Deciding between Georgetown vs. Vanderbilt - Fall 2023 Transfer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't read through all the responses, but I would say Georgetown for a more intellectual environment and for preparing for a top law school (I'm a law professor, for what it's worth).

Law professor with an opposing view here, go to Vanderbilt

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven't read through all the responses, but I would say Georgetown for a more intellectual environment and for preparing for a top law school (I'm a law professor, for what it's worth).

Law professor with an opposing view here, go to Vanderbilt

Why? Please be specific.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven't read through all the responses, but I would say Georgetown for a more intellectual environment and for preparing for a top law school (I'm a law professor, for what it's worth).

Law professor with an opposing view here, go to Vanderbilt

Why? Please be specific.

Because A. it is more prestigious, which will help if they don't want to go to law school and it will also help a bit if they do want to go to law school at the few schools that care about undergrad prestige, e.g. Yale and Stanford. B. The quality of the undergrad students is going to be a bit higher than at Georgetown simply by virtue of the greater selectivity and "prestige," which is helpful in making connections and just growing as a person. What I've seen at law school is that the students who went to better undergrads tend to do better on average. C. Greater undergrad prestige generally helps with things like clerkships D. despite all of these professional advantages, Vanderbilt also has the reputation of being fun compared to Georgetown, which I hear has very little school spirit if that matters. E. Being a "double 'dore", meaning going to Vandy law after Vandy undergrad, is a pretty good option for law school as Vanderbilt law is comparable to georgetown Law and vanderbilt law generally gives more generous scholarships to "double 'dores". Vanderbilt law seems to do quite well in clerkships and biglaw

[Anonymous]

Because A. it is more prestigious, which will help if they don't want to go to law school and it will also help a bit if they do want to go to law school at the few schools that care about undergrad prestige, e.g. Yale and Stanford. B. The quality of the undergrad students is going to be a bit higher than at Georgetown simply by virtue of the greater selectivity and "prestige," which is helpful in making connections and just growing as a person. What I've seen at law school is that the students who went to better undergrads tend to do better on average. C. Greater undergrad prestige generally helps with things like clerkships D. despite all of these professional advantages, Vanderbilt also has the reputation of being fun compared to Georgetown, which I hear has very little school spirit if that matters. E. Being a "double 'dore", meaning going to Vandy law after Vandy undergrad, is a pretty good option for law school as Vanderbilt law is comparable to georgetown Law and vanderbilt law generally gives more generous scholarships to "double 'dores". Vanderbilt law seems to do quite well in clerkships and biglaw

NP. Is this post a joke? Vandy is not more prestigious than Gtown. Ask 100 people which school is more prestigious and all of them who don’t live in the south will pick Gtown. Georgetown students are definitely of AT LEAST equal quality to those at Vandy - and many would argue of higher quality - since the Gtown applicant pool is a self-selecting higher stats group due to the fact that Gtown does not use the common app and requires test scores. Gtown would shoot up any rankings list if they changed these two factors, since they would exponentially increase applications immediately.

Add to that the fact that Vandy law school has never been ranked in the T14, while Gtown is a T14 regular. BigLaw in major east cities almost all interview at Gtown and all hire from there, which is not true of Vandy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Because A. it is more prestigious, which will help if they don't want to go to law school and it will also help a bit if they do want to go to law school at the few schools that care about undergrad prestige, e.g. Yale and Stanford. B. The quality of the undergrad students is going to be a bit higher than at Georgetown simply by virtue of the greater selectivity and "prestige," which is helpful in making connections and just growing as a person. What I've seen at law school is that the students who went to better undergrads tend to do better on average. C. Greater undergrad prestige generally helps with things like clerkships D. despite all of these professional advantages, Vanderbilt also has the reputation of being fun compared to Georgetown, which I hear has very little school spirit if that matters. E. Being a "double 'dore", meaning going to Vandy law after Vandy undergrad, is a pretty good option for law school as Vanderbilt law is comparable to georgetown Law and vanderbilt law generally gives more generous scholarships to "double 'dores". Vanderbilt law seems to do quite well in clerkships and biglaw

NP. Is this post a joke? Vandy is not more prestigious than Gtown. Ask 100 people which school is more prestigious and all of them who don’t live in the south will pick Gtown. Georgetown students are definitely of AT LEAST equal quality to those at Vandy - and many would argue of higher quality - since the Gtown applicant pool is a self-selecting higher stats group due to the fact that Gtown does not use the common app and requires test scores. Gtown would shoot up any rankings list if they changed these two factors, since they would exponentially increase applications immediately.

