After almost six years of counseling clients on US LL.M. admissions I have reached the conclusion that anyone applying to top LL.M. programs needs to understand the Harvard essays even if they are not applying there. When it comes to LL.M., I think Harvard Law School does. My reasoning is as follows:
1. Harvard Law School is the top general LL.M. program. Yale and Stanford are harder to get into, but they are small specialized programs. Harvard has the best name brand reputation of any American university in the world and so does its law school.
2. Not a single one of the LL.M. admits to Harvard I worked with or know about ever rejected it to attend Columbia, Chicago, or other top general LL.M. programs.
3. For applicants who apply to Harvard, it is the hardest application they will likely have to complete. The only other exception might be UC Berkeley because of the need to have a very detailed plan of study, but that is arguable and highly variable.
4. Most importantly, those who apply to Harvard are also applying to the other top programs and many will most likely be utilizing their Harvard content to prepare essays for other schools. The rigorous analytical and legal thinking that makes for great Harvard essays will thus impact not only their chances for admissions at other schools, but all other applicants' chances as well.
Therefore even if you don't apply to Harvard's LL.M. you need to apply the same level of intellectual rigor to your essays that a successful Harvard admit would be applying to his or her essays. Since you are competing with those who apply to Harvard, you need to write essays at the same level as required by Harvard. In my next post, I analyze Harvard Law School's four essay questions for Fall 2008.
-Adam Markus
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コロンビア, ハーバード, シカゴ, スタンフォード, 米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, エッサイ, LLM留学
September 22, 2007
September 21, 2007
Free GRE Preparation
While looking at the University of California Office of President's website, I came across http://www.number2.com/, a site that offers free GRE preparation. I am not sure how good their preparation system is, but if the University of California is willing to link to it, I would certainly think it would be worth trying. "The company was founded by professors and graduate students who wanted to make high quality test preparation universally accessible." Sounds good to me. If you use it, please let me know what you think.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
大学院留学
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
大学院留学
September 20, 2007
How hard is it to get into top US LL.M. programs?
In the following post, I provide a detailed analysis of LL.M. acceptance rates. UPDATES TO THIS POST CAN BE FOUND HERE, BUT READ THIS FIRST. 10/6/07: I have now updated my table on LL.M. admissions rates. Please read this post for my overall analysis, but refer to my most recent for admissions rates.
As I indicated in an earlier post, US Law Schools provide very comprehensive admissions results for their J.D. programs, but significantly less information for LL.M. programs. While ABA approved J.D. programs are required to report detailed admissions information, LL.M. programs are not required to report such data. Using US News and World Report's Law School information, I put together the chart below to look at how difficult it is to get into the J.D. and LL.M. programs at America's Top 20 Law Schools. CLICK ON THE CHART TO ENLARGE IT.
Email me at adammarkus.gmail.com for an excel or pdf version. See below for hyperlinks to where I obtained my data.
While there are many other great US Law Schools, I have, for the most part, focused on the schools that the LLM applicants I have worked with in Japan are most likely to apply to. The great exception is Yale, which is included because of its rank. Given that Yale's program is specifically designed for those who are seeking academic careers, my clients, lawyers (弁護士 Bengoshi), patent lawyers (弁理士 Benrishi), judges, prosecutors, and company and government sponsored legal experts don't typically don't fit the admissions criteria.
SO HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO GET ADMITTED?
Well for some schools like University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, the program in Banking and Financial Law at Boston University, and USC it is not even possible to determine from their websites how many students attend each year. While I could contact students in these programs to get more numbers, I was specifically interested in seeing to what extent these schools actually provide good admissions data easily accessible to applicants. I have to say, as you can see from reviewing my table or actually looking at the websites I reference at the end of this post, that the amount of data available is quite limited.
ESTIMATED ACCEPTANCE RATES:
I am have created estimated LL.M. acceptance rates mostly based on J.D. Yield. I do this based on the following assumptions:
1. J.D. Yield is an excellent indicator of a school's overall popularity with applicants. All things being equal someone admitted to a school with a higher yield is simply more likely to go there than someone admitted to a school with a lower yield. This is not always the case, but it generally the case.
2. LLM applicants, in-part, make decisions based on overall school ranking and ranking and yield are generally well connected (though not conclusively so).
