Bad Glacier

What I said about Columbia a few posts back? Ignore that. They’re definitely on the ball.

Other than The Daily Show and Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, I don’t watch much TV. I get my news, music, and much of my entertainment online. But I was in Cleveland this weekend and saw a few shows (there are few things more fun than relaxing with my girlfriend, watching TV and mocking everything we can). I don’t have anything interesting to say about law school, so I’d like to write about TV.

First off is “Numb3rs”, CBS’s new show about a math professor who, in his spare time, uses mathematics to fight crime with his FBI agent brother. Yeah, it’s about as realistic as you’d expect.

I guess CBS is trying to stick with the “CSI” template by showing another side of criminal investigations (I’ve got something to write about CSI, too. Later.). But math? C’mon. The show is apparently based on real-life events, but the episode I saw (yeah, I’m basing this post on one episode. Pshh, I don’t have to try to be fair.) had the math genius using his huge brain to predict where bank robbers would strike next. His model worked; the FBI confronted the bank robbers in the middle of their next heist. But the theives had backup, so his model didn’t work after all! Now, you might say that since his model was only meant to predict the location of the next robbery, it worked just fine. But you’re wrong.

So what does a failed-FBI-agent-slash-math-professor do now? Well, he certainly doesn’t continue teaching or work on a new model that tries to predict the theives’ escape plan. Instead, he lectures his brother on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (wait, that’s physics, not math), stops going to his lectures, and starts work on “P = NP?“, a famously unsolved (possibly unsolvable) problem in theoretical computer science. I’d think that after such a spectacular failure, he’d work on something a little less… um… impossible. But that’s just me.

All in all, I didn’t really like the show. It was boring and it felt like the math was forced into the show to provide a gimmick. All he did was find a pattern, anyways. Bah.

For the past few days, I’ve been reading through old posts by some of my favorite law student blawgs. It’s interesting to read their thoughts on starting law school and to see the differences in style and content over the year(s). Today, I ran across this post by Heidi at Letters of Marque talking about Michigan’s high yield in Fall ‘03 and the reasons they were able to attract so many students. Heidi says:

The secret to Michigan’s success is simple. They sent decisions before everyone else. This allowed a community to form and nucleate. People felt like they were part of the “Michigan” community before they had time to project being part of any other community. The community grew. And it’s a lot harder to leave a community than it is to pick a law school. For that matter, it’s a lot easier to join a community than it is to pick a law school. Michigan’s high yield was a result of community building.

So let’s put the blame (or the credit) squarely where it belongs–on the efficiency and friendliness of the Michigan Admissions Office.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Michigan sent my first acceptance, and like I said earlier, their frequent mailings keep refreshing the idea of UM Law in my head. Similarly, the personalized admission letter and the admitted students web page made me feel special. Sure, lots of people got complimented on their personal statement*, but I highly doubt Ms. Zearfoss would straight-up lie on something like this, especially when there’s something as easy as my odd (for law school) major to write about. I hadn’t been very happy with my personal statement, so the compliment was nice to hear (along with the acceptance, of course. The compliment wouldn’t be worth much without that.).

So Michigan goes with the “send early, send often, stay visible, make students feel good and think of themselves as X Law School students” strategy. I have to say that it’s working pretty well. I would have no problem going to UM Law.

I doubt Harvard has any problems attracting students (except the ones that get into Yale, maybe), but it looks like they’re adopting a piece of this strategy too. Apparently they’re making people sign up for Harvard Law e-mail addresses to apply for financial aid. I can’t imagine a financial aid process that would require a HLS e-mail address, but it’s a good way to get people to think of themselves as Hahhhvaaahhd students. And it’s a lot cheaper than a tee shirt (which I hear Stanford sends out).

