He lost his scholarship and subsequently left Cardozo this fall. But, he actually hated law school and intentionally didn't try to do well his 1L year so take that with a grain of salt.

Just to weigh in beyond the anecdotes, look at the nalpdirectory for real recruiting info. If you click on "Law Firm" and search for who interviews at Cardozo, you get 123 hits. For Fordham, 330. Columbia, 614.

So no, Fordham is nowhere near the same league as Columbia, but at the same time, Cardozo is nowhere near being in the same league as Fordham, in terms of who wants to hire grads from these schools.

Personally, I work at a v50 in DC, at a firm that has never employed a Cardozo grad in any office (there are Fordham grads in at least 3 of our offices, so placement outside of NYC is definitely possible if you want it). So turning down Cardozo's large scholarship was, for me, a great decision. And most of my friends at Fordham also turned down a lot of money from Cardozo, and they're all working at v20 firms in NYC...

i'm cardozo grad, top ten vault firm. never took a ny practice or ny law class in my life (other than the ny eptl component to trusts and estates). we don't even look at the cplr in civ pro - just the frcp. just had to debunk the fordham guy who says that csl "over-emphasizes NY Law and NY Practice ". i'm sure you make a great lawyer if you speak with authority about matters beyond your base of knowledge.

I'd just like to point out how cute it is that the Fordham commenters are all snooty towards Cardozo like Fordham wasn't a shit school too. If Fordham was my best option I'd pass on being a lawyer.

Fordham Girls are nast

Fordham Girls are nast

yes 4:42, you have no pecker.

Nobody can argue that Fordham has a more recognizable name right now than Cardozo. Fordham has been around much much longer. But as a 30 year old law school competing in NYC, neither can anybody deny that Cardozo is gaining reputation and status pretty darn quickly.

I'll say it again - margin of error doesn't apply. As we were all told countless times by our 1L professors, if you're going to use a term of art, be sure you undersand what it means. I'm not an expert in this stuff but in a past career I used buy market research. If you are saying that 2% is too small a deviation to be significant to you or to support the conclusions being drawn about Cardozo being a better school or whatever, than fair enough, but that's very different than saying it's statistically insignificant. Margin of error refers to reliablility of a sample size. When you're working with a 100% sample size any deviation is statistically valid.

I'll add this as one more CSL perspective. I graduated in the top 20%, but no journals or moot court, and ended up in a top 10 firm. I didn't take NY practice or any other class that emphasized NY law so I don't know what that guy was talking about. I got a significant scholarship (not full ride) which I didn't have any trouble keeping. I've known a few people who got scholarships and lost them because they got crappy grades. I know more people who got scholarships and kept them, or in some cases saw them increase as a result of their class standing.

Could have gone to Fordham - it's a great school - but I'm very happy with the education I got from Cardozo and it all worked out just fine for me.

Au contraire -- margin of error is indeed significant here. Assuming nothing really changes at a school from year to year you would expect deviations of a percent or two -- not always going to get exactly the same percentage because one or two students more or less are inevitably going to fail. But if a lot more students fail or a lot more pass-- it is more than just a natural fluctuation of a random sample from year to year -- it is a significant change. Hofstra's 12 point change was statisticially significant. Cardozo's/Cornell's 2 point change was not.

>So I'd estimate that at least 80 students in my class worked at big firms last summer out of 250(?) total.

Out of the 80 people in my 1L section (1/4 of day division), over 50 are at big firms now. Again, there's no comparison in the placement of the two schools.

au contraire! and csl people speak spanish!

I turned down UVA (half-scholarship) to come to Fordham (only 5K) because I wanted to live and work in NY...

It was a big gamble, but it paid off. I'm much happier in NY than I was living in VA...andI got an offer from a V20 firm and at the offer mixers, I've met quite a few kids from UVA.
...so, had I gone to UVa, I'd probably end up in the same position I am now....but except I'm happier in NY.

(I went to UVa undergrad)

I turned down UVA (half-scholarship) to come to Fordham (only 5K) because I wanted to live and work in NY...

It was a big gamble, but it paid off. I'm much happier in NY than I was living in VA...andI got an offer from a V20 firm and at the offer mixers, I've met quite a few kids from UVA.
...so, had I gone to UVa, I'd probably end up in the same position I am now....but except I'm happier in NY.

(I went to UVa undergrad)

I have to admit it must be kind of exciting to believe you are on the cusp of somethign bigger and better as a school -- but thats just it..its a gamble....sure cardozo could rise from the ranks and break from BLS and NYLS but at the end of the day its only fighting for a spot to be equally considered against Fordham. And all Fordham would have to do is to start pulling out those scholarship dollars to counteract cardozo and where would Cardozo be then? You rightfull said money makes all the difference...that doesnt say anything to the quality of the school or teaching or extras like clinics and special programs, biglaw opportunities for those outside top 10-20 and access to clerkships....

Anyways, like any entity - Fordham fears having to share their perch...but thats just it ----Cardozo would only be sharing the perch not actually going beyond it....statistically not going to happen for a number reasons most importantly FORDHAM ALUMs make up a big portion of biglaw and like hiring own! ...but hey who knows may be fordham will commit some increasingly stupid moves to forfeit their position.

yale's bar passage rate for NYC: 94.2% last year. does that make NYU and Columbia better than it? I think not.

cardozo should enjoy its 15 minutes of fame and then get over it.

I turned down UVA (half-scholarship) to come to Fordham (only 5K) because I wanted to live and work in NY...

It was a big gamble, but it paid off. I'm much happier in NY than I was living in VA...andI got an offer from a V20 firm and at the offer mixers, I've met quite a few kids from UVA.
...so, had I gone to UVa, I'd probably end up in the same position I am now....but except I'm happier in NY.

(I went to UVa undergrad)

Do what I did---take a full ride for your first year at Hofstra--be in the top 2% of your class and forget about Fordham or Cardozo and transfer to Columbia(also got accepted to NYU) and write your own ticket

I turned down UVA (half-scholarship) to come to Fordham (only 5K) because I wanted to live and work in NY...

It was a big gamble, but it paid off. I'm much happier in NY than I was living in VA...andI got an offer from a V20 firm and at the offer mixers, I've met quite a few kids from UVA.
...so, had I gone to UVa, I'd probably end up in the same position I am now....but except I'm happier in NY.

(I went to UVa undergrad)

I have to admit it must be kind of exciting to believe you are on the cusp of somethign bigger and better as a school -- but thats just it..its a gamble....sure cardozo could rise from the ranks and break from BLS and NYLS but at the end of the day its only fighting for a spot to be equally considered against Fordham. And all Fordham would have to do is to start pulling out those scholarship dollars to counteract cardozo and where would Cardozo be then? You rightfull said money makes all the difference...that doesnt say anything to the quality of the school or teaching or extras like clinics and special programs, biglaw opportunities for those outside top 10-20 and access to clerkships....

Anyways, like any entity - Fordham fears having to share their perch...but thats just it ----Cardozo would only be sharing the perch not actually going beyond it....statistically not going to happen for a number reasons most importantly FORDHAM ALUMs make up a big portion of biglaw and like hiring own! ...but hey who knows may be fordham will commit some increasingly stupid moves to forfeit their position.

I turned down UVA (half-scholarship) to come to Fordham (only 5K) because I wanted to live and work in NY...

It was a big gamble, but it paid off. I'm much happier in NY than I was living in VA...andI got an offer from a V20 firm and at the offer mixers, I've met quite a few kids from UVA.
...so, had I gone to UVa, I'd probably end up in the same position I am now....but except I'm happier in NY.

(I went to UVa undergrad)

There are a lot of Fordham alums because Fordham is big. Cooley is bigger and will eventually have a lot of alums. So go to Cooley instead.

Fordham is an embarassing TTT whose only deterrant from slitting its wrists is the fact that Cardozo is even worse.

Me pass bar? That's unpossible!

4:54 Fordham:

Yea, I don't see Cardozo going past Fordham. I'm optimistic, but not crazy. But, who knows. Maybe Fordham will screw the pooch. Maybe they will continue to let their facilities wallow in shoddiness.

But you bring up an interesting question: With Cardozo's admitted class numbers getting dangerously close to those of Fordham, and Cardozo continuing to improve in terms of firm placement, will Fordham Admissions Dean Chalmers (not to be confused with the principal from the Simpsons) start turning out his pockets? Currently, I suspect that they currently don't b/c (1) They aren't going to compete with NYU and Columbia, so why try, and (2) Rightly or wrongly, they don't feel pressured by any other lower school in the region.

Lastly, I must say that I do not consider Cardozo to be in the same ranks as NYLS. You can verify that on nalpdirectory.com. Perhaps Cardozo has even surpassed Brooklyn (although it's significantly closer), who seems to place equal, if not fewer, people in big law from a class that is twice Cardozo's size.

Cardozo Scholarship Conspiracy:

Those rumors certainly float about, and my guess from being in the system is that they are more likely true than not. I think Cardozo gives out scholarships to like 50% of students, but you need to maintain a 3.4 or top 1/3 to keep it. So yeah there is an institutionalized squeeze, which is pretty scummy. And yeah, I feel like they stack sections with scholarship people to perpetuate the squeeze.

But it's 2 sides of the coin:
The school agressively gives out more money than they can really afford to attract good students, which has helped it's ascent in the rankings and bar pass rates. But that's also why people lose those scholarships after a year.

I don't think anyone at Cardozo thinks it's better than Fordham, we just think that Fordham, in terms of students and faculty (not prestige, which is a function of history), is no better than the Dozo.

