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I agree that there is not necessarily a phenomenon, because people have been going off the derech as long as there has been that option. It’s not a coincidence that with expanding freedoms came mass “shmad”, e.g. with German emancipation, immigration to America, the rise of communism, etc.
The advantage of seeing it as a phenomenon is when it calls attention to certain problems that cause individuals to go off the derech, such as abuse, poor representations of frumkeit, bad parenting, and other such things.
But it’s a disadvantage when people think that the litmus test in determining whether things are proper is whether they will send people off the derech. It’s wrong to hit people, whether it makes them go OTD or not. It’s wrong to espouse certain extreme views of Yiddishkeit, whether it makes people go OTD or not. Those things are wrong to the people who stay frum and the people who don’t, equally.
This post is dedicated to PBA.
There are many positive attributes that President Obama has.
1. He came from an somewhat unstable background, having been raised by his grandmother after his parents split and basically abandoned him, and he overcame that to become president of the United States.
2. Unlike the overwhelming majority of people who enter top law schools with high-minded ideals and then forget their ideals and work for corporate law firms for lots of money, Obama returned to community work when he graduated.
3. He embodies personal ideals, such as integrity and family stability.
4. He is articulate and well presented, both important attributes for a leader.
5. Jews who look back at the times when we were denied entry into various countries because of immigration quotas should look well at a president who understands that the majority of immigrants are honest hardworking people who are only seeking a better life for their families, and does not intend to round these people up and ship them off. Jews who remember those times and also want cheap cleaning help should appreciate it even more.
Once you get past the racism and hyperbole and understand that both Romney and Obama are inherently decent, incredibly accomplished people who simply have different visions for the ideal America, it is possible to see the recent race as a choice between a candidate who can be America’s CEO, efficiently running the country to get the best possible return during his time as president, and one who is a properly dignified leader, a strong figure who stands for many of our important values, can represent us in a positive light to the world, and can more generally guide the country on the basis of core ethics and ideals.
Notasheep: Maybe my comment wasn’t clear. I was saying that since the point of reading is to expand your horizons, looking for books that specifically won’t do that is a fool’s errand.
You’ll be pleased to find out, Oomis, that young Black people in New York can get stopped, manhandled and frisked without committing any crime at all. So you can feel at least somewhat safe.
Also, while it’s easy to pretend that there’s some sort of vendetta against frum people, there’s also a non-trivial case to be made that Pollard essentially handed over American tactical secrets to the Russians at the height of the cold war. Now that Putin is restoring the Russian autocracy, you probably are safer with him behind bars.
I think there are two distinct issues here. The first (just because one has to be first) is whether the restaurant was discriminating. It seems that it was, and that is indefensible.
But the second question is how we should react to this story, and my initial reaction is that perhaps we should take a lesson about the ethics of doing things like going to an expensive lounge and just buying water (or nothing). It doesn’t only mean this place, either. Hotels and some other establishments understand that there’s a certain gray area in which they need to cater to non-paying customers, but we should go lifnim mishuras hadin and not push it to the limit.
I find that I am exceptionally good at identifying other people’s problems, but not quite as good at identifying my own.
Probably the biggest benefit to reading is expanding your horizons and encountering new ways to think of things. So it’s pretty ironic that you need literature that does this the least.
trak 443: Technically, the odds would be good if the chance of winning gave you greater value than the money you’re spending. If it’s a 1/2 chance and you spent $50k for it, the odds wouldn’t be good. Basically, if the raffle holder is breaking even, your odds are not “good”.
1. He’s Black
2. He’s liberal
Because of that, some people cannot fathom that there can be any redeeming quality about him.
I am pretty embarrassed at the level of discourse among many frum people I’ve spoken to about the President.
Just my hapence, my understanding of the reason why the “God created an old world” theory is not misleading is basically this: Hashem didn’t create an brand new world, with seeds in the ground but nothing grown, with eggs but no chickens, etc. To some extent, the new world was only possible with some level of “backstory”. The same way a fully grown lion that was created would have had to in theory be born, a fully grown tree would in theory have had to be planted, a fallen tree would have had to be felled; the entire world as a functioning ecosystem had to have a backstory.