Add to that the fact that Vandy law school has never been ranked in the T14, while Gtown is a T14 regular. BigLaw in major east cities almost all interview at Gtown and all hire from there, which is not true of Vandy.

I agree that Georgetown has outsized lay prestige compared to Vanderbilt. Among more educated circles, which are more relevant, Vanderbilt has the edge in undergrad prestige. You'll notice the average test scores at Vanderbilt undergrad are consistently higher than those at Georgetown, which is more of a peer with Emory and NYU. Again they are both great schools, but Vanderbilt is more comparable to Cornell or Dartmouth.

With regard to georgetown vs vanderbilt law, I would guess most of my colleagues would call these comparable schools. Maybe practitioners perceive some large difference between them but my experience is that the average student from them is pretty interchangeable. Certainly the top student at gulc is generally far more impressive than the top student at Vanderbilt law simply because they are 1/600 compared to 1/150, meaning they are in a higher percentile technically speaking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Because A. it is more prestigious, which will help if they don't want to go to law school and it will also help a bit if they do want to go to law school at the few schools that care about undergrad prestige, e.g. Yale and Stanford. B. The quality of the undergrad students is going to be a bit higher than at Georgetown simply by virtue of the greater selectivity and "prestige," which is helpful in making connections and just growing as a person. What I've seen at law school is that the students who went to better undergrads tend to do better on average. C. Greater undergrad prestige generally helps with things like clerkships D. despite all of these professional advantages, Vanderbilt also has the reputation of being fun compared to Georgetown, which I hear has very little school spirit if that matters. E. Being a "double 'dore", meaning going to Vandy law after Vandy undergrad, is a pretty good option for law school as Vanderbilt law is comparable to georgetown Law and vanderbilt law generally gives more generous scholarships to "double 'dores". Vanderbilt law seems to do quite well in clerkships and biglaw

NP. Is this post a joke? Vandy is not more prestigious than Gtown. Ask 100 people which school is more prestigious and all of them who don’t live in the south will pick Gtown. Georgetown students are definitely of AT LEAST equal quality to those at Vandy - and many would argue of higher quality - since the Gtown applicant pool is a self-selecting higher stats group due to the fact that Gtown does not use the common app and requires test scores. Gtown would shoot up any rankings list if they changed these two factors, since they would exponentially increase applications immediately.

Add to that the fact that Vandy law school has never been ranked in the T14, while Gtown is a T14 regular. BigLaw in major east cities almost all interview at Gtown and all hire from there, which is not true of Vandy.

I agree that Georgetown has outsized lay prestige compared to Vanderbilt. Among more educated circles, which are more relevant, Vanderbilt has the edge in undergrad prestige. You'll notice the average test scores at Vanderbilt undergrad are consistently higher than those at Georgetown, which is more of a peer with Emory and NYU. Again they are both great schools, but Vanderbilt is more comparable to Cornell or Dartmouth.

With regard to georgetown vs vanderbilt law, I would guess most of my colleagues would call these comparable schools. Maybe practitioners perceive some large difference between them but my experience is that the average student from them is pretty interchangeable. Certainly the top student at gulc is generally far more impressive than the top student at Vanderbilt law simply because they are 1/600 compared to 1/150, meaning they are in a higher percentile technically speaking.

and vanderbilt had higher act and sat scores prior to becoming test optional, which I see they did recently

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Because A. it is more prestigious, which will help if they don't want to go to law school and it will also help a bit if they do want to go to law school at the few schools that care about undergrad prestige, e.g. Yale and Stanford. B. The quality of the undergrad students is going to be a bit higher than at Georgetown simply by virtue of the greater selectivity and "prestige," which is helpful in making connections and just growing as a person. What I've seen at law school is that the students who went to better undergrads tend to do better on average. C. Greater undergrad prestige generally helps with things like clerkships D. despite all of these professional advantages, Vanderbilt also has the reputation of being fun compared to Georgetown, which I hear has very little school spirit if that matters. E. Being a "double 'dore", meaning going to Vandy law after Vandy undergrad, is a pretty good option for law school as Vanderbilt law is comparable to georgetown Law and vanderbilt law generally gives more generous scholarships to "double 'dores". Vanderbilt law seems to do quite well in clerkships and biglaw

NP. Is this post a joke? Vandy is not more prestigious than Gtown. Ask 100 people which school is more prestigious and all of them who don’t live in the south will pick Gtown. Georgetown students are definitely of AT LEAST equal quality to those at Vandy - and many would argue of higher quality - since the Gtown applicant pool is a self-selecting higher stats group due to the fact that Gtown does not use the common app and requires test scores. Gtown would shoot up any rankings list if they changed these two factors, since they would exponentially increase applications immediately.