3. I think JD yield rates accurately reflect the way my own LL.M. clients have acted in the past.
4. For NYU, which had more than 2000 applications and 425 students at the New York City campus and 40 in Singapore for Fall 2007, this formula does not work because the number of estimated admits that the formula generates is absurdly high. I have assumed their yield was 50%, which produces an acceptance rate of 47%. Their J.D. yield rate is very low and their LL.M. class is very big, so I think this is a reasonable adjustment. Of course, I wish I had real the numbers!
My formula for LLM Estimated Number Accepted:
(Number of LL.M. Enrolled/(JD Yield)=(Estimated LL.M. Number Accepted)
My formula for LL.M. Estimated Acceptance Rate:
(Estimated Number Accepted)/(Number Applied)= (Estimated LL.M. Acceptance Rate)
My estimated LL.M. acceptance rates are simply a guess and I would not be surprised if they are wrong. Use them at your own risk. Hopefully, I will be able to get better real numbers from schools, but I think my estimates are better than nothing.
Assuming my estimates are correct (a big assumption), the admission rates for top LL.M. programs are typically somewhere between 26% and 45%.
THE TOP THREE
While not recorded on my table because it is completely outside my methodology, I assume the acceptance rates at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford are fairly close to the rates of J.D. admission. Given Harvard's size and the fact that the only schools a Harvard admit is likely to choose over Harvard are Yale and Stanford, I assume Harvard's LL.M. acceptance rate can't be higher than 15% and maybe as low as 10%.
Is Better LL.M. Admissions Data Available?
In effort to answer that question, I have emailed all 20 of the schools that I researched. I sent them all the same identical email at the same time. While I have specific contacts at some of these programs, I also wanted to see how the programs would react to such a request using their standard email addresses. I will report my results as I receive them. Questions? Comments? Write comments here or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/LLM.htm
Harvard
http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/graduate/admissions/downloadapplication.php
(download application, it mentions 150 spots, but no other information)
Stanford
http://www.law.stanford.edu/program/degrees/advanced/
New York University
http://www.nyulawglobal.org/graduateadmissions/eligibilitystandards.htm
Columbia
http://www.law.columbia.edu/llm_jsd
University of Chicago
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/prospective/llm-faq.html
University of Pennsylvania
I found nothing on their site, http://www.law.upenn.edu/prospective/grad/coursestudy.html#llm
University of California, Berkeley
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/admissions/advdegree/catalog/page6.html
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
http://www.law.umich.edu/prospectivestudents/graduate/degreeprograms.htm
Assume 55 per year.
Duke
http://www.law.duke.edu/internat/internationalStudents.html
University of Virginia
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/prospectives/grad/faq.htm
"Virginia Law receives several hundred applications each year for a class of fewer than 50 students." The brochure states 45 per year.
Northwestern
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/admissions/profile/
provided no information. It used to.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/career/statistics/llm.html
99 in the class of 2006 for both the LL.M. and LL.M./Kellogg programs.
Cornell
http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/admissions/degrees/lmm_jsd.cfm
I assumed 900 applied and 60 matriculated.
Georgetown
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/graduate/foreign.cfm
"Each year Georgetown Law Center provides Master of Laws degree programs for more than 100 students who received their legal training outside the United States." I used 100.
UCLA
Nothing found at http://www.law.ucla.edu/home/index.asp?page=2266
or elsewhere.
USC
Nothing found at http://lawgip.usc.edu/llm/admissions.cfm or elsewhere.
Vanderbilt
http://law.vanderbilt.edu/prospective-students/llm-program-/llm-class-of-2008-profile/index.aspx
I counted the LLM students in the photo: 25.
University of Texas-Austin
http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/degrees/llm/
"The LL.M. program is a small and extremely selective program. Each year we receive approximately 250 applications for the 30 or so places in the LL.M. class. In 2006–2007, our LL.M. class included 28 students from 14 countries." I assumed 30 attend and 250 applications.
Washington University St. Louis
No data provided at http://law.wustl.edu/ataglance/
or elsewhere.
Boston University
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/llm/american/faqs.html#faqs-large
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/llm/intellectual/faqs.html#howlarge
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
http://www.law.umn.edu/llm/apply.html#17
"We receive about 200 applications per year on average." "We enroll a class of 25 to 30 students each year." I assume 200 applications and 30 students.