What does suck about Cardozo is school closing at 4PM on a Friday so close to finals!

haha - this is so entertaining! all this bickering for what? because cardozo students had a higher passage rate than fordham this year? who gives a shit?!!? if you're going to be a good lawyer, you'll be a good lawyer, make money, etc... if you're a shitty person, you'll still be a shitty person (and a HUGE dork with bad social skills, as is the majority of law school students - NO OFFENSE TO ANYONE WHO MATCHES THAT DESCRIPTION - it's purely objective!), regardless of the degree on your wall. granted, going to fordham, nyu, columbia will more easily get you into a big firm, where you will make a lot of money, and maybe even make partner some day! but in the end, there is a much higher statistical probability that you will be fat, bald, married (unhappily) with annoying, ugly kids that you have to raise, as painful as that will be, and then find the time to enjoy yourself in some way, which will never actually happen. so your debts will be squared away (if you have them), and you will move to the suburbs, where your kids will still be annoying, ugly and spoiled, and your wife will only become fatter and more irritating. hey! maybe that office isnt such a bad place to be after all - thanks top 10 school for getting me a sweet job where i will hate my life and become the dick that my father was and i swore i never would be! hey, lucile (secretary), you want a christmas bonus? come get it out of my pleated pants!

and as for hot girls in law school, i will agree that i have seen the most concentrated bunch at FORDHAM - to me, that is WAY more important than bar passage rate. NYLS and brooklyn are rumored to have the hottest girls - that is a dirty lie. first, when talking about hot girls in law school, the most you will have will be as many fingers as you can count on. second, like all hot girls, at least 70% of them will have boyfriends. so, in conclusion, hot girls in law school is a misnomer and does not apply to the average, handsome law school guy (unless you are a good home wrecker!) also, you might want to avoid hitting on and/or hooking up with girls in your school, in your section, and especially if they sit within 2 people of you in any class. while it is fun to create an awkward situation like that, there is a lot of dirty laundry aired in law school, so if you prematurely ejaculate, cry after sex or like to be extremely candid about your bestiality fetish, do not commit section-cest.

thank you,
a concerned 3L

I don't understand why Brooklyn is ranked 60 on US News (dropped 7 spots from last year) and why its bar passage rate is so low. It has a great reputation in NY and has been around for like 100 years. what gives?

bottom half at fordham to $65,000!

FU 2L: if you compile a list of graduates working at large firms and compare Dozo to Fordham there is a very simple reason for why there are more fordham people on the list. Dozo has been in existence for 30 years, and Fordham for 100. There are a lot more fordham grads than dozo grads to justify these numbers.

On to scholarships: You don't need to be top third to keep your scholarship. You need to maintain a 3.3 gpa. I can't think of a school that does not have a GPA requirement to keep scholarship. I know people who were only top 50% and still kept their scholarships.

As for Jobs: you no longer need to be top 10-20% to get a Job out of Dozo. Kids in the top 50 are getting big law jobs, and they are also at the school on scholarship so it seems that Dozo might be a better choice than Fordham after all.

I know I enjoyed turning down Fordham.

does anyone know why fordham is so stingy with scholarships?...aside from the reasons mentioned above:
1) no need to compete with nyu/columbia for applicants
2) doesnt feel the need to compete with bk/dozo...

But what do they do with the extra money? I mean they're obviously not spending it on facilties...

Is it just hiring top faculty? It seems that all of our profs graudated from ivy league law schools....

it also seems that everyone at fordham (faculty and students) were a hair away from being at an ivy league school...

>With Cardozo's admitted class numbers getting dangerously close to those of Fordham, and Cardozo continuing to improve in terms of firm placement, will Fordham Admissions Dean Chalmers (not to be confused with the principal from the Simpsons) start turning out his pockets? Currently, I suspect that they currently don't b/c (1) They aren't going to compete with NYU and Columbia, so why try, and (2) Rightly or wrongly, they don't feel pressured by any other lower school in the region.

Actually, the real issue is that the Bronx campus controls the purse-strings for the law school. If the law school was autonomous, they'd have enough money to shower admits with scholarships, but the law school supports the rest of the University.

Supposedly, they should be starting on the new building soon, and when that opens, it'll solve all of the facilities problems (this is why they're letting everything go to sh*t, why repair when it will all be replaced...). But that's still at least 3-4 years off.

A depressed, slowly speaking woman phoned me 1 week after I sent Fordham my application to congratulate me on my acceptance. I politely declined on the spot because it was my safest safety school.

My shining moment: two girls, one cup

5:13, how could anyone possibly know that they were a "hair away" from Ivy acceptance? Is this consolation what keeps Fordham students going?

I graduated in May in the top 15% and am currently at a V10 firm. Cardozo has more clinics and more journals than Fordham despite having fewer students (although clearly not half as many as evidenced by the numbers who took the bar in July). Cardozo's clinics, especially the innocence project, are also much more widely known outside the small world of law school. Cardozo's Law Review Journal is also ranked higher than Fordham's.

Cardozo is also focused on becoming more than just a NY school and now draws more than 50% of its students from outside the tristate area. Cardozo is actively recruiting from around the country and trying to place more of its students in firms outside the NY area. Fordham continues to draw primarily from the tristate area.

Cardozo loses its top 5% to NYU and Columbia every year just like Fordham (although this is truly trading prestige for money as it is harder to get a V10 position as a transfer to NYU or Columbia than being in the top 5% at Cardozo, even if you ignore the automatic large scholorship Cardozo gives every 1st year who finishes in the top 10%).

As for quality of faculty, Cardozo has an excellent group of young professors, the problem over the last 10 years or so, is that NYU and Columbia regularly poach professors from Cardozo as they become more established. I have no idea how often Fordham professors get hired away, but it's an annual occurance at Cardozo.

Basically the only thing Fordham has going for it is a much longer history which gives it more partners in NY firms and more people to fill out US News surveys. Fordham will continue to stand still in every metric that exists for law schools and Cardozo will continue to improve -- it's a matter of when not if.

Cardozo to T14!

it does take a lot of really complex legal analysis to pass the bar. I didn't just memorize the black letter law. Therefore, T2 schools must teach complex legal analysis more than requiring students to memorize black letter law ... or something like that.

Fordham has to realize the 70s are over and redecorate its library already.

Hofstra tied Brooklyn!!!!

NY passing score to 655 out of 1000 points!

That outta hold down you SOBs.

NY bar passing score to 675 out of 1000 points!

Let's see how Fordham does then.

"at least 35% of incoming students get merit-based-contingent scholarships" > I wonder how this statistic fluctuates in more competitive years. It seems that Cardozo throws that money at tons of admittees whose LSAT and GPA are off the charts for that school. I received a call from the dean with my offer, which is not uncommon. I graduated (a top 5) law school in '05, which was the second year during which law schools were innundated with applications. In those years, it would seem that many more people than had been predicted would enroll in Cardozo and therefore raise that 35% figure to something like ~45%.

One point that hasn't been made yet is that usually the top students from Cardozo and Fordham wind up giving up their scholarships and transferring to NYU or Columbia. Those students usually get V10 jobs if they want them. They likely would have gotten those very jobs even if they hadn't transferred, but it seems like they are freeing up spots for their ex-classmates.

"Lastly, I must say that I do not consider Cardozo to be in the same ranks as NYLS. You can verify that on nalpdirectory.com. Perhaps Cardozo has even surpassed Brooklyn (although it's significantly closer), who seems to place equal, if not fewer, people in big law from a class that is twice Cardozo's size."

That makes no sense at all. Both schools are still considered to be on par with each other...so the requirements are roughly the same - top 25% and a journal. Since BLS' class is around 450 (PT included), BLS should have more students in biglaw.

From my 3L friends in law school are telling me, that seems to be the case. This past summer, they met a lot more BLS students than Cardozo this past summer.

BTW, BLS does not have a GPA requirement for the scholarship - you just need to stay in the top 40%. If oyu miss the 40% mark, you keep a percentage of your scholarship, depending on how close you were so ranked 50% is like 80% of your scholarship.

Not bad compared to Cardozo' GPA requirement especially since it comes out to be around top 1/3 of the class. I know my cousin chose BLS because it was more lenient with retaining the scholarship money.

5:25, "a lot of really complex legal analysis" is not required to pass the bar, and I passed it in CA. The fact that you think so is due to the fact that you graduated from a T2 school.

Allow me to be the voice of reason. I think what everyone seems to have lost sight of is that bar passage rate does not make or break the school. There are many other important factors such as (but not limited to) number of volumes in the law library.

I don't doubt that Cardozo is an amazing school, with amazing profs, and amazing facilities, and clinics, SCOTUS clerks etc....

however, the student body, is by the numbers, slightly less qualified than Fordham (in terms of incoming GPA/LSAT)...

....as far as fordham studetns "being a hair away from ivy league"....in general, most students I know at Fordham were waitlisted at an Ivy...or turned down schools like UVa, Gtown, BU, to come to Fordham b/c of the NY thing.

The main, and most important difference, with Carodozo is OCI...

fordham's 60/40 system virtually ensures taht the the top 2/3 of students interview with at least 1 biglaw firm and most of the top 50% if they interview well, get a biglaw offer...

That's most likely b/c of the huge fordham alum presence. in NY biglaw...which will not get any smaller, so just by the numbers, Fordham grads will continue to place better in NY BIGLAW than Dozo grads because despite how much Dozo improves, Fordham will ALWAYS have more partner alums in NY.

To the Fordham folks who keep focusing on past results and current alums working in biglaw:

The point the Cardozo people are trying to make is not that more Cardozo grads than Fordham grads work in biglaw or that this fact will change overnight because that is clearly not the case. The point is that we are gaining on you and will continue to do so.

The LSAT/GPA profiles of incoming students are already about the same, and there are several factors that make Cardozo more attractive for many students: scholarship money, strength in IP law, and Union Square location (I'll take that over Columbus Circle any day), among others.

For current 2Ls and 3Ls, about the top 1/3 of the class receives biglaw offers, with a few slipping through the cracks but plenty from below the top 1/3 managing to score the job of their choice as well. The good legal hiring market has played a part in this, but so has Cardozo grads distinguishing themselves in the workplace. Cardozo grads also tend to be bereft of the sense of entitlement that plagues the ranks of many of the top schools; maybe it is just a matter of time before that changes, but I find the school to be quite a humane place, and I am happy I go there.

Goddamnit, Brooklaw. Below the state average?

"Fordham will ALWAYS have more partner alums in NY"

until those partners die...

"Cardozo grads also tend to be bereft of the sense of entitlement that plagues the ranks of many of the top schools"

5:41, you're joking, right?