Add to that the fact that Vandy law school has never been ranked in the T14, while Gtown is a T14 regular. BigLaw in major east cities almost all interview at Gtown and all hire from there, which is not true of Vandy.

I agree that Georgetown has outsized lay prestige compared to Vanderbilt. Among more educated circles, which are more relevant, Vanderbilt has the edge in undergrad prestige. You'll notice the average test scores at Vanderbilt undergrad are consistently higher than those at Georgetown, which is more of a peer with Emory and NYU. Again they are both great schools, but Vanderbilt is more comparable to Cornell or Dartmouth.

With regard to georgetown vs vanderbilt law, I would guess most of my colleagues would call these comparable schools. Maybe practitioners perceive some large difference between them but my experience is that the average student from them is pretty interchangeable. Certainly the top student at gulc is generally far more impressive than the top student at Vanderbilt law simply because they are 1/600 compared to 1/150, meaning they are in a higher percentile technically speaking.

and vanderbilt had higher act and sat scores prior to becoming test optional, which I see they did recently

I believe NYU has just as high if not higher test score than Vandy. Y
So.e of you are creating tiers based on USnews and USnews rankings are about to change dramatically.

[Anonymous]

I'm a Vandy law alum so a bit biased but the law school there sends a ton of grads to big law and is a ton more pleasant than Georgetown. And, Nashville is a blast. There were probably 10 to 15 double-Vandy kids in my graduating class (just under 10%).

[Anonymous]

Wrt which is better for law school, the answer is whichever has more grade inflation in her intended major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to both of these schools. Vandy undergrad and Gtown Law. Then BigLaw. I disagree that it doesn’t matter where you go to undergrad. Your undergrad shapes you as a person in ways that law school cannot. I’d choose advise my kid to choose Northwestern for the ranking, the culture, the academic and intellectual rigor. My DS is at a school that does quarters— it is maybe a little more intense but he finds it suits him because there is no time to procrastinate and get too far behind. Law school is not for sure. She shouldn’t choose second best bc of some plans to do law school later.

If op is correct about northwestern having more grade deflation, northwestern is not a good choice.

I say this as someone who applied to law school from a place the prided itself on grade deflation. It hurt me, law school application wise. I wound up going to a top fourteen and I think I could have had a shot at a top five if I’d gone to a place with less grade deflation. My major had more grade deflation than other majors at my school, which is even worse

[Anonymous]

Is the school Wisconsin OP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Retired Biglaw partner here. Whether OP’s daughter goes to Georgetown, Vanderbilt or Northwestern will have zero - zero - bearing on her acceptance to a top law school and absolutely no influence on whether she lands a job with Biglaw either. Anyone suggesting anything to the contrary is out of their mind. This thread is the poster child for college admissions and planning going completely off the rails.

As an aside, when I was a Biglaw partner I distinctly remember another partner bragging over lunch about her kid just graduating from a top law school and getting ready to start in Biglaw and I honestly felt sorry for them both. If I had a kid who was as focused as OP’s kid seems to be on landing a job in Biglaw I’d wonder why and worry that I’d done something wrong. What’s the appeal beyond the money?

I kind of agree with this. There’s no reason to be in Biglaw other than the salary. But there are so many easier (and more pleasant) ways to make money, too. I wonder what a 19 year old really knows about Biglaw.

That being said, if these are her options, she’s doing a lot of things right. She can make the decision on her own and any of these places will prepare her for whatever is coming next. This is an enviable position to be in!

[Anonymous]

If she picks Georgetown can she stay home?
Dorms are nothing exciting at Georgetown.
My husband went to northwestern and he absolutely loved his experience and city of Chicago.
Excellent undergrad education and very good admission to law and business school.

[Anonymous]

What kind of “exciting” dorms are you looking for? They’re great guess speakers at gtown and lots of opportunities in DC- cultural , internships. Plenty of parties at Georgetown, without having to deal w frats

[Anonymous]

Gtown alum here

two schools on entirely different trajectories. If you asked me this question 20 years ago, I would have laughed at their comparison and said Georgetown easily. Now Vandy has established itself firmly as one of the “hottest” schools not only in the South but the entire country. In my DCs wide and varied friend group (both top public and private school kids in the NY metro region), interest in Vandy blew away Georgetown - they are not viewed in the same class. Vandy has the “it” factor at this time, like it or not it’s real