Another option is the “tall, dark, mysterious stranger” strategy. Send out little information, make decisions late. Make admitted students feel lucky instead of special. No school completely fits here, but this pretty much fits with the stereotype of Yale. They have their own way of doing things—a special, 250-word essay (but you can still send in your personal statement, if you wish, as an “extra” essay) and their “professors-rate-applications” system of admitting students which (supposedly) leads to late decisions—and if that doesn’t match up with other schools’ schedules, tough. For me, Virginia has put themselves in this category by not sending me a view book or application information even after I visited in the early fall. Columbia, with the death of their Dean of Admissions (link), they’re probably here now whether they like it or not.

I suppose there’s also the “dollar bill, y’all” option, but I haven’t yet dealt with the financial aid stuff, so I don’t really have anything to say here, except that Yale’s “No merit aid, ever! None! EVER!” shtick appears to remove them from this category.

*Really though, how many things can you be complimented on? “We really enjoyed your LSAT score and GPA!” “Your name is just the right length! We love ‘Brickner’s!” The things that distinguish you are your essays, your major, and you extracurriculars/work experience. So it’s not surprising that people were complimented on these things.

I don’t know if it’s planned or not (I assume so), but Michigan has done an amazing job of keeping themselves in my mind recently. In the last month or so, I’ve received:

• information on Ann Arbor and student living options in the area;
• faculty and student guidebooks showing me what my future could be like if I were smart enough to become a law professor or if I were a better person and spent my entire life helping underpriviliged people instead of playing Grand Theft Auto and noodling around on my guitar all day;
• another faculty guidebook with essays by Michigan’s interdisciplinary faculty members, along with a very enthusiastic letter from Professor Don Herzog (I’ll pass this one off to foxes for now);
• a Blue Mountain talking e-card — “Just wanted to say we love you!”; and
• three stripper-grams (nice touch, I must admit).

I’m flattered, of course, but I figured that would be about it until financial aid decisions come around (after I get my W2s and my parents’ tax returns from the past 30 years), but no. I finally got around to checking out Left2Right, and of the 30 or so authors, five or six of them are UM faculty (mainly philosophy, but also Professor Herzog and Elizabeth Anderson, who taught a Law & Philosophy class last semester). I wouldn’t have given it a second thought if I hadn’t remembered Dr. Herzog from the two faculty booklets.

I can’t escape. I just can’t do it. They’re everywhere!

So I guess what I’m saying is, “See you at preview weekend, foxes.” (And anyone else—if you’re attending March 17 - 19, let me know. I don’t want to go into this thing completely blind.)

I’m gonna take advantage of the link from ambivalent imbroglio and encourage everyone who hasn’t done so already to download the Firefox web browser. It’s like Internet Explorer, except, y’know… good. Tabbed browsing is the greatest thing ever. And the whole “no gaping security holes” thing is pretty nice, too. But you probably know that already, smart people that you are.

(You see, I have to suck up to you because I don’t actually have any content yet and I want you to come back again. Please? Don’t make me beg.)

P.S. - If this page looks messed up on your browser, please let me know. I’m still messing with the design and layout, and I haven’t been able to test on anything but an old IE and Firefox 1.0. Damned style sheets. Thanks, y’all.

So why did I decide to start blogging? There are the usual reasons—fame, power, groupies, and plain old exhibitionism—but the main reason is that I want to improve my writing.

I’ve always had trouble translating my thoughts into words. I write slowly, revising paragraphs over and over. I want to get to the point where I can come up with an idea, fire off a quick post, and go back to whatever I was doing. To me, a blog seems like the best place to improve this aspect of my writing because of the nature of the posts: short, mostly self-contained, with a wide range of styles and topics.

So anyways, there you go. I started blogging to improve my writing. The groupies had nothing to do with it, I promise.

Uh, hi. This is my blog. I’m a recent college graduate with a degree in computer science. This blog will document my applications to, entrance into, and (hopefully) passage through law school, as well as the strange experiments with writing and talking I conduct in between.

Wish me luck.

P.S. - Thanks to ambimb for setting me up here at blawgcoop.