5:46,
he's not joking...do you/did you attend Dozo? I haven't met many snobs, and the one girl that seemed elitist to me transferred to NYU

Cardozo 3L,
You seem to be basing your analysis on the "good legal hiring market."

Have you not been reading up on the recent news? The legal market is sinking, just like 2001/2002...law firms will start hring more conservatively and letting more people go (Clifford Chance, mcKee, Thacher Proffitt...most likely soon Sidley and cWT etc.) The recent success Dozo students have had in getting summer positions will probably not play out in the near future with the tightening legal market.

Hey, "2007 Cardozo Grad" - little inferiority complex there?

What Fordham has going for it is...

A HIGHER PERCENTAGE OF OUR GRADUATES END UP WITH GOOD JOBS.

Also, on journals, having more is a bad thing, because it means there's no prestige. At Fordham, anyone who wants one gets one, so if you're not law review, secondary journals mean sh*t. And Cardozo's LR is definitely NOT ranked higher or cited more than Fordham's - check out washington and lee's rankings. Cardozo well outperforms its rankings, but it gets cited 50% less than the FLR.

NYLS has the hottest girls in the city, because they are the dumbest.

Get with the program.

In response to:

"Fordham will ALWAYS have more partner alums in NY"

until those partners die...

Posted by: Anonymous | November 30, 2007 05:45 PM

The Fordham partners that do die will be replaced by new Fordham partners...

fordham graduates about 400 poeple every year, just be sheer attrition, there will always be a ton of Fordham associates and partners at BigLaw...

It seems to me, based on an earlier post, that at most, about 85 Dozo grads got biglaw this past summer (that will change next summer with the legal market's hiring slump)....

I'd wager that Fordham has about 2-300 grads going to Biglaw every year ...

75% of BIGLAW associates leave their firm in 3-5 eyars...

so at the partnership point, there will always be more fordham grads around for the partnership slots...its pure math, a numbers game...

brickbreaker - i know plenty of NYLS girls who think they're smart

also, i think all girls trying to be lawyers are stupid in some way (unless they're hot - then they dont need to be anything) - havent they ever heard of the double standard?

5:54,
makes sense. but who cares? NYC is going to be underwater in 30 years due to global warming. I'm not sticking around to make partner just so I can lose my apartment to the fishies....

who enjoyed the law school halloween mixer???? weeeeee ooooooooooooo!!!!

I went to NYU. Over the years I've interviewed probably interviewed over 100 2Ls from each FU and doza. No comparison. Many many more idiots at doza. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Look at the lawyers in this town - lots of idiots pass the bar.

5:41 - Your comment that "[t]he good legal hiring market has played a part in [the top 1/3 of Cardozo 2Ls and 3Ls receiving biglaw offers]..." is somewhat misleading. The good legal hiring market has played a MAJOR, if not decidedly critical, role in the fact that Cardozo students in the top 1/3 are receiving offers from Biglaw. Ask any '04 or '05 grad from Fordam, Cardozo, BLS or St. John's and they would agree. Be thankful that the economy has created a need for these students at Biglaw. It won't last forever...

I went to NYU. Over the years I've probably interviewed over 100 2Ls from each FU and doza. No comparison. Many many more idiots at doza. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Look at the lawyers in this town - lots of idiots pass the bar.

I went to both Fordham and Cardozo because I am so pimp by being a blasian. Hines Ward and Tiger Woods aint got nothing on me.

05 Fordham Grad,
I agree...
With the recent benign lay offs at some firms in NY, next summer's OCI will be far less generous to Cardozo.

I guaratnee that the alleged 1/3Dozo with Biglaw this year, if true, will prove to be a huge anomaly.

also...a poster above said that about 75-80 kids had Biglaw...but didnt define "biglaw"...are we talking about v100? Amlaw 100? or just any firm that pays at least 145?

6:01 is dead on. Now that the legal market is starting to contract, and will continue to go south for at least a couple of years, the recruiting numbers will return to normal.

Instead of Cardozo placing 25-30% in Biglaw, it'll go back to 10-15%.

Similarly, for Fordham, instead of 55-60% getting Biglaw, it'll go back to the traditional 1/3.

I'd wager that once fordham tears down this shitehole of a prison disguised as a law school and builds a new school commesurate with the quality of students and facutly, we'll inch closer to the t-14...at least on par with Cornell, Gtown, BU, and Gwashington....

I mean honestly, I personally would have picked Fordham and NYC over Cornell (glorified SUNY) in bumblefuck Ithaca...not even a train station!

the list of summer placement for 2007 given to us by OCI were all V100 firms.

cardozo kids have inferiority complexs....

fordham know they're not better than or equal to NYU/COlumbia....

Cardozo refuses to admit Fordham is that much better than them....stop using your top kids to justify your entire school's existence - by several admissions - its the free scholarship money that got you to go there...now live with your money and your lower prestige! fordham kids go to fordham despite the NO MONEY....get over your free money - enjoy it and your biglaw gig...but our lower ranked students will enjoy their biglaw jobs right next to your law review behinds....

Harvard=Yale > COlumbia = NYU > FOrdham > Cardozo=BLS > St. Johns = NYLS > CUNY

but damn i iwish fordam got a new school - i absoultey despise going to that school and using the library...and im a 3rd year who is actually satisfied with Fordham having turned down higher ranked non-nyc schools....

I actually know several people who turned down cornell for fordham - it is a glorified SUNY....luckily for them they are part of some historical league or something...

- NYC versus Ithaca....hmmmmmm

Fordham 2L at 3:33:

Assuming the sets are otherwise identical, and your assumed facts are accurate that 10% of Cardozo grads rec'v biglaw offers and 50% of Fordham grads rec'v biglaw offers, your chances of making 160k are not 40% higher at Fordham than at Cardozo. They are 400% higher.

HTH.

Anon III,
No one said that lawyers excelled at math...if we did, we wouldnt have wasted time going ot law school and would be 3rd year analysts at an i-bank now or working at a hedge fund...

Furthermore, even Fordham's evening students place better in BIGLAW than the day students at Dozo and BK . . . to the chagrin of the other Fordham day students...

6:16, Fordham will never be anywhere CLOSE to top 14. Live with the fact that you go to a shitty school. You can still get jobs in NYC, so don't worry.

6:25, you're unable to express yourself in writing and are an embarassment to your shitty school.

FU 2L -

More precisely, you'd either be working at an i-bank now, or out partying, telling the girlies you have hedge fund, seeing as it's 6:40 on a Friday.

27 year old hedgies to $1,190k!

From my understanding, the NYC breakdown looks something like this:

NYU/Columbia
Fordham
Cardozo/Brooklyn
NYLS

Fordham is well-regarded, particularly in NYC, but still not on the same level as NYU/Columbia.
Likewise, Cardozo is well-regarded, particularly in NYC, but still not on the same level as Fordham.
I do think at this point, Cardozo is slightly better regarded than Brooklyn, and as Cardozo is such a relatively new school, that gap is growing. However, there is still a ways to go before Cardozo is considered on the same level as Fordham.
As far as 'Biglaw' placement goes, I think the days of exclusively top-10% at Cardozo are past, but it still doesn't have the top 25-33% placement that Fordham does. I'd say Cardozo probably places top 10% easily in Biglaw, with the top 15% having a decent shot and the top 25% having some shot. Beyond that, you better do something outstanding to get noticed.

woohoooo!!!

clusterf+++k!!!

now will we all just get over ourselves and our inferiority complexes? both fordham and cardozo???

BTW...im a fordhamite

I don't think that Fordham will approach the general t-14 for a while, but I will say that some point after we have a new biulding, we will be close to on par with cornell, BU, GW, and GULC...epseically if youre looking at NY job placement

I don't think that Fordham will approach the general t-14 for a while, but I will say that some point after we have a new biulding, we will be close to on par with cornell, BU, GW, and GULC...epseically if youre looking at NY job placement

FU 2L, maybe Fordham isn't getting that new building because it wants its students to have a skapegoat for why no one gives a shit about their "law school?"

Anonymous,
If no one gives a shit about Fordham, then why are you wasting your precious time posting on a blog about Fordham? Obviously, at least you...and the other tools posting here, give a shit about fordham...

ummm fordham to t-14

I dont think so

cardozo to fordham...?

maybe in 20-30 years...

but even then...there's something to be said about cardozo ---"ASPIRING" to be compared equivalent to Fordham....

AHAHAHAHHAAHHAHA

I guess i misspoke...I didnt mean to say that Fordham would be a t-14 ...but that in the near future, after the new building is completed , in the eyes of NY, and norhteast BIGLAW firms....Fordham will be considered more on par with Cornell, GW, GULC, BU, and Emory...but still lag well behind the t-10 and Uva/duke

FU 2L: Just stop talking.

I think it will take Dozo 15+ years to be regard on par with Fordham.

The interesting thing about Cardozo is it's location on the precipice of big law employment. You see people with many offers (top 15-20%), those who are happy they have there 1 or 2 (top 20-33%), and the other HALF who doesn't have anything and are understandably

bitter/worried/frustrated/depressed. It's a very awkward place to be as a 2L during OCI. people who have offers talk about them in huddled clusters in journal offices (they don't want to alienate their less fortunate peers or seem like pompous douches), while those without jobs don't talk about not having a job because of embarassment.

the social dynamics are interesting and unfortunate. what hasn't really discussed (one post has touched upon it), is the interviewing lottery mechanisms the schools have.

Cardozo requires any firm that comes on campus to allow 15% of the schedule to be randomized based on rankings made by the students. Fordham has the 60/40 program. Fordhamites, please provide some details on this. It seems like it does a better job of spreading the big law love down the class ranks.

If Cardozo is so great, why did their admissions dean, who presided over their rise, jump ship to go to UCLA?

7:23: Please never write anything again.

7:24:

The same reason why half of top 10% at both schools transfer to NYU/Columbia...
move on to bigger and better things, DUH!
maybe he was from the west coast, maybe they gave him more $$...

no matter what, it is not a indicator of cardozo "false awesomeness"

It would be very good if Cardozo made it as a recognized tier-1 school, if only for the sake of its namesake.