=============================================
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
コロンビア, ハーバード, シカゴ, スタンフォード, 米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, LLM留学
As I indicated in an earlier post, US Law Schools provide very comprehensive admissions results for their J.D. programs, but significantly less information for LL.M. programs. While ABA approved J.D. programs are required to report detailed admissions information, LL.M. programs are not required to report such data. Using US News and World Report's Law School information, I put together the chart below to look at how difficult it is to get into the J.D. and LL.M. programs at America's Top 20 Law Schools. CLICK ON THE CHART TO ENLARGE IT.
Email me at adammarkus.gmail.com for an excel or pdf version. See below for hyperlinks to where I obtained my data.While there are many other great US Law Schools, I have, for the most part, focused on the schools that the LLM applicants I have worked with in Japan are most likely to apply to. The great exception is Yale, which is included because of its rank. Given that Yale's program is specifically designed for those who are seeking academic careers, my clients, lawyers (弁護士 Bengoshi), patent lawyers (弁理士 Benrishi), judges, prosecutors, and company and government sponsored legal experts don't typically don't fit the admissions criteria.
SO HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO GET ADMITTED?
Well for some schools like University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, the program in Banking and Financial Law at Boston University, and USC it is not even possible to determine from their websites how many students attend each year. While I could contact students in these programs to get more numbers, I was specifically interested in seeing to what extent these schools actually provide good admissions data easily accessible to applicants. I have to say, as you can see from reviewing my table or actually looking at the websites I reference at the end of this post, that the amount of data available is quite limited.
ESTIMATED ACCEPTANCE RATES:
I am have created estimated LL.M. acceptance rates mostly based on J.D. Yield. I do this based on the following assumptions:
1. J.D. Yield is an excellent indicator of a school's overall popularity with applicants. All things being equal someone admitted to a school with a higher yield is simply more likely to go there than someone admitted to a school with a lower yield. This is not always the case, but it generally the case.
2. LLM applicants, in-part, make decisions based on overall school ranking and ranking and yield are generally well connected (though not conclusively so).
3. I think JD yield rates accurately reflect the way my own LL.M. clients have acted in the past.
4. For NYU, which had more than 2000 applications and 425 students at the New York City campus and 40 in Singapore for Fall 2007, this formula does not work because the number of estimated admits that the formula generates is absurdly high. I have assumed their yield was 50%, which produces an acceptance rate of 47%. Their J.D. yield rate is very low and their LL.M. class is very big, so I think this is a reasonable adjustment. Of course, I wish I had real the numbers!
My formula for LLM Estimated Number Accepted:
(Number of LL.M. Enrolled/(JD Yield)=(Estimated LL.M. Number Accepted)
My formula for LL.M. Estimated Acceptance Rate:
(Estimated Number Accepted)/(Number Applied)= (Estimated LL.M. Acceptance Rate)
My estimated LL.M. acceptance rates are simply a guess and I would not be surprised if they are wrong. Use them at your own risk. Hopefully, I will be able to get better real numbers from schools, but I think my estimates are better than nothing.
Assuming my estimates are correct (a big assumption), the admission rates for top LL.M. programs are typically somewhere between 26% and 45%.
THE TOP THREE
While not recorded on my table because it is completely outside my methodology, I assume the acceptance rates at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford are fairly close to the rates of J.D. admission. Given Harvard's size and the fact that the only schools a Harvard admit is likely to choose over Harvard are Yale and Stanford, I assume Harvard's LL.M. acceptance rate can't be higher than 15% and maybe as low as 10%.
Is Better LL.M. Admissions Data Available?
In effort to answer that question, I have emailed all 20 of the schools that I researched. I sent them all the same identical email at the same time. While I have specific contacts at some of these programs, I also wanted to see how the programs would react to such a request using their standard email addresses. I will report my results as I receive them. Questions? Comments? Write comments here or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
Specific urls cited for LL.M. data from US News and World Report's Top 20 US Law Schools for 2008 (in rank order)
Yalehttp://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/LLM.htm
Harvard
http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/graduate/admissions/downloadapplication.php
(download application, it mentions 150 spots, but no other information)
Stanford
http://www.law.stanford.edu/program/degrees/advanced/
New York University
http://www.nyulawglobal.org/graduateadmissions/eligibilitystandards.htm
Columbia
http://www.law.columbia.edu/llm_jsd
University of Chicago
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/prospective/llm-faq.html
University of Pennsylvania
I found nothing on their site, http://www.law.upenn.edu/prospective/grad/coursestudy.html#llm
University of California, Berkeley
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/admissions/advdegree/catalog/page6.html
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
http://www.law.umich.edu/prospectivestudents/graduate/degreeprograms.htm
Assume 55 per year.