It’s not that Hashem had this clever thought, “Let me put in some tricks to fool them!”. It’s that the entire premise requires that the newly created world paradoxically had a past. Dinosaurs, this argument goes, were part of that past.
As an analogy, it’s like in Harry Potter, when the story starts with Harry at 11, (or, if you like, as a baby). But there is a story behind the story, and it happened over centuries.
There is no reason to attack me, Nishtdayngesheft, if you disagree with something I said you can feel free to argue with the points and I will either concede or respond. I didn’t say that they do anything wrong – I said that like any successful business, there are criticisms that can be raised on some things that they’ve done.
I’m debating between writing a detailed post that seems to criticize them when that wasn’t my intention, and cutting it short in a way that unintentionally makes it seem like I have some inside information. I’ll do something in the middle.
1. I maintain that many of their books are also sponsored, but even if I’m wrong, the market position is mainly based on the sponsored books.
2. Even if the sponsorships are warranted for something like the Gemara, they are arguably not warranted for something like the Siddur Yitzchak Yair, which was sponsored in advance, marketed extremely aggressively, and had the effect of putting several smaller distributors in a bad position.
3. Even if they have done nothing wrong, a position that I am perfectly happy agreeing with, if they hold themselves out as Klal Yisroel’s publisher one could argue that they should have a more expansive view of what they should be doing. If there’s no money in Sephardi Biographies, let them start raising money for Biographies. 🙂
4. I am happy to continue to discuss this, but ad hominem attacks reflect well on nobody.
Why don’t we do what everyone always threatens when they want to cut funding for buses and textbooks? Free Pollard or we’ll sign all our kids up for public school and then all of them will be in trouble!
Litvishe Kiryas Yoelite, that is not a reasonable point of view. Not everyone has time to run a publishing house, and if there is a legitimate criticism of Artscroll, then there is no reason why someone shouldn’t voice it. One such criticism is that unlike what someone above posted, it’s not true that they wouldn’t print them if no one would buy them. They have all their books paid for long before they hit the shelves, because they have The Mesorah Foundation, which solicits donations for the books. Everything they make on the books is pure profit.
This also has a tendency to skew the market. Yes, they have the largest market share, because they have done the best work overall of all their peers. But it’s still fair to raise the question whether they should dominate the discourse. This applies not only in choosing which books to publish, though there’s a valid argument that if they paint themselves as Klal Yisroel’s publishers and support themselves with donations, they do in fact have a mandate to publish Sephardi books. It applies also to their unwillingness to entertain any viewpoint outside their own. It applies to their business tactics, which, like those of any other successful business, including Mitt Romney’s, can be questioned.
And lest you counter that the people who buy the books and support them with donations are responsible to know what is going on, well, then, let them find out in the Coffee Room.
I can’t believe that he slept only a half hour a night. The Rambam and the Steipler say that you need to sleep eight hours a night. Furthermore, it’s physically impossible, and ain somchin al haness. This guy was oveir on two aveiros, and you haven’t even gotten to page two.
No. It is a vast conspiracy created by scientists in the mid-17-1800s, both to encourage hedonism and ensure that they remain employed.
The original plan had two prongs. The first was to create hoaxes on their own, “finding” bones and “researching” them. The second prong was to plant more of these bones in areas around the world so that the “scientific” study of dinosaurs would go on indefinitely. This second prong created the ancillary benefit that they didn’t even have to catalog their findings or develop a taxonomy based on what they “discovered”. They created the systems first, and then distributed the bones according to that system.
The biggest moment in the history of paleontology was when Georges Cuvier developed methods of making bone-like material appear immensely aged. From there, it was just a question of having the manpower to chop cow bones, procure elephant bones (mammoths…) age them, and distribute them around the world.
So no, there is no evidence.
Vochindik, that can mean two things. It can mean that gedolim never did anything that could possibly be criticized, which would indicate that that you’ve read too many Artscroll biographies yourself.