7:24,
Because UCLA is a much higher ranked school. Duh. Nobody will argue that with you. Cardozo's prestige isn't that of UCLA. However, Cardozo is a good school to be at. The fact that its so NEW and that its rising so quickly in NY is astonishing. Where it will be 10 years from now will probably be much different than today (hopefully, and most likely, for the better).

i doubt that in 15-20 years dozo will be on par with fordham (requiring a 25 jump in the rankings)...furthermore, I think that Fordham will also rise in the ranksings to be on better par with Emory, BU, and GW...and maybe even Cornell and GULC (at least in the eyes of NY BIGLAW firms)

At fordham, the 60/40 system works like this:
you bid on 35 firms and rank them. Let's say that firm X will interview 100 students at Fordham.
Of that 100 students, 60 are pre-screened by XX firm, usually by GPA cut off.

The other 40 get their interviews based on lottery where the firms have no say in who it interviews - in other words, Fordham is telling these firms, if you want to interview these 60 kids you pre-screened, you HAVE to interview these other 40 kids who want to work at your firm...

so it works out that if you're on the borderling gpa cut off for that firm (say the firm only interviews top 10% at Fordham - like Simpson), if you're in the top 15-20%, you have a pretty good shot of having a callback and offer if you interview really really well, have a great resume (which they would ahve overlooked in pre-screening).

This really helps out kids in the 33%-66% who otherwise would not get interviewed....primarily with the v50-v100 firms. So, for example, I know quite a few kids 33%-50% who "preferenced" (40% ers) firms like Dewey, schulte, Stroock, Mckee, KL Gates, etc, who got offers

Even schools like UVA can't say that 40% of their interviewees arent pre-screened.

Of course, if you're an idiot, you can fuck up...like, if you are top 25% but apply to simpson or any of the v10 firms, you're gonna get dinged and it will be a jerkoff interview. If you play the game right, you can have a ton of callbacks and offers.

Choosing whether to hire a Fordham or Cardozo 2L is like choosing between eating corn or peanuts....out of my own shit!

Get real, combine the schools, cut out the bottom half the first year. Save students the embarrasment and Big Law the hassle of rejecting these rejects.

I burn Fordham/Cardozo application packages to heat my Vermot ski lodge.

Choosing whether to hire a Fordham or Cardozo 2L is like choosing between eating corn or peanuts....out of my own shit!

Get real, combine the schools, cut out the bottom half the first year. Save students the embarrasment and Big Law the hassle of rejecting these rejects.

I burn Fordham/Cardozo application packages to heat my Vermont ski lodge.

I'm not normally one to point out bad grammar on a message board, but this paragraph is particularly bad:

"The interesting thing about Cardozo is it's location on the precipice of big law employment. You see people with many offers (top 15-20%), those who are happy they have there 1 or 2 (top 20-33%), and the other HALF who doesn't have anything and are understandably"

St. John's is better than either Cardozo or Fordham. Out here in Queens, we have less distractions but essentially equivalent access to the resources of New York. Plus, it's cheaper. And we have a more qualified student body judging by the admissions statistics. Frankly, let Cardozo and Fordham have at it--the real school hovering just below the NYU/Columbia radar is obviously St. John's.

ummm cardozo kids need something to make their decision to take the free money that much more prestigious...btw notice how cardozo is so good that people dont even take the time to actually know its proper pronunciation? heee heee - yeah I know its cardoza - but really who cares? man you cardozo kids sound as bad as those fordham kids who talk about how they were extra special waitlisted at COlumbia/NYU!

Get over yourselves and your inferiority complexes - if you were anywhere halfway near as secure in your school's wonderful "opportunities" you wouldnt be trying so HARD to convince us of how you arent a T2!

@5:40 (3):

Not to mention Library Total Square Footage, Non-Library Total Square Footage, and Total Law School Square Footage.

http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/intro_9th_general.htm#factors

Big deal, NYU is king. Columbia has a tenuous hold on #2 (fighting off the T3 and 4 schools), Cornell sucks the worst. Stop the presses!

wtf is cardozo? i've at least heard of cumberland.

Fordham students have jobs in Big Law. Cardozo students review contracts for $25/hr. That enough of a difference for you?

My V15 has only 2 (I think) Cardozo grads but we recruit there so I was sent to do on-campus interviews. I was definitely impressed by the resumes I saw/applicants I interviewed. However, we were told that only applicants on law review with impressive undergrad degrees/job experience would get callbacks. I don't think anyone eventually received an offer.

By contrast, when I interviewed at my alma mater (Fordham) it seemed as though anyone in the top 1/3 (and even some in the top 50% who went to great undergrads) received callbacks. Look, this is only anecdotal evidence, but I think it also reflects the conventional wisdom that going to a less well regarded/less selective school is a roll of the dice.

Cardozo is a damn good school and the school's reputation is improving. But it's a real stretch to say it's on par with Fordham at this point.

I assume that Cardozo had a higher passage rate than Cornell or Fordham because, like St. John's, the school's curriculum emphasizes the Exam and exam topics.

"7:24: The same reason why half of top 10% at both schools transfer to NYU/Columbia... move on to bigger and better things, DUH!
Posted by: Cardozo 2L | November 30, 2007 07:29 PM" > your figures are way off base. Columbia takes ~ three students from Cardozo and Fordham each year. NYU might take more, but that's because transfer students don't affect the admit statistics and, by extension, the rankings, for which NYU has been known to go to extreme measures (e.g. lying about library holdings, a practice cited in a MSM article circa 2002).

Which schools are first? NYU and St. Johns?

:-P

Our old admissions dean was from NY and was a Cardozo alum, but I guess it is understandable to have left the 4th best law school in NY for the lifestyle of Southern Calif. while working for the best law school in SoCal.

Cornell is not a glorified SUNY. There are some land grant undergraduate colleges, e.g. the School of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, graduates of which are second only to Harvard undergrads in percentage admitted to HLS (author passes no judgment on the wisdom of this practice). Cornell Law School is not a land-grant school, and its graduates may bask in the prestige associated with an Ivy League institution. The NYC component of Cornell Law School's OCI process takes place in NYC. Say what you want about the merits of Ithaca vs. NYC, but don't ever speak of Cornell and Fordham in the same breath. Some people might choose the pursuit of knowledge against a scenic background over sitting around in an overcrowded, decrepit 1970s facility near the horse shit border of Central Park.

*Also, the Hughes dinining hall in Cornell Law School makes a mean chocolate chip panckake.

Cornell is not a glorified SUNY. There are some land grant undergraduate colleges, e.g. the School of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, graduates of which are second only to Harvard undergrads in percentage admitted to HLS (author passes no judgment on the wisdom of this practice). Cornell Law School is not a land-grant school, and its graduates may bask in the prestige associated with an Ivy League institution. The NYC component of Cornell Law School's OCI process takes place in NYC. Say what you want about the merits of Ithaca vs. NYC, but don't ever speak of Cornell and Fordham in the same breath. Some people might choose the pursuit of knowledge against a scenic background over sitting around in an overcrowded, decrepit 1970s facility near the horse shit border of Central Park.

*Also, the Hughes dinining hall in Cornell Law School makes a mean chocolate chip pancake.

good to hear cornell on this row....too bad they are in Ithaca....hahahaha

btw other IVIES laugh at you!!

If Cornell was even close to other other Ivies...why does it accept the TTT practice of shclepping to NY to be interviewed...(which is what Bc, BU, and Tulane students have to do). If they were anywhere near their alleged peers in prestige...NY Law firms would go to Ithaca to interview...since NY Law firms go to Harvard, UVA, Penn, Gtown, Chicago, and Yale to conduct their interviews. The only thing keeping cornell anywhere near t-14 is its history as once being part of the ivy league...(but then again, wasnt Rutgers?)...

however, i'll concede that the only thing keeping Fordham nipping on the heels of Cornell, etc...is its location in NY...if Fordham moved to Ithaca...its grads would be fithging with SUNy Buffalo for miDLAW

Ithaca gets an unfair rep. No, it's not NYC: It is a charming college town in upstate new york. You take what comes with that when you attend Cornell Law: great food, extremely tight-knit (and relatively small) law school community, cheap prices (rent, drinks, etc, about 1/3 of the cost of Manhattan), great schools for your kids, and bitterly cold (although very beautiful) winters. I'm sure there are some that have chosen Fordham over Cornell because of a strong desire or need to be in a big city; Ithaca is a tough job market for working spouses. But, for the most part, Cornell is not losing applicants to Fordham, or Cardozo, or GW, BU, BC, etc, simply because Cornell's nationwide placement offers a different set of opportunities for the average student. (I.e., if you're in the top of your class at Fordham, etc., you'll have many great opportunities . . . but falling out of that top % might be a matter of misreading a test question or falling ill one winter.)

like i said cornell admits DO pick lower ranked schools over cornell law...face it...NO Columbia admit or nyu admit would EVER pick fordham over it....cornell is middling and fordham will catch up near it so go get over your SUNY pride CORNIE!!!

7:24 - The dean of admissions went to UCLA because he had been at Cardozo for a really long time and realized that if he didnt make a move that would be the rest of his career. People do like to move occasionally. The really interesting thing is that the director of admissions from Columbia left Columbia to be the dean of admissions at Cardozo

I concur with 3L Fordham...

For those who are ONLY interested in practicing law in NYC...(like myself), it would be a no-brainer to pick Fordham over Cornell...especially if you want some sweet 1L summer internships or 2L fall/spring intenrships..

Furthermore, I cant even begin to count the number of judges and partners etc. i've met at fordham events in NY...i doubt many judges/parnters make it up to Cornell for a cocktali party, especially since they dont even interview in ithaca....

Cornell will soon be like the other almost-ivy....RUTGERS....

Okay..that last line was a joke...for national prestige..cornell is obviously the better choice, if you only care about living and working in NY, obviously, Fordham is the same...

Oh, and to clarify a few points:

BigLaw firms from most major cities DO come to Ithaca to interview. We also have an NYC job fair with other NYC, SF, LA, and DC BigLaw firms who don't want to wait for the on-campus interviews or for the late October regional job fairs. (Yes, I agree that Cornell's recruiting calendar makes very little sense.)

