Bad Glacier

Thursday started off with a breakfast reception. Bleh. Have I mentioned I don’t like these? I really like having a place to sit while I’m eating. In between trips to the food table, I did end up talking to several interesting admits, a current student or two, and a couple people from the Admissions Office. Dean Schizer spoke and then took questions. He emphasized the teaching at Columbia and talked about his plans to improve the law school.

This law school has a lovely pancreas. Inner beauty, people. Inner beauty.

I considered going to the Public Interest Open House, but that sounded like it involved talking to people, so I sat through the faculty panel on teaching and the financial aid Q&A instead. Basically, I found out that Columbia professors (at least six of them) enjoy teaching and 2L are guaranteed summer funding for public interest jobs, but not 1Ls. Also, Columbia gives out more of your aid during the first two years, allowing you to hold off the bulk of your borrowing until third year. That’s kinda nice.

Lunch was nice, especially the real food and the sitting down parts. We accidentally filled up the whole table, rather than leave space for current students, but no one cared enough to move. Some students volunteered to let the admits look at their apartments, so our table ran around to a couple. I was impressed with a decent-size two-bedroom apartment that cost each person $900-some and actually had a common room you could spread your arms in. From what I gathered, that’s a great price for New York (even though it sounds unbelievable to me). We also saw Lenfest Hall, a new building, but I was somewhat disappointed with the $1400/month hotel-style rooms (all singles). Some of the others were happy to find a clean, new, modern place, but I liked the other buildings better. They had character.

Dean Schizer had really talked up Professor Jeremy Waldron in his opening speech, so I snuck into his lecture on torture, even though it had already started. Wow. From what I saw, the man is a rock star. And he has a great accent, too.

Next was an alumni panel. The best part of this was when a student asked about balancing a career and children and the whole group of amazingly successful people completely blanked. Eventually a couple people said something about making time and avoiding litigation work, and the law firm partner chimed in that while she didn’t have kids, firms were understanding towards parents. For instance, you can cut your hours back to 8:00-5:00 or 6:00, no weekends . . . with a corresponding cut in pay, of course.

At least they’re upfront about it.

Law school changes you. Into a hippogriff-like ball of wings, hooves, and other assorted body parts. Beware, mortals.

We finished up with — yes! — another reception. I went back to my room for a while, then stopped by a local bar where the Bar Review people were supposed to be. It was pretty empty. Not late enough, apparently. My plane left early the next morning, so I left and went to bed.

Hmm. From my account, it’s probably hard to see why I liked it. That’s my fault; I probably shouldn’t post such crap, but I’ve been especially tired and lazy lately. My main fear going in was that I wouldn’t be able to handle the city. Luckily, I really like Morningside Heights. It’s relatively peaceful and really seems like a nice area to live in. As long as I have a calm place to hide when I’ve had too much New York craziness, I can handle the city. The professors were great, the students seemed intelligent, and the facilities were very nice. The other admits were generally nice; I didn’t meet anyone as cool as the Michigan crowd, but I won’t count that against Columbia. Out of a 300-some-person class, there are bound to be some cool people.

So that’s that.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 5th, 2005 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Applying to Law School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.