Oh-my-gawd (Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?)

Friday, 25 February 2005

Oh-my-gawd

David Bernstein has moved up from shilling his books to a post that can essentially be summed up as “please help pay my salary.” I kid you not.

Considering George Mason Law School? Are you considering attending George Mason, academic home of me and co-conspirator Todd Zywicki? People telling you that it’s crazy to consider Mason over a “superior” (i.e., higher-ranked in U.S. News) school? Well, I’m meeting an increasing number of GMU law students who have turned down, among other schools, local and regional competitors William and Mary, George Washington, and Georgetown (in fact, I’ve run into several students who turned down G’town but not G.W.; I didn’t think to ask, so I’m not sure if they didn’t get in or didn’t apply to G.W.). Several years ago, such students were few and far between, but not anymore. I don’t have exact numbers, but I’d say it’s pretty common (given that G.W. and G’town have way bigger entering class sizes than Mason, it wouldn’t take, from their perspective, many students who turned them down to make up a significant proportion of a GMU class—20 each, and you have a quarter of a GMU entering class!). Your mileage may vary of course, and one’s choice of law school is a highly individual decision. But if your heart is with GMU, and you want to reject a higher-ranked school, go for it, you will not be alone.

Why not include a referral code while he’s at it? If he doesn’t already have one, I suggest ”?exclude=davidb.”

Look, I get the institutional pride thing. If some kid with the grades and SATs asked me if he should go to Millsaps or one of the other alma maters, unless he was hard-core into engineering or really into math I’d tell him or her to come here—the hard-core engineer or mathematician I’d send to Rose-Hulman, and I’d only include math because they have a much bigger department. I’d even say the best undergraduate education you can buy in the Deep South (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina) is right here. But the idea I’d whore out my blog to plug my employer is patently ridiculous.

6 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

1. Drew Gold wrote @ Fri, 25 Feb 2005, 3:29 pm CST:

I’m pretty sure (duh!) that Bernstein gets paid either way.

2. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Fri, 25 Feb 2005, 4:51 pm CST:

I’ll grant that there’s no direct relationship between Bernstein’s salary and how many people he ~~dupes~~ attracts to George Mason, but I suspect there’s a very strong indirect path. More law students willing to pay for a GMU education = more in the kitty for faculty raises.

3. Fred wrote @ Sat, 26 Feb 2005, 5:11 pm CST:

It’s not a money thing; it’s a prestige thing. Bernstein wants to be at a more prestigious school, and if better students go to GMU it will go up in the rankings and help his prestige.

4. Len Cleavelin wrote @ Sun, 27 Feb 2005, 10:12 am CST:

Actually, for what it’s worth GMU ranks in the top 40 (tied for no. 26) in Brian Leiter’s Educational Quality Rankings of American Law Schools, which is based on U.S. law faculty assessments of each school’s faculty quality. I suspect that GM is a much better school than it’s U.S. News rating indicates (I tend to agree with Leiter that the U.S. News methodology is seriously flawed, but that opinion and a couple of bucks’ll get you a cup of coffee at Starbuck’s).

Knowing what I know now, I’d never go to GMU Law myself, but that’s because the dean of the law school is Daniel Polsby. I had Polsby for Torts when I was a student at Northwestern Law, and he was (by a large margin, IMHO) the single worst teacher I’ve had in 23 years of formal education (K-12, 4 years college, 3 years law school and 3 years graduate school).

5. bryan wrote @ Mon, 28 Feb 2005, 1:03 pm CST:

Actually, for what it’s worth GMU ranks in the top 40 (tied for no. 26) in Brian Leiter’s Educational Quality Rankings of American Law Schools, which is based on U.S. law faculty assessments of each school’s faculty quality. I suspect that GM is a much better school than it’s U.S. News rating indicates (I tend to agree with Leiter that the U.S. News methodology is seriously flawed, but that opinion and a couple of bucks’ll get you a cup of coffee at Starbuck’s).

Actually, for what it’s worth, ANY ranking of schools is about worth the price of the spit it would take to lick a stamp, other than for perception.

And the only person I’ve ever met from Rose-=Hullman was a psycho who stalked his ex-girlfriend, so I’d never recommend thaat either.

6. armchair genius wrote @ Mon, 28 Feb 2005, 7:35 pm CST:

Well first off, I see nothing wrong about being proud of where you work or went to law school and highlighting the positives to try to encourage others to attend that school.

But that said, I personally would highly encourage anyone planning on attending law school to go to the highest rank school they possibly can (so long as we are talking about a significant difference between the schools being compared, i.e., if there are within a few spots rank is insignificant unless they are in different quartiles or one is top 10 and one is just outside the top 10).

I agree rankings of schools are pretty much worthless as far as reflecting merit or the actual value of that school’s education – in fact higher rank schools tend to provide you with less preparation for the actual practice of law than lower rank schools.

But as far as your personal career potential, it clearly matters. And obviously the US News rankings are the one to look at as that is the ranking that people who will be hiring you are familiar with.

But of course that is just my opinion.

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