And not all of us are obsessed with NYC. I certainly wasn't, and, when applying, limited myself to T14 schools which I knew would give me placement opportunities in cities other than NYC. Turns out it was a good bet: My academic standing at Cornell wasn't anything to brag about (no latin honors), but I received offers from top law firms in NYC, DC, and CA.

And the spicy waffle fries at Hughes Hall are pretty damn good, too.

Fordham : respectable law schools

Cordozo : Fordham

7:56 - Your assumption is wrong. Cardozo doesn't emphasize NY Law at all. If you look at the curriculum, there are no required courses (except for ALR) after 1L. If someone wants to focus on NY Law, the courses are there, but it's by no means forced or mandated.

8:45-Martinidez was #2 at Columbia and was tired of being #2 to Nkonye Iwerebon, Columbia's dean of admissions, and wanted to run his own show. Not "really interesting."

NYU consistently has the highest bar passage rates (certainly always higher than HLS grads have on the NY bar - HLS being NYU's main competitor, not Columbia)

damn it feels good to be a gangsta

I'm not sure why everyone gets so defensive when someone says their school "focuses on the bar" or "emphasizes new york law."

Is that not why people went to law school? To pass the bar and become attorneys?

And even further, is that not why most people came to school in New York, to take the New York Bar Exam?

So what if a school focuses on the bar, more specifically the New York Bar. I say, more power to them.

Fordham is not, nor will it never be in the same league as cornell or GULC. But it is probably on the same level in NY as GW/BU/BC.

Columbia Law School is the NYC law school most consistently ranked 4th by U.S. News.

Wow... even the Cardozo logo looks all jewishy. I bet it says something like "Fordham sucks."

CORNELL IS A BAD LAW SCHOOL FILLED WITH LOSERS WHO CAN'T EVEN PASS THE BAR

John Sexton Pleads (and Pleads and Pleads) His Case
By JAMES TRAUB
Published: May 25, 1997
"JOHN SEXTON WOULD BE THE FIRST TO SAY that he is not wholly responsible for N.Y.U.'s rise, though whether this is genuine modesty or simple caution is impossible to know. N.Y.U. Law School was a humble institution located on two floors of a Greenwich Village office building when Arhtur T. Vanderbilt became dean in 1943. Vanderbilt created a scholarship program to draw bright students from around the country, and between the money that he raised and the real-estate deals that he forged, the law school was able to build Vanderbilt Hall, the brick, would-be-Ivy League structure that sits on Washington Square South and continues to house most of the law school's offices and classrooms.

Vanderbilt also had the inspired idea of buying the Mueller Macaroni Company, which supplied the school with a steady source of income. When the trustees sold the company in 1977, N.Y.U. became of the nation's richest law schools overnight. Norman Redlich, who became dean in 1975, went on a building spree that eventually added two dormitories, a vastly expanded library and a renovated building to house the school's clinical program. By the mid-80's, N.Y.U. was a nationally recognized law school, known for turning out tax lawyers for the big New York firms and dedicated advocates for Legal Aid and the A.C.L.U.

In the great law-school pecking order, though, it fell well below Columbia, its uptown rival, and it was not considered hospitable to the kind of theoretical inquiry then sweeping the lawschool world. ''There was a sense that being an intellectual was elitist,'' says Lawrence Sager, a constitutional-law professor at N.Y.U.

When Redlich announced that he was stepping down, Sexton, then a recently tenured professor, was the candidate of the theoreticians. His academic pedigree was impeccable: Harvard Law, Law Review and clerkships with Appeals Court Judge David Bazelon and Chief Justice Warren Burger. But Sexton was not a prominent scholar, and he was not distinguished only or even primarily by his credentials. He had a priestly way about him, with a hand on the arm and an ear always ready for confession. He loved the law school as if it were the Mother Church. But he was also worldly; he talked like a ward heeler, knew everyone's name and understood the importance of alliances. It was a gift he came by naturally: his grandfather had led the Jefferson Democratic Club in Brooklyn and was Jimmy Walker's Tax Commissioner; his father had been a Brooklyn lawyer, a frequenter of taverns and also a leader of the Jeffersons.

Sexton's skill as a political operator and his extravagant charm made some of his colleagues uneasy. They wondered, as Lawrence Sager says, whether Sexton was truly artless or whether he had in fact constructed an ''extraordinarily elaborate public persona.'' Sager says he's still not sure. And then there was the issue of ambition. ''He always struck people as a young man in a hurry,'' faculty member says.

But there was a good argument to be made that a young man in a hurry was exactly what the law school needed. Sexton and the people around him believed that N.Y.U. Law had to become the kind of school that atttracted talented scholars. When he became dean, Sexton preached fervently about a new kind of law school in which a model of ''engagement'' would replace the model of ''independent contractor.'' He offered young people the chance to join ''the Enterprise'' - the term he coined for a community of like-minded souls that at the time existed only in his imagination. "

How the hell did this become a Columbia/NYU debate?

9:45:
"How the hell did this become a Columbia/NYU debate?"

Self-importance

The title says it all . . .
Ivy Envy
By MARK LEVINE
Published: June 8, 2003
"Academic wooing makes other forms of romance seem straightforward in comparison. It begins in rumor and often ends in abject spurning; its convolutions occur somewhere near the juncture of Freudian psychology and economic game theory. Academic economists appear to have a peculiarly keen interest in continually testing their market value by flirting with interested schools. Yaw Nyarko, who has been at N.Y.U. since 1988, says ''it's taken for granted'' that some advance their salaries by getting the school to match an offer from somewhere else. As such, a department in the suitor's role often finds itself expending time, energy and self-esteem on what turns out to be an elaborate tease. According to Gale, a typical batting average in senior faculty recruitment is about .200 -- that is, two hires for every 10 offers. After a few years of being roundly rejected by their prospects, Gale and his colleagues began the 2001-2002 academic year wearily intending to chase six or seven recruits, in the hope of hiring one or two. The department had ''hit a wall,'' as one of its members, Jess Benhabib, puts it.

On Washington Square Park, though, loftier plans were being laid for economics. There, on the top floor of the Philip Johnson-designed red sandstone megalith that houses Bobst Library and the offices of the university's top administrators, John Sexton, dean of N.Y.U. Law School since 1988, was preparing to take over N.Y.U.'s presidency. Sexton had no particular interest in or knowledge of economics as a scholarly matter. What he had was a desire to generate a high-volume buzz around his vision for a new N.Y.U. In this vision, N.Y.U. would emerge as the school of the Pepsi -- or Mountain Dew -- generation: a vibrant upstart competitor to richer, tradition-laden places like Harvard and Princeton. N.Y.U. would be forward-thinking, Clintonesque in the breadth and voraciousness of its embrace and eager to capitalize on its downtown urbanity, aspiring, in Sexton's words, to be ''the world's first global university in the world's first truly global city -- the intellectual epicenter of the world's epicenter.'' Sexton had the bold strokes down. It was the opening move that eluded him. ''Where do we start?'' he recalls thinking. Then, suddenly, ''economics jumped out as an opportunity.''
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

During his reign at the law school, Sexton engineered the most stunning climb to the top in the recent history of American legal education. The school, which had barely broken into the ranks of the Top 20, came in the view of many observers to merit utterance in the same breath as Harvard, Yale and Stanford. It did this mainly through Sexton's relentless faculty recruitment, which involved spending at least 10 hours, and sometimes many more, in one-on-one sessions with faculty being considered for hire. Sexton sold his vision of a law school centered on the Enterprise. ''In the Enterprise, we want people who view their role in a university as a sacred trust,'' Sexton says. ''We want people who impose on themselves, daily, the requirement to answer affirmatively to the question, 'Am I living a useful life?' '' His plan worked surpassingly well. Between 1992 and 2002, Sexton persuaded three dozen senior professors to bolt from the likes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Virginia and Michigan. Sexton paid competitive salaries but refused to engage in ''free-agency bidding.'' The people who made good Enterprise players, he says, were not motivated primarily by money. Money, however, was instrumental to Sexton's ambitions for the law school, and his gift for raiding faculties was matched by his success at raiding sources of fund-raising. In 1998, he ended a seven-year fund-raising campaign that took in $185 million, at that time a record for a law school. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I decide to question Sexton about his sincerity -- to ask whether the Enterprise might not be construed as an elaborate marketing strategy, a way of selling N.Y.U. by positioning it as a hipper alternative to the better-heeled schools with which it wishes to compete for talent and money. After all, N.Y.U.'s endowment may be $1.1 billion, but on a per student basis that is a tiny fraction of Princeton's worth.

stop...

bu/gw aren't t-14

i like cardozo, i received (and kept) a full ride, the students and faculty are great, etc don't get me wrong... but i don't know who all the other cardozo people here are friends with.
i personally don't know anyone outside the top 15% who got a biglaw job, and most people i know will be working at V50-100. which isn't terrible. but it's not what i expected when i turned down fordham and other schools.
i agree that cardozo is on the rise, i think it will keep going up in the rankings every year. but that doesn't help all these people who thought they'd get jobs, but right now have absolutely no prospects (not me, but most of my classmates).

How do you tell the difference between a CLS grad and Hofstra grad?

you can't.

No person with a brain would ever go to anything in NY other than CLS, NYU, Cornell (in that order, unless you have a penchant for Ithacan Hippies).

The T-14 stuck for a reason: Nothing else has legit national reach (and even if you "know" you want to end up in NYC and you go to a non-T-14, employers still pity you and know you can't go elsewhere...cough, Bozo and any other school that sent me 12 glossy mailings each that I laughed at and promptly trashed).

Opening Arguments: Columbia, NYU Vie
To Become New York's Top Law School
By DANIEL GOLDEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 28, 2001

NEW YORK -- John Sexton, dean of New York University Law School, says that nobody who makes policy based on magazine rankings "should be allowed to walk the streets." But his detractors at Columbia University Law School accuse him of doing just that.