Duke
http://www.law.duke.edu/internat/internationalStudents.html
University of Virginia
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/prospectives/grad/faq.htm
"Virginia Law receives several hundred applications each year for a class of fewer than 50 students." The brochure states 45 per year.
Northwestern
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/admissions/profile/
provided no information. It used to.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/career/statistics/llm.html
99 in the class of 2006 for both the LL.M. and LL.M./Kellogg programs.
Cornell
http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/admissions/degrees/lmm_jsd.cfm
I assumed 900 applied and 60 matriculated.
Georgetown
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/graduate/foreign.cfm
"Each year Georgetown Law Center provides Master of Laws degree programs for more than 100 students who received their legal training outside the United States." I used 100.
UCLA
Nothing found at http://www.law.ucla.edu/home/index.asp?page=2266
or elsewhere.
USC
Nothing found at http://lawgip.usc.edu/llm/admissions.cfm or elsewhere.
Vanderbilt
http://law.vanderbilt.edu/prospective-students/llm-program-/llm-class-of-2008-profile/index.aspx
I counted the LLM students in the photo: 25.
University of Texas-Austin
http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/degrees/llm/
"The LL.M. program is a small and extremely selective program. Each year we receive approximately 250 applications for the 30 or so places in the LL.M. class. In 2006–2007, our LL.M. class included 28 students from 14 countries." I assumed 30 attend and 250 applications.
Washington University St. Louis
No data provided at http://law.wustl.edu/ataglance/
or elsewhere.
Boston University
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/llm/american/faqs.html#faqs-large
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/llm/intellectual/faqs.html#howlarge
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
http://www.law.umn.edu/llm/apply.html#17
"We receive about 200 applications per year on average." "We enroll a class of 25 to 30 students each year." I assume 200 applications and 30 students.
=============================================
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
コロンビア, ハーバード, シカゴ, スタンフォード, 米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, LLM留学
US Law School Admissions Data Reporting Requirements
In the first post in this series, I considered the impact on LL.M applicants caused by the discrepancy between the way LL.M. and J.D. admissions data is reported. In the third post in this series, I will provide analysis of the relative difficulty of getting into top J.D. and LL.M. programs.
Here, I consider the role of the primary credentialing authority for American Law Schools, the American Bar Association (ABA). As I will explain, ABA Approved Law Schools are, in fact, subject to reporting admissions data for J.D. programs (Download Chapter Five and read Standard 509, Interpretation 509-1, Section (1) ), but have no obligation to report LL.M. admissions data.
One reason for the discrepancy between the way US Law Schools report admissions data for LL.M. and J.D. can be traced to the ABA approval process:
The ABA does not formally approve any program other than the first degree in law (J.D.). For those not familiar with the way the bar works, this lack of oversight of LL.M. might seem odd because one could mistakenly believe that the ABA actually regulates bar admission. So how do LL.M.s get admitted to the bar?
The criteria for eligibility to take the bar examination or to otherwise qualify for bar admission are set by each state, not by the ABA or the Council for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
Thus states determine who can take the bar, not the ABA. The ABA is thus able to avoid the whole issue of LL.M. programs and bar passage.
Interestingly enough, even though the ABA does not provide direct oversight on LL.M. degrees, the two states, California and New York, that routinely accept the US LL.M. degree for bar admission, only accept LL.M.s from ABA approved schools.
In California, the LL.M. is accepted if it is from an ABA approved school, but California also accepts J.D. graduates of non-ABA approved schools. Hence California which actually oversees non-ABA approved law school's J.D. programs appears to assume that the ABA is providing oversight for the LL.M., which the ABA is not doing.
In New York, the standards for LL.M. or other graduate degree study are explained in great depth. Again the assumption appears to be that New York assumes ABA oversight:
Approved Law School - Approved law school means a U.S. law school approved by the American Bar Association (ABA). Please note that the Board cannot recommend a particular law schools nor does the Board maintain a list of schools that offer programs that will satisfy the Rule 520.6. You may contact the ABA's Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar at their website (http://www.abanet.org/legaled) to obtain a list of ABA approved law schools.
