Home › Forums › Yeshiva / School / College / Education Issues › BTL or Regular Degree
- This topic has 59 replies, 17 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 11 months ago by Veltz Meshugener.
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January 15, 2015 8:37 pm at 8:37 pm #1054649popa_bar_abbaParticipant
Is your niece Adriaan Lanni? That’s my guess.
January 18, 2015 5:16 am at 5:16 am #1054650Ex-CTLawyerParticipantpopa_bar_abba
This is not the name of my niece, but I would be proud to have such an accomplished woman in the family.
January 18, 2015 11:06 am at 11:06 am #1054651popa_bar_abbaParticipantOk, then my next guess is Judge Gertner. (There are only three choices, btw. There’s only 3 women teaching first year criminal law according to the website.)
January 18, 2015 11:59 pm at 11:59 pm #1054652popa_bar_abbaParticipantBrony: You should more accurately say you have a job lined up at a v10 firm.
January 19, 2015 7:55 pm at 7:55 pm #1054653Veltz MeshugenerMemberI feel so relieved at having told the truth about my real identity that I am going to share a couple things I gleaned from reading law school and law firm message boards and blogs.
1. Confusing Penn and Penn State is an old meme and it did yeoman’s work for Brony, getting the law students to laugh and everyone else to think he was misguided.
2. In some ways, it’s a hundred times easier to go the yeshiva -> law school route. Ivy league (& equivalent) students other than yeshiva guys have survived a culling process that eliminates people at every stage for having a bad semester, taking the wrong courses, not having enough “extracurriculars”, even in some instances not having enough family money. Contrast that with the average yeshiva guy, who, so long as he stays enrolled, can maintain a good enough GPA.
On the other hand, I don’t think admissions offices are stupid, certainly not once they Google search and hit this thread. Nor are firm recruiters stupid. Anecdotally (though I challenge Brony to disprove this), yeshiva guys need an LSAT 3-5 points higher to get into school. They also need to do better in school to get jobs.
Moreover, while yeshiva -> law school seems like a bit of a loophole, there is no free lunch. If you haven’t learned to study for and take exams, then, all else being equal, you will need to work harder and it will take some time to learn. If you don’t have the social experience of your classmates, or the vocabulary, or the polish, you will be at a relative disadvantage. This is why yeshiva guys underperform their admission numbers in law school admissions and underperform their grades in firm hiring. This is also why people who have semicha (again anecdotally) do better in law school while people who slacked in yeshiva do worse. And to wrap things up a bit, the successes almost universally come at the higher tail. Yeshiva guys who are substantially more gifted than the median T14 student can hope to do as well as the median T14 student.
January 21, 2015 9:41 pm at 9:41 pm #1054655frumnotyeshivishParticipantVM – “yeshiva guys underperform their admission numbers in law school admissions”…
PBA has vehemently disagreed with that. No one has objective numbers. Your way makes sense. His way doesn’t. You have my vote.
January 21, 2015 11:14 pm at 11:14 pm #1054656popa_bar_abbaParticipantI don’t deny that at all. BTLs underperform their admission numbers in gaining admission. But then overperform in school. The two prior sentences may have a causative relationship.
January 22, 2015 12:24 am at 12:24 am #1054657frumnotyeshivishParticipantPerhaps I misunderstood VM. Either way I strongly believe that BTL’s have lower law school gpa’s relative to their lsat score. You disagree with that. My way makes sense.
January 22, 2015 1:59 am at 1:59 am #1054658popa_bar_abbaParticipantAnd I think my way makes sense. See, this is what I’m talking about. It takes a yeshiva guy to notice that one boich sevara is as good as another.
January 25, 2015 2:29 am at 2:29 am #1054659Veltz MeshugenerMemberI meant to make both claims. It’s pretty obvious from what I’ve seen that the frum students at any top law school have better numbers than other students. I have less evidence to suggest, although I believe it is true, that generally, yeshiva graduates underperform in law school as compared to their classmates with similar numbers. This second point comes with the caveat that I believe, although with even less evidence, that the difference is explained when you account for other relevant factors. For example, I believe that if you look at people with semicha, the difference would disappear, because yeshiva graduates with semicha have experience regularly and systematically studying for tests that involve application of law to facts. As I said above, if you don’t have the “procedural” skills, you will underperform regardless of what your raw intelligence allows you to get on the LSAT after a few months of studying.
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