NYU, where classes began Monday, reduced its entering class this fall to 385 students from 426, sacrificing at least $1.2 million in tuition. While Mr. Sexton says the move is educationally motivated, his uptown rivals call it a transparent bid to leapfrog Columbia in the influential U.S. News & World Report law-school rankings. The magazine pegged Columbia fourth last year, one notch ahead of NYU.

"Their other tactics have failed," says James Milligan, Columbia's law-school admissions dean. "Now they're willing to take a giant financial hit to come closer to Columbia."

What Duke and the University of North Carolina are to college basketball, Columbia and NYU are to legal education: two evenly matched, ambitious neighbors, each perpetually seeking an edge. Separated by a 30-minute subway ride on the Broadway IRT, staid Columbia in Morningside Heights and brash NYU in Greenwich Village vie for students, faculty and Manhattan bragging rights.

"New York thinks the world revolves around New York," says Brian Leiter, a University of Texas law professor. Yale may be No. 1 in U.S. News, he says, but "being No. 1 in New York may matter more." (Stanford is currently No. 2, Harvard No. 3.)

More than half of Columbia's law applicants seek admission to NYU, and vice versa. Mr. Milligan says Columbia, whose school year begins next Tuesday, "dominates" in landing students accepted by both schools. Mr. Sexton disputes that. Neither school will divulge the numbers.

Both schools claim the third-largest law library in the country. NYU says Columbia's is fourth; Columbia says NYU's is eighth. The difference is that Columbia counts titles, while NYU counts volumes. One title -- say, a reference work -- may contain many volumes. Kent McKeever, Columbia's library director, suspects that NYU has bought loads of microfilm and microfiche documents in recent years to boost its ranking in U.S. News, which counts both volumes and titles. NYU denies any such intent.

In 1999-2000, when NYU overtook Columbia in U.S. News for a year, a Columbia student publication parodied NYU's dean. "We will not rest," its April Fools' issue quoted Mr. Sexton as vowing, "until we are the only law school in the top 10." This past spring, NYU's troupe of "Law Revue" students turned the popular song "Blame Canada" into "Blame Columbia."

Next year, emulating Duke-North Carolina and other undergraduate rivalries, the law schools plan to play each other in the inaugural Dean's Cup basketball game. "I can take [Columbia dean] David Leebron one on one," jokes the six-foot-tall Mr. Sexton, who has a three-inch advantage over Mr. Leebron. "The guy can't go to his left."

"Everyone's aware of the rivalry," says Noah Feldman, a former Rhodes scholar with an Oxford doctorate and a Yale law degree. Mr. Feldman, 31, was recently wooed by both schools as a professor and opted for NYU, impressed by its "exciting" young faculty in his field of constitutional law.

When the rivals were after John Witt, another junior faculty candidate, the 29-year-old specialist in legal history dined at the Gotham Bar & Grill, courtesy of NYU, while Mr. Leebron, the Columbia dean, treated him to lobster and Riesling at Jean Georges, on Central Park. Mr. Witt opted for Columbia, which also called in such heavyweights from its history department as Alan Brinkley to work on him.

Messrs. Leebron and Sexton, temperamental opposites, have vied with each other since their days together at Harvard Law School. The low-key Mr. Leebron, 46, vacations in France and has season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. The outgoing Mr. Sexton, 58 -- who will become president of NYU next spring -- is given to hugging reporters and other strangers. He has season tickets to the New York Knicks and Yankees, and is trying to kick his habit of drinking 20 cups of coffee a day.

In 1978, Mr. Leebron defeated his older classmate in an election for the coveted presidency of the Harvard Law Review. But in 1988, when both men were teaching at NYU, it was Mr. Sexton who plucked the plum job -- the deanship. Mr. Leebron soon left for Columbia.

At that time, Columbia's superiority went largely unquestioned. The Ivy League institution, alma mater to presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, regularly placed graduates in white-shoe firms and judicial clerkships. Even today, a higher proportion of Columbia graduates get clerkships; 19.5% to NYU's 15.1%, according to the American Bar Association.

NYU, whose graduates include New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his predecessor, Ed Koch, was known primarily for public-interest law and its association with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The mergers-and-acquisitions law firm, whose four founders earned their degrees from NYU, has donated heavily to the school.

NYU did have one advantage: a bigger endowment, the legacy of its 1976 sale of the Mueller Macaroni Co., which it had acquired decades earlier. Using his financial edge, Mr. Sexton raided top-flight schools for star faculty and bought million-dollar Greenwich Village townhouses as residences for them.

NYU has particularly ramped up in international law -- Mr. Leebron's scholarly specialty and a field Columbia once dominated. This year, NYU snared Harvard Prof. Joseph Weiler, a leading theorist on European Union issues, and Philip Alston of the European University Institute in Florence. Mr. Alston had been on the short list of potential candidates for a chair at Columbia.

In 1994, NYU became one of the first major law schools to give merit aid to top students. Columbia, reluctant to break with the Ivy League tradition of need-based aid only, responded with a smaller merit-scholarship program in 1999.

This year, both schools offered such aid to Shanna Bar-Giora, a Cornell University graduate who scored the maximum 180 on her LSATs. She chose Columbia. "NYU tried too hard to impress me," she says.

Aryeh Haselkorn, a second-year student at NYU, is glad he ended up there instead of Columbia, which waitlisted him. "All the people here are happy, and all my friends there are unhappy," Mr. Haselkorn says.

The rift between the schools -- and their deans -- widened in 1997, shortly after Mr. Leebron took over at Columbia. Mr. Sexton boasted in a New York Times Magazine interview that Columbia was "yesterday's war" and that he had "sucked dry" the faculty at another premier law school, the University of Chicago.

Afterward, he wrote a letter of apology to the Chicago faculty and, in a further show of remorse, publicly knelt down and kissed the shoes of Chicago's dean. But Mr. Sexton did not apologize to Mr. Leebron.

Columbia has boosted its endowment -- which now stands at $281 million -- past NYU's, which has $222 million. And after falling behind NYU for the first time in 1999-2000 in U.S. News, Columbia bounced back ahead, aided by an improved passage rate of graduates on the bar exam and a 9.9% boost in applications, which increased its selectivity. Mr. Leebron attributes the spike to "vigorous outreach," which lowered Columbia's acceptance rate to 17.4% of its applicants.

Columbia will have 357 first-year students this year, 28 fewer than NYU's pared-down enrollment. By admitting fewer marginal applicants, NYU generates a better student-teacher ratio, reduces its acceptance rate to 21% from last year's 22.2%, and raises its median LSAT score -- all points winners at U.S. News.

Mr. Sexton says his aim is to foster smaller classes, regardless of the rankings. Kenneth Kleinrock, the school's admissions director, says the goal is to avoid inconvenience during campus construction.

Yet while cutting law-student numbers, the school is increasing its contingent of foreign graduate students from 435 to 450. Although these students take regular law-school classes, they pursue master's degrees in law, so U.S. News doesn't count them. Columbia has about 160 such students.

Some insiders believe the law schools' feud will wane when Mr. Sexton steps up to the presidency of NYU. But if he has his wish, the rivalry may ratchet up a notch. Columbia University is looking for a president. Mr. Sexton's advice: Hire Mr. Leebron.

everyone knows NYU is slightly better than CLS but so what?
CLS needs to pull itself up by its bootstraps and make something of itself! by gum!

nyu undergrad = toilet-bowl student body

that is why I chose CLS

Columbia undergrad, Ivy > Cornell undergrad, Ivy > NYU undergrad, Olsen Twins > do any of the other schools even offer Ugrad degrees...

Dude, 252 comments? Y'all need a hobby or something...I got it, instead of arguing over law school library statistics, put yourselves in "Hot or Not?"

Note that Cornell has a very small student body. Just one person failing the bar exam drops Cornell's NY bar passage percentage by 1% or more. In other words, the difference between a 95% pass rate and a 91% pass rate is like 2-3 people. It's statistically insignificant; basically a natural variation.

At the NYC law factories, however, a whole lot of people have to fail to lower that passage rate by just 1%. In other words, you have a pretty large number of students at those schools who failed. But hey... at least they got to see the Barbri lectures in person.

but a whole lot of people have to pass too get get that rate up by 1%. cornell's very small student body is more evidence of how shitty the school is. they enroll like 20 people at that school and they still can't game their way into the top 10.

how do you tell a CLS grad from a Touro grad?

you can't.

Only an idiot would choose Cardozo over Cornell. Cornell is highly overrated, but its still miles better than Cardozo will ever be.

Teaching state law for 3 years might improve your bar passage rates, but try getting a job out of state (or even in NYC) with a Cardozo law degree!

10:09: I tried getting a job out of state.
I succeeded.

what's better, cumberland or cardozo? both are regional schools that no one's ever heard of . . .

no one gives a shit about new jersey.

11:11,
clearly you aren't living in NY and failed to land a job in a real city

Fordham has the tenth most employers participating in OCI - more than Yale.

You can have a 3.0 and Fordham and get into biglaw. I highly doubt the same can be said for Cardozo.

10:09 is well informed and absolutely right -- it must suck to waste three years taking bar prep classes, only to pass the bar and learn that you have zero out of state job prospects.

Here is one such sad example: http://www.skadden.com/index.cfm?contentID=45&bioID=113

Poor William S. Rubenstein couldn't even get a job at Skadden's Wilmington, DE office. Cardozo must really suck.

How do you tell the difference between a Fordham grad and a Cardozo grad?

The Fordham grad thinks his school is better than Yale.

As a 3L at Fordham once said, "I highly doubt the same can be said for Cardozo."

Dear AutoAdmit trolls,

Thank you for sucking your own dicks in front of the whole Internet. It's really brightened my Saturday at work.

Very truly yours,
a lawyer with a life

I never said that Fordham is anywhere near a good a school as Cornell...but based on metrics that are important to me...and to a lot of other people, Fordham comes pretty damn close.

for those, like me, who are ONLY interested in working/living in NYC....I'd say that Fordham is almost on par with Cornell...and if not now...will be in a relatively short period of time.