Or it could mean that since their gadlus cannot be called into question, analyzing the specifics of what they did, whether it seems to be something one would agree with or not, can never be negative. That is a more plausible view.
A large part of the issue is that the definition of lashon hara depends on your values. So when you have one major publishing company printing almost all of these “biographies”, it appears as though all the gedolim consulted with the CEO of that company, since anything he would have thought was “wrong” by definition is excluded from the book. Also, the people who are vocal supporters of censoring books tend to share certain viewpoints as well, so even publishers who would be willing to print with another viewpoint have an incentive to keep things as vanilla as possible.
@crisisofthweek You’re too late. It was racist and xenophobic from the word goyters.
Can you have philosophical questions without kefirah?
HIE: There’s a small logical malfunction in your post. After admitting that YOU don’t know of a bachur who was hit by a car hitchhiking, you accuse me of not knowing what I’m talking about. I concede that you don’t know about these bachurim, however I know about them and I will feel free to talk about them.
Furthermore, the point about hitching wasn’t only about fatalities; it was also about the impropriety of bachurim wandering around town unsupervised, with complete freedom to go anywhere they want and often nobody who will notice if they don’t return. There are also more subtle negative effects of being in an environment where nobody is answerable for your welfare, which was the rest of my point about yeshivas not being responsible for their bachurim. Admittedly, it was not a point tailored to bachurim, many of whom don’t mind eating tuna from a can three times a day, hitching all over town, and crashing shalom zachors and weddings for free booze. But it’s something parents should be inquiring about – or at least be aware of in case they want the option of inquiring about.
Whiteberry, I commend your questions. After observing yeshiva boys for a long time in Lakewood, and having a long conversation with a few of them recently, it seems that the answers are not always what you’d think they are. I would add a few more: Does the yeshiva provide three meals a day and shabbos seudas? (I have met bachurim who walked two miles to a seudah because the yeshiva didn’t host them, and suggested that they let the mashgiach know if they didn’t find a meal. I also constantly see bachurim hitchhiking to fast food restaurants across town, and there have been several FATAL car accidents lately involving those bachurim.) What is the shabbos schedule like? (I have met, on many occasions, bachurim at shalom zachors of complete strangers, because they had nothing else to do Friday night, and they had no other outlets during the week. What do bachurim do for fun? What is the student/faculty ratio? Are there always rebbeim/mashgichim on call? What kind of relationship do bachurim who are not the best in learning have with their rebbeim? (I spoke over yom tov with a kid in a mid-level yeshiva, not for metzuyanim, nor for druggies, who said that about half his class wasn’t there for shiur each day. The rebbeim didn’t say anything because of the prevailing fear that the boys would become rebellious, and the boys weren’t going to volunteer to come. The parents are blissfully unaware of this.)
Health: to me the issue is who are “they” and what sort of solution are they going to find? I suspect that if the original mohel had agreed to stop metzitzah b’peh, or even to some control measure, we never would have gotten to this point. Since that original story, has there been any effort at all to systematize guidelines for mohelim regarding the risk of infection? Not to my knowledge, although I welcome anyone’s input.
So the government steps in and says that they will force us, not to stop bris, not to even stop metzitzah b’peh, but to let the parents know that there is a risk and ask that they formally accept it. It is, frankly, an almost perfectly conceived law, which is rare for government. It doesn’t affect the religious practice of people who want to do it – they are free to accept the risk. It doesn’t threaten certain mohelim. It doesn’t require any further oversight by the government. It does, in my estimation, two things. It gives opportunity for people who are less educated about or less committed to, metzitzah b’peh a set time to opt out. And it (likely) makes a mohel liable if it can be found that he was negligent in preparing, including in failing to inform. Both of those effects are perfectly reasonable – in fact, they would have been a great place for the community itself to start, if they were in fact interested in protecting babies’ health.
I think that stories like the ones above should be classified into different categories (Learning, davening, middow, mofsim, etc.) when they are told over. Personally, I like stories that show extraordinary character, and I like the ones that you’d hope to see from every adult less inspiring. I also don’t believe the mofsim.
