Is it better to be in the top of your class at a mediocre school or in the middle of the pack at a Tier 1 school?

What are you smoking? Last at Yale is certainly better than first at any Tier 2 or below school. Last at Yale is probably even better than Top 10% at UC Davis, UC Hastings, University of Colorado, Emory, etc. Middle of the pack at any Top 50 school is better than everything except maybe The top 1 and 2 at a Tier 2 school, and certainly better than #1 or 2 at a tier 3 or 4 school (especially outside the geographic reach of the tier 3 or 4 school). And don't kid yourself that you can be top dog at a tier 3 or 4 school; all law schools are brutally competitive, especially the lower tier ones. I would pay to go to a tier 1 over a full ride at a tier 3 or 4 no questions asked.

How much more would you pay for a top 20 school vs. a top 25 school? NLJ 250 placement at the top 20 is nearly half of the class and NLJ 250 placement at the top 25 school is just over 1/3rd of the class.

Last at Yale may be better than top 10% at schools around #30, but the overlap in applications between Yale and those schools is probably 0. More realistically, for example, top 30% at UNC-Chapel Hill probably beats out bottom 30% at Georgetown in the Southeast, but probably loses in the Northeast.

It's really a function of geography, coupled with grades, for a lot of comparisons--unless you have a Top 6 school as an option.

To 2nd Decider, based purely on rankings and money, I would pay a quarter more for a Top 6 school as compared to a Top 21-25, an eighth more (maybe) for a 7-15, and maybe, say, a sixteenth more for 16-20.

Factoring in geography, though, if I wanted to practice in the Northwest, I would pay just as much for Washington as I would for Vanderbilt, if not more, because going to Univ. of Washington would open up contacts and would show to interviewers that you want to practice in that geographic region. Analogously, I would pay as much, if not more, to go to Emory than UCLA if I wanted to practice in the South.

Also, keep in mind that rankings 21-25 include such state schools as Minnesota, IU, and Illinois, which cost less than other, higher-ranked private schools. Thus, those schools might attract fewer students who feel the pressure to head to a NLJ 250 firm to pay off steep debt.

I go to law school in New Zealand and am wondering why Americans are so obsessed about school rankings, I have friends that have been to/still go to harvard, cornell and UCLA law schools and all law education seems the same to me, you study the text books in your chosen fields of law study and then try to regurgitate as much accurate information to solve the problem questions. I have never been able to see a significant difference in legal knowledge from someone who goes to a top law school and someone who doesn't because all law schools grade very hard.

Law school is a weeding process and employers sitting on a pile of resumes use a candidates law school to sort applicants. Why take a chance on a tier 4 candidate when you can hire a tier 1. Your chance of getting an idiot from a tier 1 school is a lot less than your chance of getting one from a tier 4 school (simply from the fact that anyone with a brain would chose a tier 1 over a tier 4 if they had the option). It is that simple.

I can second that the law school weeding process. Grades and law schools help narrow the applicant pool.

Victims of a self-serving system that condemns you to servitude until an opportunity to become the slavemaster arises?