Solely in terms of NY job prospects, I'd wager that Fordham will soon come close to being on par with certain t-14 and t-20ish schools.

by the time our new building is bith, for NYC job prospects, i'd say that Fordham grads will have close to, if not similar opportunities as Emory, BU, GW, GULC, Vandy, and Cornell....and maybe even UVA...call me optimistic

Hard to believe that Fordham and Cardozo are fighting over who is best. Who really cares? If you aren't at NYU or CLS, you are clearly not at the top. If you turned down one of them for Fordham/Cardozo, you made a big mistake. If you MADE that mistake, you learned quickly, aced 1L, and transferred. Hence, all the Fordham/Cardozo people commenting are the ones who went to a lower-ranked school because they couldn't get in to a T14, then demonstrated the intelligence of the T14 recruiters by failing to get the grades necessary to transfer.

Rather than whine about who is best, perhaps you should be studying for finals -- there is still hope for you. A good GPA and class rank from either school will get you a decent job. Otherwise, have fun doing e-doc review in your cubicle.

Full disclosure: Fordham 2L, heading to 160k next summer, top 50%, turned down Cardozo, very happy at Fordham.

what difference does it make if you're top 50% at Fordham and landed a SA job in NY with 160K base? You won't be able to KEEP that job once you graduate if you've failed the bar...and seeing from the bar passage report, 50 of your graduating classmates failed the bar (and probably will be fired within the year at their Biglaw job unless they pass it in February).

None of you Fordham 2L's seem to be concerned with this fact because you all probably assume "I won't be one of those 50" just like when you argued to us Cardozo kids that we presumed that "we will be top 10%".

Be careful with your over-confidence because in 2 years you might be that sad guy who gets the pink slip at your v20 firm within 3 months of employment

If I do lose the job, will you make room for me in your doc review cubicle? After all, I'll have to pay back all that money the Cardozo students seem so worried about. $25/hour should do it . . .

Anonymous...not to jinx myself or anyoen else, but did it ever occur to you that the 11% of Fordham students who fail the bar on the first try are NOT the same students who will be working in BIGLAW? Did it ever occur to you that the 11% (50 failures) are the ones w/o jobs, working in Smalllaw or are in professions where passing the NY bar doesnt really matter

Or, the failures oculd be working at NJ, CT, or PA firms and took the NY Bar in addition to the bars of their home-firm state?

"If I do lose the job, will you make room for me in your doc review cubicle?"

FYI kids: There are no cubicles in doc review land. You will be sharing tabletops, subway-seating style in a windowless basement. Three to a table that is meant for one. You will be sharing germs and all the details of your tablemates' lives. With the associate layoffs coming, space could get even tighter as former big law associates clamor for $35/hour doc review gigs. It happened during the last recession, only the going rate then was $21 / hour. No one will care which marginally better law school you went to because all contract attorneys are (mis)treated equally.

The fact that so many Fordham people are on here sreaming until they are blue in the face that they are as good as Cornell/GULC confirms that they are not.

It's also pretty silly to argue that a few percentage point difference in bar passage rates defines the quality of the school. There's much more to the quality of a school than its bar passage rate, unless your school has a strong curriculum in rote memorization. The same goes for location - Ithaca may not be for everyone, but what does that have to do with the quality of the school? Going 200 miles from NYC is not like going to Mars. The ability of the school to attract top-notch faculty and students is not significantly affected.

This clusterfuck illustrates what makes law school and the legal profession more miserable than they need to be: petty one-upmanship at the hands of the insecure. The popcorn vs. peanuts out of one's own shit commenter said it best. People who rely on relative comparisons for the definition of their own self-worth will always be miserable. To use Lat-speak, most of you will forever be among the "great unwashed." As is evident from your fixation on rankings and starting salaries (and your constant reading of this blog's comment section instead of your casebooks), none of you seem to enjoy law as an academic pursuit, so my advice to you is to find some other interest and get a life. Work is going to suck so much more than law school, even law schools made more miserable by petty, competitive, insecure assholes. You may as well enjoy whatever free time you have now before you advance to the next level of tiers, rankings and pathetic, futile attempts to outdo your peers all for the attainment of ugly ends.

3:46,
it certainly did occur to me. But seeing as how you all claim that top 50% of the class gets Biglaw, it also occurred to me that there is probably a good chance that those with barely top 50% grades are likely to be the ones that also fail the bar. And as an aside, GPA is not the strongest indicator of success on the bar exam. Some people who are smart unfortunately fail, and some people who are idiots somehow slip through the cracks.

I think this conversation has gotten out of hand. The best thing we can do is put this in a different framework. For instance, I went to Fordham. I was lucky to get in there. I got dinged at Columbia and NYU both, which is fine, because I didn't deserve to get into either of them. There are many Cardozo students who are superior to me both in terms of intellect and in terms of work ethic. I've accepted all these things. But I have two other things going for me: these two things should explain why I feel good about myself despite all the shit that's been rained down on my alma mater.

1) I have a great Biglaw job. I've made it three years, and I'm not at all worried that I'm going to get fired now; and
2) I have seen a woman naked. In person. For free. And even if that was it, it puts me way ahead of almost all of you douches on this thread.

Have a great night!

I think 6:31 has made the definitive point here. At the end of the day, if you're the type of person who feels the need to celebrate your LSAT score or class rank on a blog, you aren't getting laid no matter where you go to school or where you work.

Also, do any of the people working at big law firms actually think their jobs don't suck? Am I fucking crazy or is the best case scenario for a law grad still garbage? What are you nimrods arguing about?

Fordham grads to naked women!

fordham rocks because we have coffee girl!....and i'd say we have more haisids than cardozo anyway!

as a fordham student - yes - we have douchebags who will holler loudest about why (desperation of the hopelessly insecure about their prestigyness) fordham is on par with gulc/cornell...whatever...but truly its no different than the douchebags at cardozo hollering with their free money - cardozo is just as good as fordham...suck up your T2ness until you climb in to the T1 till then stop hollering you are as much an embarrassment as the fordhamites talking about how they were "this" close to getting off the extra specialist waitlist at NYU or Columbia.

by the way our jews can kick your jews ass any day of the week! They are also much cooler! Fordham to T20!

And students are on this board for the simple fact most of us have finals in a week! How are we supposed to study/outline without procrastinating first on some stupid blog!

1:48 - clearly you are an insecure shit law student who i will crush under my heels in due time. just because you got into a shit school in a tier one city doesn't mean you will ever get laid. EVER.

I'm getting laid right now! Thank God for Fordham/Cardozo make-up sex!

All right, this flame war between the Cardozo students and Fordham students is ridiculous. Both are good schools, and if you pull your weight you will get a good job, despite the quasi-intelligible zingers the trolls on these comment threads toss out (normal person + anonymity + audience = total f***wad, due recognition to Penny-Arcade).

Furthermore, the comments portraying Cardozo as a honeypot for observant Jewish students of any stripe are entirely correct. I don't roll on Shabbos, I don't roll on holidays, and thus Cardozo was my first choice for law school. The school's location and IP program certainly didn't hurt either.

These comments, while entertaining, don't focus on the significance of this year's bar results. Cardozo has improved greatly since, even since I have graduated, but that does not mean it is gaining ground on Fordham.

I think these bar results speak more directly to the increased competitiveness of attending any law school in NYC. Fordham, Cardozo and Brooklyn all have LSAT scores that are much higher than similarly ranked schools because students want to be in the City.

Admission stats have generally increased faster and more steadily for NYC area schools than for schools in other areas. As these admission statistics improve, so do bar passage rates.

The most significant statistic is that this is the first time that students from NY schools passed at a higher rate than students from schools outside of NY. I imagine that this is a result of more students choosing NYC schools over other higher ranked schools – Fordham over GW, BU, Iowa, etc. – or Brooklyn and Cardozo over Tulane, Wisconsin, Bloomington, American, etc.

If this trend continues, Fordham will continue to rise in the rankings, perhaps even cracking the top 20; Cardozo will continue to rise and crack the top 50. Brooklyn might do the same.

There are two obstacles that prevent NYC schools from ascending the US News rankings unimpeded. The first is the reputation scores, which have the effect of preserving the status quo. The other is the cost of living adjustment that will keep schools like Iowa higher ranked than Fordham, and schools like Alabama higher ranked than Cardozo.

Hopefully, for me and the Fordham kids, our schools will continue to benefit from their prime location, and will continue to pick off higher ranked schools outside of NY in the same way that NYU and Columbia have picked off top schools like Michigan and Chicago. For now, I offer an olive branch to all other NYC schools, and perhaps some day a list of the very best schools will mirror a list of NY schools. Kind of how a list of the top Vault firms is more or less a list of firms in NY.

But are we all still agreed that Cornell is terrible?

2:00pm, how does cost of living hurt Fordham and the other TTT NYC law school's rankings?

Otherwise, I agree largely with your post, particularly in terms of market competitiveness driving out the Iowas, GWs, & Michigans of the world

According to Brian Leiter's "The U.S. News Law School Rankings: A Guide for the Perplexed," 9.75% of the overall US News score is the average per capita expenditures for instruction, library, etc. He notes that this figure is adjusted for differences in cost of living. Leiter further explains:

"In 1999-a consequence of U.S. News having hired someone with expert knowledge of statistics-they made perhaps the single most dramatic change in their methodology: they started adjusting per capita expenditures . . . to reflect differences in cost-of-living. The results were so dramatic-Albama turned up in the top 50, Fordham and Boston College dropped out of the top 25 (BC has since returned)-that in 1999 U.S. News stopped printing the "Faculty Resources" rank (as they call this category): it would have been too obvious how this irrelevant expenditures category had skewed the rankings."

the difference between cornell and any of the nyc schools is that you graduate from cornell law and you know every single person in your class of 180-200. cornell grads (both law and other) want to interview and hire you, there is a real community up in ithaca and it extends worldwide after graduation.

columbia, nyu, fordam, etc. you go to class, go home, you know a couple people in your section. that's the end of it. you share a degree, you couldn't even name 10 people in your class whom you've had conversations with.

I DON'T CARE WHAT ELSE IS SAID ABOUT CARDOZO ON THIS BOARD BUT HEAR THIS. THE SCHOOL DOES NOT TEACH THE BAR EXAM. THERE IS ONLY ONE CLASS OFFERED THAT IS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT NEW YORK LAW. IT IS NOT A REQUIREMENT. NOT EVERYONE TAKES IT.