Two stories (one of which is posted somewhat differently above):
R’ Moshe was hounded by someone who disagreed with something that R’ Moshe had paskened. The man went out of his way to pursue his cause against R’ Moshe. A few months after the issue subsided, another posek (I think the book said R’ Tuvia Goldstein) came to visit R’ Moshe and he saw that antagonist leaving the house. He asked R’ Moshe if the man had come to apologize, and R’ Moshe indicated that the man had not. It turned out that the man had come to ask R’ Moshe for a letter of recommendation because he was trying to find a job. R’ Moshe had written the letter. R’ Tuvia(?) expressed surprise at the man’s chutzpah, and at R’ Moshe’s acquiescence. R’ Moshe said, “The gemara says, “yeish koneh olamo b’sha’ah achas. Maybe this is to be my sha’ah achas.”
(Story was in a book by Rabbi Frand An Offer You Can’t Refuse.)
The other story is about the Satmar Rebbe z’l (R’ Yoel). A collector came to him with a terrible sob story. His wife was sick, and couldn’t deal with their special needs child. His other children were suffering as a result, and the state was threatening to place them in foster care. He himself had gone through painful medical treatments. He was desperate for help so that he could keep his family together and allow his wife to recover.
The Rebbe gave him substantially more than was his custom, and the man left. Shortly thereafter, a chosid came in proclaiming that the man was a fraud. The chosid was disappointed when he saw that he hadn’t managed to warn the Rebbe in time, but when the Rebbe heard the man was a fraud, he said, “So he didn’t have all those tzaros? Baruch Hashem!” (Specific facts were embellished.)
@CRuzer: That’s true and I didn’t mean to give wrong information – it’s not like that Yeshiva in Monsey that has an officially supported band. But it’s an outlet that is encouraged both implicitly, by having a dedicated area of the dining room for it, and explicitly, when the boys are asked to play at Mechina events. Contrast that with a high school that I went to, where the yeshiva would not allow any musical instruments, and we would get frequent shmoozen about how terrible it is that yidden could hire goyim to play at their simchos.
I don’t see how this is “least restrictive” if a mass mailing of the concerns to all NYC residents would accomplish the same goal of disseminating the information.
Intuitively, it makes a lot more sense to address the parents directly at the time of the procedure rather than send out a letter that will be thrown out and forgotten. Also, you’re saying that the Health Department should be forced to bear the cost of the risky religious procedure.
Legally, I am not sure exactly how the court would evaluate other potential options. I would imagine that they do not expect every mandated disclosure to be sent out by the Health Department.
As a law student, I find this topic interesting. I did a tiny bit of research and it seems to me that this law would be held up to “Strict Scrutiny” which means that a court would evaluate three things to determine whether the law is Constitutional:
1. Whether the law serves a compelling government interest,
2. Whether the law is narrowly tailored to serve that compelling interest, and
3. Whether this law is the least restrictive means for achieving that interest.
(If 2 and 3 sound similar, that’s because they are.)
I would be very surprised if a court would find that the law does not serve a compelling government interest. It really comes down, IMO, to the argument over whether MbP is proven to be dangerous, but I don’t know if the court is going to require a statistical study to prove that putting a diseased mouth on a bloody wound is dangerous.
If the court rules that the “compelling government interest” part is met, then the others are easy, IMO. The restriction is more narrowly tailored than it could have been. All it does is spread awareness (and create a presumption of liability, if a mohel neglects to inform the parents.)And the least restrictive means – well, I guess that they could have taken out ads in Jewish papers or bought billboards in Boro Park, but that would not have targeted the knowledge of the people in question – the parents hiring the mohel to do a bris. The restriction does not require anything outside of each specific transaction. It doesn’t require mohels to register, or to get training, or to wear gloves. ALL it does is require a mohel to inform parents of a risk that they are undertaking. It seems as unrestrictive as a law could be, that purports to address this problem.
In case it wasn’t obvious from my post, I am anti-MbP. I had a long discussion about this with a classmate who is pro-MbP, and he felt strongly that the legal challenge would prevail.