I conclude from the above that neither state bars or the ABA are particularly concerned about LL.M. programs and certainly not something as particular as the reporting of admissions data.
The other principal body that one could look to would be the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), but my review of the requirements for member institutions leads me to the conclusion that the aforementioned ABA requirement for the reporting of J.D. admissions numbers is one that ABA Approved Schools are required to follow. However the AALS Bylaws does include language that I find very interesting:
Bylaw Section 6-2. Admissions c. A member school shall deal fairly with applicants for admission.
There are many ways to interpret such a fairness standard. At least at this time, it does not include proving LL.M. applicants with the same quality of data as J.D. applicants. I think this should change because LL.M. applicants should be able to make admissions decisions based on the same kind of admissions data that J.D. applicants have access to. In the next post in this series, I will explain what I will be doing about this issue.
Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
Here, I consider the role of the primary credentialing authority for American Law Schools, the American Bar Association (ABA). As I will explain, ABA Approved Law Schools are, in fact, subject to reporting admissions data for J.D. programs (Download Chapter Five and read Standard 509, Interpretation 509-1, Section (1) ), but have no obligation to report LL.M. admissions data.
One reason for the discrepancy between the way US Law Schools report admissions data for LL.M. and J.D. can be traced to the ABA approval process:
The ABA does not formally approve any program other than the first degree in law (J.D.). For those not familiar with the way the bar works, this lack of oversight of LL.M. might seem odd because one could mistakenly believe that the ABA actually regulates bar admission. So how do LL.M.s get admitted to the bar?
The criteria for eligibility to take the bar examination or to otherwise qualify for bar admission are set by each state, not by the ABA or the Council for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
Thus states determine who can take the bar, not the ABA. The ABA is thus able to avoid the whole issue of LL.M. programs and bar passage.
Interestingly enough, even though the ABA does not provide direct oversight on LL.M. degrees, the two states, California and New York, that routinely accept the US LL.M. degree for bar admission, only accept LL.M.s from ABA approved schools.
In California, the LL.M. is accepted if it is from an ABA approved school, but California also accepts J.D. graduates of non-ABA approved schools. Hence California which actually oversees non-ABA approved law school's J.D. programs appears to assume that the ABA is providing oversight for the LL.M., which the ABA is not doing.
In New York, the standards for LL.M. or other graduate degree study are explained in great depth. Again the assumption appears to be that New York assumes ABA oversight:
Approved Law School - Approved law school means a U.S. law school approved by the American Bar Association (ABA). Please note that the Board cannot recommend a particular law schools nor does the Board maintain a list of schools that offer programs that will satisfy the Rule 520.6. You may contact the ABA's Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar at their website (http://www.abanet.org/legaled) to obtain a list of ABA approved law schools.
I conclude from the above that neither state bars or the ABA are particularly concerned about LL.M. programs and certainly not something as particular as the reporting of admissions data.
The other principal body that one could look to would be the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), but my review of the requirements for member institutions leads me to the conclusion that the aforementioned ABA requirement for the reporting of J.D. admissions numbers is one that ABA Approved Schools are required to follow. However the AALS Bylaws does include language that I find very interesting:
Bylaw Section 6-2. Admissions c. A member school shall deal fairly with applicants for admission.
There are many ways to interpret such a fairness standard. At least at this time, it does not include proving LL.M. applicants with the same quality of data as J.D. applicants. I think this should change because LL.M. applicants should be able to make admissions decisions based on the same kind of admissions data that J.D. applicants have access to. In the next post in this series, I will explain what I will be doing about this issue.
Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
The Lack of Transparency in the LL.M. Application Process
One thing that I find highly ironic about US LL.M. admissions is the real lack of information provided by law schools. The irony is that law schools provide huge amounts of data regarding their J.D. program, but the very same schools provide very little information about acceptance rates and yield (percentage of accepted students who attend) for their LL.M. program(s). Here I focus on LL.M. programs for international students. Thus the very same schools that make it very easy to think about school selection for J.D. applicants, don't make it easy for LL.M. applicants. It is reasonable to say that as result, LL.M. applicants at a huge disadvantage relative to J.D. applicants for purposes of formulating an efficient application strategy.
