Hey guys,

I hear, for example, that NYU is "much easier" to get into than, say, Harvard because NYU has much more places on offer.

Having said this, it is possible to "rank" the following US law schools to determine which ones are harder (and easier) to get into?

Harvard; Yale, Cornell, Stanford, Chicago, Northwestern, Penn, NYU, Berkeley.

Any other top US law schools should also consideR?

Thanks,

Hi there, i only know that Yale has the most difficult level of admission. Regards.

Not sure if more difficult than YLS, but SLS seems to become increasingly selective (I guess more than HLS anyway).

1. Stanford
2. Yale
3. Harvard

for what can count my guess is: Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Chicago, Berkeley, Penn, Northwestern, Cornell. That being said it's plenty of good law schools out there.

Thanks,

May I ask: how do people pay for their US LLM's?

$US37,000 tuition + living expenses = at least $60,000.

Do you get scholarships/ fee waivers/ grants? Or, are they almost impossible to get?

You are probably right. Yale is harder than Stanford but they have different focuses (unless you are applying to SLS Spils program).

Yale: students committed to careers in law teaching
Stanford: students with a a lot of professional experience

I applied to most of them. my preference goes to Stanford, Yale, Harvard and then the others. I think the 3 of them are very selective (the only upside of Harvard in this respect is that they admit more people). I can't sleep tonight!

Hello,

It's always hard to tell since everything depends upon the number of applications as well. For instance, Yale apparently receives far less applications than Harvard for LLM programs, but who knows...Besides, the "official" rankings of admissions refer to the JD programs, not to the LLMs.

This being said, it's probably quite fair to say that:

1) Yale and Stanford are the most selective programs, quite hard to know which one is the hardest to get in, all the more than Stanford has three different programs. In any way, the ratio is far below 10% for both these programs. Each program has around 30 students (10 in each program at Stanford). Classes are never larger than 30 students.

2) Harvard is said to be a bit above 10%, but I guess they receive far more applications than Yale or Stanford thanks to their "brand". They accept around 150 students each year.

3) Chicago is also more selective than one may think and must be pretty close to Harvard since they only allow 50 LLM students. It's also one of the only programs where you actually can fail, and thus one of the most difficult...

I don't know for the others.

actually, if you look at us news ranking, it based on J.D. program (LL.M. is not considered in that ranking). So NYU provides many seats for LL.M. to make a lot of money from international student.

Any US law school in the top 1-20 is difficult to get into, regardless. And any in the top 20-50 (remainder of 1st tier) are still very selective.

To get into a top 10 school (LLM or JD) you'll need to be in the top 10% of your own school/university back home and it will have to be a good school/uni too.

top US law schools, overall ranking i guess, without specification on specializations are:

1 Yale
2 & 3 Harvard and Stanford
4 & 5 NYU and Columbia

I read somewhere in these threads (on a different topic) that LlM at NYU and Georgetown (there was another school which I forget), is not that prestigious.

To think NYU is my first choice ....

Any suggestions? How does it compare to Columbia (which was not mentioned in the enumeration, by the way)?

This ranking is probably right for JDs. LLM is a slightly different story. Of course the top 3 are the top 3 (Yale, Harvard and Stanford) but they want to attract and they are better for students with different profiles.

Yale -- research and teaching.
Harvard -- good grades and/or good connections (since Harvard has a program 10x the size of Yale and Stanford, I think it is easier to get in).
Stanford -- experienced lawyers for the IP or Corporate programs (even some top partners apply) or top students/professors for the SPILS program.

Of course you cannot go wrong with Columbia, Chicago or NYU (already in my order of preference). All other schools are great but...

Best and good luck to all.

All I can say about Penn is that last year they received over 900 applications for roughly 90 spots in the LLM program.

With no doubt of the 3 top ten..., you've to think that there are many LLM's different programs to get in, so it's depends on the field you preffer to choose...

Regards!

Why would "a top partner" want do an llm? Sounds extremely retarded(no benefit 4 career + huge loss of income).

Sabathical, networking with faculty, teaching...who cares...if you are a partner, money should not be an issue anyway. From Stanford website: "This year's corporate governance class (2002) includes, among other students, founder of King and Wood, one of the leading mainland Chinese law firms, a Russian lawyer who served as Deputy Manager of World Bank Programs at the International Finance Corporation in Moscow, and a French lawyer at the Paris office of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton who previously directed and wrote a successful French TV sitcom."