@MW13: There is more than one mitzvah in the Torah. Perhaps he’s saving Ner Yisroel from taking someone’s money on false pretenses and having to come back in another gilgul.
Yeshivish Kofer: I went to NIRC for Beis Medrash and learned with boys in the high school during their early night seder, so my knowledge of the secular education in the high school is probably not as great as yours. However, I went to other, more yeshivish places for high school, and the secular education there was far, far worse.
This topic is a year old so I don’t know how relevant it is anymore, but one thing that Ner Yisrael and a few similar yeshivas have that the newer, smaller yeshivas don’t have is a sense that they are completely responsible for the bachurim in torah, middos, and gashmius. I live in Lakewood, and the way the most of the high schools here treat their boys is an utter disaster. There can be one rebbi and maybe a (unpaid) shoel umayshiv for 40 boys in 9th grade. Nobody knows where the boys are when they’re not in yeshiva, nobody gives any hadracha outside of the Gemara and periodic jeremiads about tzioinim, ipods, and lubavitch. This leads to bachurim hitching across town at all hours, essentially no education at all, religious or secular, for the boys who are not at the top of the class, and no knowledge of what your kid is eating, who his friends are, or how he is developing.
Contrast Ner Yisrael, where there is are different level shiurim within each grade, there are dorm counselors, dorm supervisors, older chavrusas, English teachers etc. for each kid in the mechina. The secular studies may not be great, but someone will know if you aren’t showing up. There are at least tests and evaluations.
In Ner Yisrael, the boys go to the rebbeims houses for oneg shabbos, they see the rebbeim (and yungeleit) interacting with their wives and families regularly. They have kosher outlets on campus, like a baseball field, a basketball court, and even a band. If your son goes to Ner Yisroel, you will not find out that he has been going to shalom zachors of complete strangers every Friday night. You won’t find out that he has not had a one-on-one conversation with an authority figure for nine months straight. You won’t find out that he ate shabbos meals in the dorm because the yeshiva didn’t provide meals, relying on the boys to find families to eat with. These are all things that happen regularly in the young, in-town yeshivas.
If there are parents out there who are comparing Ner Yisrael to the types of yeshivas that a peer student might go to in Lakewood or Brooklyn – usually small yeshivas that haven’t been around very long, there is almost no question that your child will be safer and get a better Jewish and secular education at Ner Yisrael.
I am a man, and I would never wear a skirt that doesn’t reach my knees, or any stockings below 50 denier.
I once mistook someone, call him Stein, for someone else, call him Greenberg. I was chatting with him for five minutes, and then I asked him, “are you related to the Greenbergs from TOronto? I bet people ask you that all the time.” He looked at me like I was nuts. “My name is Stein,” he said. “Well,” I replied, “then I’m probably the first person to ask you that.”
Paul Clement
@Abba Murray: And I know who will be peering at it with a microscope, hoping to find bugs.
I agree about Fishel Bensinger. I didn’t have a tutor or course, but people I know who went to him swear by him.
Yitayningwut – did you give up?
Are you still working on them? If so, you probably noticed that they’ve gotten faster.
You should work on the LSAT harder than you’ve ever worked on anything in your life. An improvement of a couple points could mean tens of thousands of dollars in financial aid. Also, if your undergraduate degree is from Yeshiva or from an online college, you need to get a few points higher to be competitive with others from more prestigious schools.
I am currently a rising 2L and I will be happy to answer if you have other questions about the tests, applications, or admissions essays, etc.
I am a current law student, and while I don’t know much about JD/MBAs, I do have a few classmates who are doing it.
It seems to me that the idea is rarely worthwhile. Here is why:
Both JDs and MBAs can work in one of two ways – they can open new doors to you, if you go to certain top schools, and they can provide you with skills that will help you maximize the opportunities you already have, like if your uncle has a law firm and will hire you, or if your family has a business (or you’re an entrepreneur) and you want the lessons of the MBA. But in either instance, it doesn’t seem likely that the two will work well together – whether you graduate from Columbia Law and, like eighty percent of their students, get jobs in big firms, or you graduate from your local state law school and get a job doing closings or local-type practice, it doesn’t seem like an MBA would help.