One example. The typical way an LL.M. program reports its relative level of difficulty is exemplified by the University of Chicago (Chicago actually reports the number of applications, which makes it better than some other schools. I use Chicago simply as an example, but not in an attempt to make it look bad.):
Each year the Law School receives approximately 750 applications for the 50 positions in the LL.M. program
Keep in mind that this only tells you the number of admits, but not the number admitted and not yield, so you don't know what percentage decided to attend. Contrast this with the J.D. applications for 2005 (the most recent on the US News and World Report site):
Acceptance Rate: 15.9%
Number of Applicants: 4818
Number Accepted: 766
Number Enrolled: 192
If J.D. applicants only knew the number enrolled and the number of applicants, they might draw the mistaken conclusion that only approximately 4% of applicants were admitted. Based on that same mistaken impression, 50 out of 750 for the LL.M. program gives us approximately 7%. Now the actually rate of admission for the LL.M. program? Certainly it is easier than the J.D. program, but by how much? Based on what I know about the process as well as my experience with clients who get into Chicago, I bet the actual percentage of admitted students is somewhere between 25% and 30% (I will be happy to be corrected, I sent this post to the Dean of the Law School over two weeks ago and have yet to receive a reply).
Essentially international LL.M. applicants to US programs experience information asymmetry in their school selection, while J.D. candidates have a situation of almost perfect information (they can look at their LSAT & GPA and a clear sense of their relative likelihood of acceptance to any particular program). This is simply unfair and inexcusable. Make no mistake about it, most LL.M. programs engage in a set of practices that, whether intended or not, obfuscate the ability of applicants to determine the real difficulty of admission.
While admissions officers might argue that the LL.M. program is more like graduate programs in other parts of the university, I find this argument unacceptable for two reasons. First, LL.M. programs are part of Law Schools that easily have the means for reporting full information on their admissions decisions. Second, J.D. program admissions results reporting is, generally speaking, the standard by which to measure all other graduate programs and therefore applying the lesser standards generally used in the Arts and Sciences would simply be to engage in bad practice. (Yes, I said that, really only professional schools in Law, Medicine, and Business consistently report good numbers).
So why not report on acceptance rates and yield? Well, as anyone who has actually helped applicants at this for years can tell you, there is- with the exception of the very top programs (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, UC Berkeley, UCLA, New York University, University of Michigan, and Georgetown)- very little relationship between the difficulty of entering the school's LL.M. and J.D. programs. And even for the schools I mentioned, it is hard to know for sure because of the lack of LL.M. data for most of these programs.
The lack of information that schools provide is further compounded by the lack of information provided elsewhere. Given the relatively small size of the LL.M.applicant market, no one is publishing books on this. At best LL.M.programs get a passing mention. The only decent general LL.M. site, http://www.llm-guide.com/, is forced to show J.D. ranking information because there really is nothing better.
Some may argue that knowing a school's J.D. ranking is enough, but given my experience I don't think so. First of all, the Japanese lawyers (弁護士 Bengoshi), patent lawyers (弁理士 Benrishi), judges, prosecutors, government officials, and legal experts I have worked with, have often had to apply to too many schools because they were uncertain about the actual level of difficulty and the only really good numbers that they really have to look at for J.D. programs. I don't know about the situation in other countries, but LL.M.applicants in Japan tend to apply to more programs than applicants in other fields. It is common for Japanese LL.M. applicants to apply to 8 to 12 schools, as compared to the usual 4 to 6 that most graduate applicants apply to.
In the situation of information asymmetry that LL.M. applicants find themselves in, the only rational thing is apply to as many programs as they can in order to see what the best result is. I can't believe such actions are really in the interest of admissions offices, which get flooded, relatively speaking, with applications from Japan. Japanese represent a very large percentage of LL.M. applicants. Consider that 8 out of 50 in Chicago's 2007-2008 Class are Japanese, three more than the next largest nationality represented. This percentage of Japanese students is quite typical for most programs (Yale and Stanford probably being the exceptions due to their small size and selectivity). Assuming similar behavior from applicants in other countries, one can assume that with the exception of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, these programs must have relatively low yields. Of course, I can't know that for sure. However in the third post in this series, I attempt to answer that question. But before turning to that question, please read the second post where I analyze the impact of American Bar Association reporting requirements on the difference between the way J.D. and LL.M. admissions data is provided.
