Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil: NYU and Columbia

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NYU and Columbia

Prof. Ann Althouse suggests that those making the Columbia/NYU choice focus mostly on the USN&WR rankings:

How many people get into both Columbia and NYU and feel they must go to Columbia because it's one tick higher in the U.S. News ranking, and then the whole time they are there they have this sense that life is so much better down there in Greenwich Village? Don't pretend you took anything more than that into account! List a lot of diverse factors to assuage your pain, but in the end, you know what you did.

Maybe, maybe not. But I hope, looking around my law school, that no one here is tacky enough to use an award ceremony as an opportunity to query a Supreme Court justice about his intimate relations with his wife.

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While my plans for law school are on the back burner, for an undetermined length of time, I still read the "blawgs" that are listed on the sidebar. This past week I've noticed one or two taking exception to a question asked of Supreme Court Justice Ant... [Read More]

Comments

I think that's silly. I came out to visit schools, wanted to go to NYU. And when I saw that they don't have a campus, their dean is a crazy man, and their housing is twice as expensive . . . I changed my mind. It had nothing to do with US News.

Posted by: blaine | April 14, 2005 7:52 PM

I chose NYU because of it's dominance in the Deans' Cup. ;)

Posted by: JLou | April 14, 2005 9:04 PM

I applied to Columbia, but not to NYU, for reasons that I cannot now remember. I think the fact that Columbia waived the application fee may have been a factor.

Posted by: Will Baude | April 14, 2005 11:50 PM

Ditto on fee waiver as reason to apply to Columbia but not NYU. Factor for me and not Will: the whole "haha" reaction to the likelihood of getting into any top 5 school. Dean's Cup dominance, admitted. Superior coolness of Greenwich Village to Morningside Heights, admitted. Need for a campus at the grad school level, questionable. Honestly Blaine, how many frisbees have you thrown on those smidges of lawn?

Posted by: PG | April 15, 2005 11:51 AM

I applied to both Columbia and NYU when they sent me fee waivers, in a fit of agony when I thought I wasn't going to get in anywhere (logic in this decision was greatly missing). I got into Michigan three days after I sent off the applications. Waste of a good $25. Nothing against either school; they're both excellent institutions. I'm just not a fan of NYC.

Posted by: Heidi | April 15, 2005 2:50 PM

I started at NYU in 1998, living in an incredibly cramped suite with two other guys. Of the three of us, two had turned down Harvard and two had turned down Columbia (not the same two, incidentally). At least back then, NYU really did stand out from the other top schools (putting aside Yale, which none of us turned down, or, I suspect, would have turned down) in that a) it pitched itself as a much more progressive school, and b) it pitched itself as a much more collegial school. As to the Scalia thing, NYU has a long and, to me, tiresome tradition of that sort of Brechtian political theater. Comes with the territory.

Posted by: Dan | April 15, 2005 5:13 PM

Posted by: Dan | April 15, 2005 5:14 PM

I'm a third year student at NYU and I was at the question and answer period with Justice Scalia. While the question was definitely shocking and unfortunate, it's definitely not enough to dismiss the school or its students as "tacky." My decision came down to Columbia v. NYU for law school and I chose NYU because the people were happier and nicer. Maybe those are fluffy reasons to choose a school, but my quality of life has been great here. By the way, Gillers isn't the dean; Ricky Revesz took over the deanship from Sexton.

Posted by: Lisa | April 15, 2005 5:43 PM

Lisa, Certainly I doubt the school is tacky as a whole, and like most Columbia students, I know a number of folks at NYU on professional or personal levels. I don't actually have much of a stake in the rivalry, and wouldn't say one student body is much different from the other. I'd kind of hope our administration would come down more strongly on such a boorish group of individuals, however. A terse email seems... inappropriate to the event.

Posted by: A. Rickey | April 15, 2005 7:42 PM

Yeah, Revesz is the crazy one

Posted by: blaine | April 15, 2005 9:48 PM

PG i spend all sorts of time on campus. no frisbees, but picnics up behind Low Library. and i think that quality of life is a very underrated reason for picking a school. the difference between the schools is so marginal, especially in new york, that people should go where they're happiest.

Posted by: blaine | April 15, 2005 10:00 PM

I agree that quality of life is important and that people should go where they're happiness. I've spent the last 36 hours trying to explain this concept to my aunt and uncle, who are convinced that my cousin must attend the highest ranked undergrad school that accepts him or be condemned to unemployment and misery. Quality of life tends to mean different things not only to different people but also at different stages of life. A real campus seems more important at the undergrad level, where you want to have a sense of belonging somewhere, of having a space that you share only with members of your educational community, than at the grad level, when you've had the undergrad experience and you're living a more independent "adult" (or at least over-21) life. Columbia: actual campus; NYU: wide range of liquor stores.

Posted by: PG | April 17, 2005 10:50 AM

Sadly, your premise is slightly mistaken. I recall before your time Ruth Bader Ginsberg, associate justice and wife of tax prof Martin Ginsberg, entertained the question whether, as the popular bumper sticker had it, "tax lawyers really do it most in the spring." The Justice gave a grin and a thumbs-up, to applause.

Posted by: Tony the Pony | April 17, 2005 3:31 PM

TtP: I really do think there's a difference between the two, especially given the tone of the visit by Justice Ginsberg that wasn't before my time. Perhaps it's a difference of degree, but I'd actually say it's one of substance as well. After all, there really is no question that tax lawyers "do it" at some point: Justice Ginsberg's daughter is not only in existence, but is one of our Professors.

Posted by: A. Rickey | April 17, 2005 7:16 PM

Shoot, my sarcasm hyperlinks weren't working. No, it's a difference of kind, because I was (trying to be) joking. Let it be said, from this time and this place, I never heard Justice Ginsberg talk about gettin' down with her husband. I did hear her speak about the permissibility of interdisciplinary interpretive techniques, though, and lemme tell you: That's dirrrr-tay.

Posted by: Tony the Pony | April 18, 2005 2:27 PM

That NYU student's remark to Justice Scalia was unfortunate. It showed no evidence of any benefit from the $40K law school expense. He should have at least couched it in terms of judicial disqualification, or in the case of the self-dealing SC, recusal only.

Posted by: SupremacyClaus | April 23, 2005 9:27 AM

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