CARDOZO STUDENTS KNOW AS LITTLE ABOUT NEW YORK LAW ON THAT FIRST DAY OF BARBRI AS DO THE KIDS FROM NYU, COLUMBIA, CORNELL AND FORDHAM.

Thanks.

6:26- Brian Leiter is a dubious source of info on USNWR rankings, as he has made a career out of trying to crap all over them.
That being said, assuming that Leiter is right, it seems like this is a logical thing to do, as NYC costs more than Alabama, etc.

9:49- Chip on the shoulder much?

I wish Cardozo would teach students not to type in all caps.

why is everyone so plagued by insecurity and self-doubt, that they feel the need to build themselves up by constantly tearing others down?

i went to penn and have been working at s&c for a few years now. both institutions are respectable, but yes, i'm aware that they're not as good as yale and wachtell. just like i'm aware that no law firm is as good as gs or kkr. but that doesn't that make me feel compelled to say, as 3:40pm does, "are we all still agreed that Cornell is terrible?"

we're all trying to make our way, and we all have our own definitions of success. and really, by any sensible definition of the word "success," most of us can call ourselves very successful. so can we please stop trying to shit on each other all the time?

10:09, typing in all caps means that you're yelling. I was yelling.

There are too many people on this board who (in some cases, admittedly) "assume" that Cardozo students readily pass the bar because the school teaches the test. Not true. New York Practice, the only NY-based class, is an elective, three-credit course that many students do not take. In fact, the school's curriculum (thanks in part to its emphasis on IP, comparative law and constitutional issues) is highly theoretical compared to other non-top tier schools.

The fact is that Cardozo students have abnormally high LSAT scores--i.e., the school is recruiting students who are obviously good at taking tests. They pass the bar because they are just as good as Fordham and Cornell students at learning the material in a short time and working under pressure on the test.

I'm not saying that Cardozo as a school is as good or better than Fordham or Cornell, but its students may be, at least at passing the New York bar exam.

That's all.

-------

Quote: "If this trend continues, Fordham will continue to rise in the rankings, perhaps even cracking the top 20; Cardozo will continue to rise and crack the top 50. Brooklyn might do the same.

There are two obstacles that prevent NYC schools from ascending the US News rankings unimpeded. The first is the reputation scores, which have the effect of preserving the status quo. The other is the cost of living adjustment that will keep schools like Iowa higher ranked than Fordham, and schools like Alabama higher ranked than Cardozo."

Well said. NYC schools are much better than most of the schools ranked above them. This goes for Fordham (def T20 material) Cardozo (Tier 1 Probably around 30-40) and Brooklyn (Tier 1 Probably 35-45). Their LSAT and GPA are much higher than the rank indicates but because Judges and Deans outside NYC never heard of them, they suffer badly in the reputation ranking.

There are several states in which bar passage rates don't match up with USNWR rankings. I haven't looked at the statistics in awhile, but I remember that Duke had the lowest bar passage rate at one point in NC. I did not go to Duke (or any school in NC), but I always assumed that this would be the case b/c the higher ranked schools don't draw in as many local students who plan to stay in the area after graduation. I personally didn't care about learning state laws in the state where I went to law school because I didn't plan to stay there.

2:14- Brooklyn will never break into Tier 1

"2:14- Brooklyn will never break into Tier 1"

That's the point. The NYC schools can't go up higher using their reputation scores. People outside NYC never heard of them so they give them low marks.

The NYC schools (beside NYU Columbia) can only go up the rankings via other methods i.e. bar passage, ratio etc....

USNWR' ranking just perpetuate the status quo.

So when is BigLaw going to look beyond top 10% at Cardozo? I'm top 25% and BigLaw firms will not even accept my resume for on camput recruiting.

In response to whichever Fordham person was saying that Cardozo students not in the top 15% get shafted by administration, I have to agree. I had some interviews during OCS as a student in the middle of the class but it was because of connections. If it was up to the administration or career services here at Cardozo I would not have taken any OCS time.

I also agree that our rank holds strong to the NYC location and the local alumni network. Our youth may be a factor in keeping us down, but that also goes to the faculty who remain from the school's inception who are here because they were here in the beginning but are not a reflection of the depth of the faculty as it is today. Frankly, many should have retired because they are not of the same calibur and the students know who they are and avoid their classes. They are the few people who were lucky to have been here when something good was starting.

I hope Cardozo continues to seek talented faculty and students. I respect my classmates and believe many of them to be just as capable and intelligent as students from top schools. Among my classmates, the ones who work hard, shine brightest and receive the jobs. To a certain degree one could say that Cardozo holds back the students not at the top of the class because we dont deserve the jobs with the top salaries at the most prestigious firms. Cardozo brings quality control to the NYC law firms by only letting those most focused, inustrious and talented students to pass through their doors and enter the elite firms.

I wish I had performed at that level during my first year, but I didn't, so I lose out on those opportunities. Yes, I am bitter and so are the others who find themselves in my position, but perhaps we are not cut out for that--if we had taken advantage of the resources here maybe we would be.

Don't put Cardozo down for being a school of wannabes. We are all here for a reason and no one here has any misconceptions regarding why they never made it off the specialist wait list to whatever spiffy institution that would have made Grandma prouder--we do however, have a sense of self preservation and it appears from this page's commentary so does everyone else.

7:23: Very interesting - I didn't know that about Cardozo's OCI. I know when I was at Brooklyn there was no such animal and the results were grim.

I don't really see why people are talking about Fordham vs. Cardozo. This isn't even the first time Cardozo has surpassed Fordham's bar passage rate.

Although, I guess it does say something that no school (not even Fordham) has ever disrupted the top three until now. It is particularly impressive that it was a young school that broke such a long standing legacy.

i left fordham for CLS and can confidently say that in terms of my summer job prospects, it made a negligible difference.

8:05: CLS takes far more than 3 Cardozo/Fordham transfers. (there are at least 7 from FU alone this year).

bottom line, it's a personal decision based on risk aversion. i went to fordham in lieu of free rides at bklyn/cardozo, and moving to cls meant giving up a sizeable merit scholarship at fordham. i still question these decisions, but tell myself it's insurance. i am paying an overinflated premium to cover for the off chance that my grades plummet, and i hate it, but it's a necessary evil because nothing is a given. just like job success and just like job satisfaction. maybe one day one's law school and one's legal career can be truly personal, genuine choices and not the result of the self-fulfilling mob mentality of a bunch of insecure kids (myself included) who have no idea what they are getting themselves into.

anon 2L, it's "ones" you Fordham retard.

I agree with anon 2L - it really does come down to security and the higher up your school is the more you have the lower ranked you are in your class. BAr passage is a small thing in comparison to actually being able to get the job you want. T14 have better career prospects and thats why only a gambler would take a free ride or massive scholarship at a lower ranked school - granted its a good start if you are not indebted like other people but it doesnt mean you get the position you want or the opportunity to even try. Faith in your self is wonderful but in a system thats stacked to only allow a certain number of grades you cant guarantee anything no matter how hard you work because it all comes down to how everyone else does in comparison to you and you CANT control that at all. You could have a section of 170LSATers but it wont matter because the system is set up to only give out A's to a limited number of people.

I agree with anon 2L - it really does come down to security and the higher up your school is the more you have the lower ranked you are in your class. BAr passage is a small thing in comparison to actually being able to get the job you want. T14 have better career prospects and thats why only a gambler would take a free ride or massive scholarship at a lower ranked school - granted its a good start if you are not indebted like other people but it doesnt mean you get the position you want or the opportunity to even try. Faith in your self is wonderful but in a system thats stacked to only allow a certain number of grades you cant guarantee anything no matter how hard you work because it all comes down to how everyone else does in comparison to you and you CANT control that at all. You could have a section of 170LSATers but it wont matter because the system is set up to only give out A's to a limited number of people.

I agree with anon 2L - it really does come down to security and the higher up your school is the more you have the lower ranked you are in your class. BAr passage is a small thing in comparison to actually being able to get the job you want. T14 have better career prospects and thats why only a gambler would take a free ride or massive scholarship at a lower ranked school - granted its a good start if you are not indebted like other people but it doesnt mean you get the position you want or the opportunity to even try. Faith in your self is wonderful but in a system thats stacked to only allow a certain number of grades you cant guarantee anything no matter how hard you work because it all comes down to how everyone else does in comparison to you and you CANT control that at all. You could have a section of 170LSATers but it wont matter because the system is set up to only give out A's to a limited number of people.

anon 2L....I know 3 people in my section from Fordham who transferred (upgraded) to Colubmia...all of them turning down significant (mostly full-scholarships) to continue on at Fordham...

I personally would not have made such a choice because I know that if my grades/journal were good enough to transfer to CLS...then I'd have the same job prospects graduating from CLS as From Fordham (except for Wachtell)

IMHO...it ONLY makes sense to trasnfer to Colubmia/NYU from Fordham IF:
1) you are a prestige whore
2) you have any desire to clerk (especially for COAs or SCOTUS)
3) If you want to teach, i dont even think that Fordham Law hires Fordham Law grades as tenured professors
4) If you want to be in upper echelon gov't/DOJ/USAO...though that can be done from Fordham as well
5) Work at Wachtell...

The difference in getting into a top law school---or tier 3------can you do the logic games on the lsat-----students with a 780 on the sat--can't do the logic games-----it's the only difference.

The difference in getting into a top law school---or tier 3------can you do the logic games on the lsat-----students with a 780 on the sat--can't do the logic games-----it's the only difference.

The difference in getting into a top law school---or tier 3------can you do the logic games on the lsat-----students with a 780 on the sat--can't do the logic games-----it's the only difference.

The writing is on the wall Fordham will be T14 (not Cardozo) in not so distant future and that is long term equity for a degree holder.

Esp one who might want to change jobs/careers 10 years out the gate. It is a present value investment in its future return as well. I would def turn down $$ for a lesser school for the long term gain of a Fordham Law degree.

The line between Fordham Law and NYU is blurring on the street as we speak. Imagine 10 years from now.