Questions? Comments? Write comments here or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
コロンビア, ハーバード, シカゴ, スタンフォード, 米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, LLM留学
One example. The typical way an LL.M. program reports its relative level of difficulty is exemplified by the University of Chicago (Chicago actually reports the number of applications, which makes it better than some other schools. I use Chicago simply as an example, but not in an attempt to make it look bad.):
Each year the Law School receives approximately 750 applications for the 50 positions in the LL.M. program
Keep in mind that this only tells you the number of admits, but not the number admitted and not yield, so you don't know what percentage decided to attend. Contrast this with the J.D. applications for 2005 (the most recent on the US News and World Report site):
Acceptance Rate: 15.9%
Number of Applicants: 4818
Number Accepted: 766
Number Enrolled: 192
If J.D. applicants only knew the number enrolled and the number of applicants, they might draw the mistaken conclusion that only approximately 4% of applicants were admitted. Based on that same mistaken impression, 50 out of 750 for the LL.M. program gives us approximately 7%. Now the actually rate of admission for the LL.M. program? Certainly it is easier than the J.D. program, but by how much? Based on what I know about the process as well as my experience with clients who get into Chicago, I bet the actual percentage of admitted students is somewhere between 25% and 30% (I will be happy to be corrected, I sent this post to the Dean of the Law School over two weeks ago and have yet to receive a reply).
Essentially international LL.M. applicants to US programs experience information asymmetry in their school selection, while J.D. candidates have a situation of almost perfect information (they can look at their LSAT & GPA and a clear sense of their relative likelihood of acceptance to any particular program). This is simply unfair and inexcusable. Make no mistake about it, most LL.M. programs engage in a set of practices that, whether intended or not, obfuscate the ability of applicants to determine the real difficulty of admission.
While admissions officers might argue that the LL.M. program is more like graduate programs in other parts of the university, I find this argument unacceptable for two reasons. First, LL.M. programs are part of Law Schools that easily have the means for reporting full information on their admissions decisions. Second, J.D. program admissions results reporting is, generally speaking, the standard by which to measure all other graduate programs and therefore applying the lesser standards generally used in the Arts and Sciences would simply be to engage in bad practice. (Yes, I said that, really only professional schools in Law, Medicine, and Business consistently report good numbers).
So why not report on acceptance rates and yield? Well, as anyone who has actually helped applicants at this for years can tell you, there is- with the exception of the very top programs (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, UC Berkeley, UCLA, New York University, University of Michigan, and Georgetown)- very little relationship between the difficulty of entering the school's LL.M. and J.D. programs. And even for the schools I mentioned, it is hard to know for sure because of the lack of LL.M. data for most of these programs.
The lack of information that schools provide is further compounded by the lack of information provided elsewhere. Given the relatively small size of the LL.M.applicant market, no one is publishing books on this. At best LL.M.programs get a passing mention. The only decent general LL.M. site, http://www.llm-guide.com/, is forced to show J.D. ranking information because there really is nothing better.
Some may argue that knowing a school's J.D. ranking is enough, but given my experience I don't think so. First of all, the Japanese lawyers (弁護士 Bengoshi), patent lawyers (弁理士 Benrishi), judges, prosecutors, government officials, and legal experts I have worked with, have often had to apply to too many schools because they were uncertain about the actual level of difficulty and the only really good numbers that they really have to look at for J.D. programs. I don't know about the situation in other countries, but LL.M.applicants in Japan tend to apply to more programs than applicants in other fields. It is common for Japanese LL.M. applicants to apply to 8 to 12 schools, as compared to the usual 4 to 6 that most graduate applicants apply to.
In the situation of information asymmetry that LL.M. applicants find themselves in, the only rational thing is apply to as many programs as they can in order to see what the best result is. I can't believe such actions are really in the interest of admissions offices, which get flooded, relatively speaking, with applications from Japan. Japanese represent a very large percentage of LL.M. applicants. Consider that 8 out of 50 in Chicago's 2007-2008 Class are Japanese, three more than the next largest nationality represented. This percentage of Japanese students is quite typical for most programs (Yale and Stanford probably being the exceptions due to their small size and selectivity). Assuming similar behavior from applicants in other countries, one can assume that with the exception of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, these programs must have relatively low yields. Of course, I can't know that for sure. However in the third post in this series, I attempt to answer that question. But before turning to that question, please read the second post where I analyze the impact of American Bar Association reporting requirements on the difference between the way J.D. and LL.M. admissions data is provided.
Questions? Comments? Write comments here or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
コロンビア, ハーバード, シカゴ, スタンフォード, 米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, LLM留学
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