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rara128290
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Well, I'm definitely not a T14 or bust type. Often, I think regional schools are a good fit for someone who wants to stay in the area. There are some numbers that would really worry me about Santa Clara though. First being, 44.7% of graduates employed 10 months post-graduation in bar passage required jobs. That is very, very low. 53.9% employed in any job 10 months post-grad. Yikes.
It has a very highly ranked IP program which makes a lot of sense to me based on location. I wouldn't be surprised that it is solid, and probably has a lot of tech people that are switching tracks in their careers.
For admissions, it has interesting numbers. Around 70% acceptance rate which is very high, but the LSAT and GPAs aren't all that low (medians 3.17 and 154). Bar passage rate is 68% which sounds really bad, but for California is decent. Berkeley's is only 85%.
I don't know the market well enough to know how they really do placing their graduates. The most worrisome numbers to me are those employment ones. If you have some sort of job lined up for you or strong connections, it might make me worry less. But if this is a start from scratch kind of thing for you, I'd be more hesitant. I'd probably ask a lot of questions, maybe find some alumni you can talk to to get a real feel for what it's like graduating from there.
I’d be worried about competing for jobs with Stanford, Berkeley, and Hastings grads. + all the other lower ranked schools in that area
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It cannot be repeated enough -- you cannot predict how you will do in law school. Your LSAT/GPA will not predict how you do in law school.
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Are you planning to do IP law? And do you live within a good commuting distance? They are basically across the street from the amtrak station which is awesome, but it is expensive to take the train each day and alternatives from other parts of the bay (BART or driving) are limited/painful. Honestly, I visited a couple of weeks ago and it seemed like a decent place for IP.
I feel that most places can teach you what you need to know about law and will expose you to professors that are well-respected (they all seem to sabbatical at each other's schools anyway!) I know someone that wound up outcompeting people from the T5 in their IP recognition who came from Santa Clara (and, no, their tuition wasn't paid for by a company and they didn't have a job lined up with that company afterwards; they were really smart and hard-working and being from SC didn't hold them back and the tuition assistance was a huge factor for them). However, they also dealt with the fact that: it's pretty impossible to transfer to a T14 school from SC even if you do great, and the networking and recruiting are more limited. You'll be connected to uniformly more successful people through your classmates in the long run going to a higher ranked place. And recruiters won't show up as much to SC events. If you have a special background or work experience, that negates some of these factors when competing with folks who just have a JD and minimal work experience.
If you're in IP, SC is really pushing to be stellar in that area. This year they are starting a pilot program - Tech Edge - where they partner with local attorneys and companies to give a select group of students a chance to get some marketable work experience while in school during the year.
As for bar passage, it seems most of these places run into the problem that they have a bimodal admission pool: they admit people that are very good with scholarships and have no problem passing the bar and then they accept people who are barely meeting their margins that pay full tuition and those folks do abysmally on the bar. So a 50% passage rate often reflects more about the people that were probably never going to do well no matter which school trained them. Anyway, that's all my random thoughts for the day and I know it's a tough decision. I think SC's ASW is this weekend, so go and hear what they have to say....
I cant tell you if you should or shouldnt go to the school. I'm just telling you that there is no predictor of how you will do in law school. I dont know why you think that your LSAT/GPA stats will make it such that you are apart of the ~40% who get a job. If you decide you want to go there, ask for a full scholarship before accepting. If you get a full scholarship, ask for a living stipend. I wouldn't want to take out loans for a ~40% chance of getting a job.