Hi, I am a LLM applicant from Bangalore, India and I am really keen to know as an Indian applicant is there something I should know before deciding which University.. also what are the job prospects, what has more International Recognition? As a sinlge girl where would it make sense to study and what are the Financial Assistance if any.Further Cornell or U penn and why? if anybody out there would help me I d be really grateful. Thanks Keep me posted.

Which field are you interested in?
Are you interested only in Duke, Penn and Cornell programs?
I think it is important to consider these factors before expressing an opinion.

hi i am interested in a General law program with electives of intl business law and intellecttual property law and international commercial law,media and the law are the fields i am looking at
but i am unable to decide which University and the advantage of each

i m interested in only in duke cornell n u penn

I would choose Penn or Cornell.
Penn ranks higher and this seems to be important in terms of prestige - job prospects etc. (but opinions about each law school's relative prestige vary according to the country you come from; in Italy Cornell is a stronger brand than Duke and perhaps even than Penn).
I'm personally biased toward Cornell, but that depends upon my field of specialization and my personal tastes, which are not the same as yours.

Dam

I would vote for Penn : it is highly ranked (the only school that you mentionned within the top 10), is an Ivy League school, has a great international and commercial law program and last but not least, there are joint classes with Wharton professors (which means you can take MBA-classes during your LLM).

Did I mention that Penn is also the closest (out of those you mentionned) to New York and Washington, meaning that job prospects are easier and it is less difficult for you to travel (Cornell is over 5 hours away from New York Ciry, making it almost impossible to have interviews in NY unless you take a plane, and very few employers will want to pay for plane travel expenses)

No matter what people tell you, being in a top 10 law school is IMPORTANT if job prospects are important to you. And Penn has lots of prestige and is highly ranked. Lots of US-firms are inviting LLM students to receptions and cocktails - this shows a lot about the value U.S. firms put on Penn. I do not think the other schools you mentionned can boast something like that.

For info, LLM students got invited THIS YEAR by firms in NY such as Skadden Arps, Cleary Gottlieb, David Polk, Allen & Overy, White & Case, etc. Other people mentionned that other law schools do not help LLM students to get jobs - as you can see, things are better at Penn and yes, those were receptions organized this year by firms in the US as they obviously have an interest in LLM students from Penn.

I would vote for Penn : it is highly ranked (the only school that you mentionned within the top 10), is an Ivy League school, has a great international and commercial law program and last but not least, there are joint classes with Wharton professors (which means you can take MBA-classes during your LLM).

Did I mention that Penn is also the closest (out of those you mentionned) to New York and Washington, meaning that job prospects are easier and it is less difficult for you to travel (Cornell is over 5 hours away from New York Ciry, making it almost impossible to have interviews in NY unless you take a plane, and very few employers will want to pay for plane travel expenses)

No matter what people tell you, being in a top 10 law school is IMPORTANT if job prospects are important to you. And Penn has lots of prestige and is highly ranked. Lots of US-firms are inviting LLM students to receptions and cocktails - this shows a lot about the value U.S. firms put on Penn. I do not think the other schools you mentionned can boast something like that.

For info, LLM students got invited THIS YEAR by firms in NY such as Skadden Arps, Cleary Gottlieb, David Polk, Allen & Overy, White & Case, etc. Other people mentionned that other law schools do not help LLM students to get jobs - as you can see, things are better at Penn and yes, those were receptions organized this year by firms in the US as they obviously have an interest in LLM students from Penn.

I would say it's similar among them, so you might need to make a decision based on whether you like the location, faculty, and financial supports etc. Yuenping offered quite detailed insider views from Penn, and I agree to most of them. However, I can offer some counterparts from Duke.

First, we do have joint courses here with Fuqua Business School and Sanford Institute of Public Policy, and Nicholas School of Environment. Second, rankings vary from year to year, but in a general sense, top 14 law schools are in the same group. (They never fell out of T14 since US News began to publish their law school rankings). All 3 Schools you mentioned qualified.

Some of my classmates are invited to do interviews (depends on your home country, you will have different offer) and employers do pay for their flight and hotel. On-campus interviews are offered from some firms as well. If you are talking about the big LLM job fair in NY, flight is not that unaffordable, I don't think Penn got such big advantage in terms of location (I meant to do interviews, if you like city better, definitely Penn has the edge against Duke and Cornell) Finally, I am not familiar with situation in other law schools, but career office at Duke Law helps a lot! Last year many alumni got hired as well.

Again, I am not saying Duke is the best among the three. I personally like Penn a lot as well. What you need to do is to carefully think through what you want from this year in the US! Hope this is helpful. Good luck to you:)

of the three (only), I would choose Penn. really u want to be as close to NY as you can, that really is huge. flights are not unaffordable on a one off but think about doing a few trips at $200 each plus your accomodation (50-100 a night). this quickly makes it expensive. also from a practical point of view, your course load will be very high. If you go to Duke or Cornell you will have to take days off to travel. This will involve missing classes and falling behind which is not good because you may also be relying on your grades to get a job! if you want to work in the US you should be very carful where you choose to study. as a foreigner you probably can only work in California and NY (+Illinois and a few others). Your interests will probably be best served by being in those cities. Yes they are expensive but realistically you will be in thousands of debt anyway and trust me another $10,000 isnt that much extra if it gives you a significant edge when it comes to getting a job- if that your priority). another point to remember is that alumni is huge. Which college has alumni in the city in which you want to work. if you want to work in NY- then Columbia, NYU and Fordham are the big ones. for the most part Duke's alumni, as great as they are, aren't in NY in significant numbers, so that might be cold-comfort when it comes to looking for a job.
Depsite what any college tells you, the priority for all law schools is the JD progam. most schools aren't that helpful to LLMs. because most students are given jobs first in second year as summer interns and are later given offers based on the internship. LLMs cant do this because the schools wont let you do on campus interviewing. The main avenues for LLms are the NY job fair, the Columbia jobs Fair, some cotact through the school depending on where you are from, and personal contacts. When choosing a school, the one you should choose is the one with the highest ranking, the one in NY or Cali and the one with the largest alumni network IN THAT CITY (check Martindale Hubbell).- as far it's possible to get all three. I give this criteria if you want to get a job in the US though. the quality of lectures in the college will be very high too in all three of those colleges. (Stanford Yale and Harvard would obviously be outside the above criteria as their reputation is so good that having them on your cv would compensate the significant inconvenience of being outside NY or Cali.)

At Penn, you can also take courses at Wharton School of Business, Annenberg School of Communication, etc.