Add to that the limited number of top schools in business and in law, and the fact that they don’t always coincide. Also, if you go to a top law school, you’re paying about $200,000 for the x% chance of a six figure job. Does an additional $50-75,000 raise the odds or the salary?
That said, I have heard that UPenn now offers a three year JD/MBA, and in the case of Penn, both the law school and the business school are highly regarded.
For any serious scholar, there is no comparison between any of the other dictionaries and the Jastrow. The Jastrow is a real dictionary, based on etymological research, citations throughout shas, knowledge of contemporaneous usage to the gemara, etc. The others are glorified “teitch sheets”, based on the Jastrow.
There’s no question that Artscroll used the Jastrow for their shas. And even for anyone learning on their own, it’s better because he gives you different contexts, so you can use your own judgement in deciding how to translate.
If it were true, though, there would be no reason for President Obabma’s LSAT score to be suppressed the way it is.
Mosheemes, the correlation is debated ad nauseum on dedicated LSAT and law school websites. It’s like the Rashi in Parshas Noach – some people say that the scores can’t indicate anything, because everyone in each school is so close together. Other people say, if there’s a correlation when the difference is so small, imagine how predictive the LSAT would be if there was a broad range among peers.
Regardless, for purposes of the point I was making, there is a correlation.
“I just heard from a reliable source that a bachur with a BTL from Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway scored high on his LSATs and just got accepted to Harvard.”
Pashuteh, you are hearing right now from an anonymous guy who’s been participating in an online discussion with you that he himself got into Harvard. I also know at least one other. Frankly, I don’t look down on the my yeshiva education the way some people in this discussion do, so I don’t know how to respond to the “I don’t recommend this for everyone”.
As far as accreditation, I don’t know much about specifics, but I do know that many yeshivas issue credit without being accredited, and (I think) those degrees are not accepted by the Law School Admissions Council. My first post-secondary yeshiva was like that – I had to get transcripts from them, but if I didn’t have a degree from the yeshiva I attended afterward, the transcripts would not have sufficed (for those who took the LSAT, they would have been necessary but not sufficient. 🙂 ) Other yeshivas go through a process to gain accreditation, and they then issue legitimate degrees which can be the basis for a further education that does not require prereqs. BMG, Ner Israel, Shaarei Torah and a few others come to mind.
As far as government money, I know that at least some of the aid that yeshivos benefit from are Pell grants. I don’t know the specifics, but I think they’re technically allotted to the student.
It’s completely untrue that Harvard could get as many perfect scores as they want. Harvard has a class of 600, and they are contemporaneous (actually slightly below, lately) with Yale and Stanford. If 160,000 people take the LSAT, as happened last year, there would be only 160 people with marks over 178. Take into account that lower tier schools give nice scholarships for good numbers, while the top 3 only give need-based aid, and you see why high numbers are in such high demand.
Yale, on the other hand, has a class of around 180, and indeed, they are less beholden to numbers.
Popa, “Law schools are mainly interested in putting out a quality graduate,” is not really true. They are mainly interested in maintaining their US News ranking. Former deans openly admit that admissions falls back onto the numbers because that’s the best way they can rise in the rankings.
A23, I don’t necessarily think that I’ll be the one to buck the trend. But it fits with my general take on the whole scene – I don’t need job rates to rise – I just need to find one job, and in that regard my personal risk/reward is definitely worthwhile. Do you know what the unemployment rate and pay scale are like for yeshiva graduates in general?
In the worst economy since the Great Depression, 65% of Columbia grads had jobs within a short time of graduation – most of those in the high six figures. Recent recruiting and firm finances in general have been up. If I can’t make $160,000, income based repayment will allow me to make the same living I’m making now, with more opportunity to control my own career.
Again, I’m not being an oiberchochom. I don’t claim to have a secret that no one else has. I am not comfortable AT ALL with the immense investment, but I’m even less comfortable with chickening out and getting stuck behind the counter of KFS.
“Columbia is a tougher question, but NYU categorically does not accept BTLs. End of story.”
I’ve heard that too. I guess I’ll find out, sooner or later.
“There’s a new year of statistics, Northwestern dropped to 8th”
That’s of interest. People assumed that the big jump was because they started focusing more on students with work experience. I guess time will tell where they settle. Regardless, they still outperform their rank.
“Veltz Meshugener –
Why do you think you know it all?”
I’m not sure what I posted that makes it seem like I know it all. To the contrary, me and anyone who’s gone through this or knows someone who has, only has their own experience. That’s why it’s nice to contribute to a thread where people who search will have several different viewpoints in one place.
I shudder at the amount of debt involved, and I have not yet put down a seat deposit. But in my judgment, a lot of the warnings don’t apply to me, personally.
According to almost everything I’ve seen, the most important factors in hiring are school and class rank. Looking at the websites of the most prestigious firms, (Sullivan Cromwell, White and Case etc.) you will find plenty of former yeshiva students – look for fancy JDs together with BTLs or no listed undergrad. I imagine that between two closely similar candidates, a firm would choose the Ivy undergrad. But (I speculate) if a former yeshiva guy goes to Columbia, he’s way ahead of an Ivy grad who goes to Fordham, and if he makes law review, he’s way ahead of an Ivy grad who’s at median.
I know I’m late to the party, but while googling for information I came across this thread, and being in the “parsha”, I decided to offer my two cents.
I am an 0l. I have a BTL from Lakewood, and a 99.9 percentile LSAT score. I am thus far in at a few T14s, including Columbia and higher – ranked.
I personally know three former chavrusas who have done LS admissions before me. Two had BTLs (coincidentally, they both went to UPenn), and one got an online degree, and is in another of the T14. It seems pretty clear to me from these few people that the BTL was better than the online degree. Reb Online Degree was by far the best of the three LSAT wise, and had a far tougher admissions cycle. IMHO, if you want a secular degree, go brick and mortar.
The beauty of law school admissions, as you know if you’re involved, is that because of the rankings, you can make yourself a desirable candidate. If it’s true that Columbia and NYU don’t love BTLs – there is still going to be a school that will like an above median GPA and LSAT no matter where the GPA is from. That’s why even Reb Online Degree got a fancy scholarship when he finally did get in.
That is also why it’s hard to believe that any specific school “doesn’t take” BTLs. I understand that New York area schools may not want to oversaturate themselves with specific degrees, but with a good LSAT/GPA, they need you too. If you have flexibility, maybe Michigan (near the Detroit frum community), or Chicago or Northwestern would be worth looking into over a NY area school. Even UCLA is ranked right outside the T14, and I’m told there are some Jews in California.
I find it hard to believe as well that BTLs are all in the top or bottom 5%. Of the (admittedly few) that I know, none are near either extreme. Of the people I know of, two are in Biglaw and seem okay, one has a good summer job lined up, and one is a 1L. A friend of a friend just graduated, failed the bar, and has nothing lined up right now.
If there is one thing that my admissions cycle/process has taught me, it’s that there are few certainties, and few accurate generalizations. “Yeshiva guys can’t write” means nothing if you can write. “They don’t take BTLs” is not likely 100% true – it may just mean they need evidence that the stereotyped shortcomings of BTLs don’t apply to you.
The same even goes for “Yeshiva guys are good/not good at law”. The fact is that the LSAT is a decent predictor of Law School success, and at least BMG has an insane performance history on the LSAT – in the same sphere as top secular undergrad schools. Maybe many yeshiva guys don’t have a writing background, but if they can do well at the reading comprehension on the LSAT, they at least understand English at a fairly high level. OTOH, if you know you have a writing weakness or a general knowledge weakness, don’t say “oh, the LSAT predicted that I’ll do well.” Work on your weakness until it’s not – read and write and read and write. I have found that participation in online forums has made me a much better writer.
Oh, and re: that topic about Northwestern having bad employment – I don’t know where that could possibly be from, but according to last years statistics, Northwestern was the. top. school. in the country from big firm placement.