December 2008

Just received this press release: 

 

"Shark Tank" - A new show by Mark Burnett (Apprentice, Survivor) 

  

Are you trying to start a business but need an investor? 

 

Do you have an existing business but need financing to take it to the next level? With the credit market frozen, and banks in trouble, we could be what you need! 

  

New major television network pilot (to air) seeking entrepreneurs who would like to pitch their idea to a panel of five multi-millionaire and billionaire investors!!! 

  

Get the chance to pitch on national television, giving your business valuable exposure plus the opportunity to pitch to 5 potential investors at once!! 

  

Hurry - We are under serious holiday deadline and need all submissions ASAP.

 

Email a brief paragraph with your non-confidential business idea, a recent

photograph and contact information to: csimonian@markburnettprod.com

 

 

I started a thread called 1L Blues a while back, because I thought it would give other aspiring law school students something useful and realistic to chew on.

Here's another unhappy camper (maybe he'll become a happier camper?) with some interesting things to say:

To be quite honest, I have not been happy at all with my law school experience. We are reading and discussing "big" cases in our nation's history (Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, etc.), but the material leaves me cold. If anything, it feels stifling and a bit underwhelming. There are roughly 70 people in my Legal Methods section (out of a class of ~380), and I feel like I'm in a room full of pedants, people whose only goal is to correct my mistakes. I can't imagine dealing with these people and this material for three years, let alone some number of years afterwards.

All the grim realities of the legal profession seem to have reared their ugly heads. I feel like I'm taking a huge risk by spending three years and $130,000 to stay the course on school. If I had to summarize my feelings: I see why they have to pay people to do this work.

In thinking about it and speaking others, the main argument in favor of staying seems to be that finishing at [top law school] would be a valuable enough credential to allow me to do other things. The counter-point to this is that looking at the numbers, both debt and recruiting statistics, the main thing this degree is going to prepare me to do is work as a lawyer, with other possible initial opportunities in lobbying, policy, or government work. If I want to do something else, why not spend the time and money directing myself toward that goal?

While I've known this information in the abstract, being immersed in the environment and material has thrown everything into stark relief. I wish I could have come to this realization sooner, but I'd rather have it now than later. If I was 18 and just starting school, I'd tell myself that I probably just have cold feet. But at 26, I trust my judgment enough to realize that something else is going on here.

But I don't trust myself enough to operate in a vacuum. Is this a normal reaction? Is it something I'll get over? Is it something I should get over?

After polling as many good people as I could get a hold of, the general recommendation seemed to be that I should stick things out for a year and a summer and see where I stand then. Although this is contrary to my initial reaction, hearing the same advice from a number of people did pound the point home. I can't really believe that [top law school] is somehow conspiring with the people I know to keep me here.

Worst case, [top law school] has gave me enough money that firm work over the summer (assuming I'm diligent with the funds) comes pretty close to clearing out my debt for the year. I also had some people advise me to keep my eyes open for the area of law that interests me (not product liability suits from the 1800s) and be proactive in making sure I found opportunities to get work in that area. I have no idea if that area of the law is going to pop up for me, but I feel like after a year, I should have more information to make a better decision. Plus, it's a horrible time to reenter the job market in financial services.

I think too that if I left prior to completing the first year, there would always be some nagging doubt about whether or not I would have enjoyed it. Like you suggested, there is apparently a big disparity between legal study and legal practice, and the former may not have a lot of bearing on the latter. After making the initial decision to apply to law school, I know that I didn't really examine that decision again during the application process. It's hard to keep yourself motivated unless you are working toward a fixed goal. And once the results are in, the visiting, financial aid, and deciding processes take on a life of their own. This has actually been a good chance to sit down and reflect a bit on what I want to get out of this experience. Whatever that is, if a year goes by and it looks like I can't do it, then will be the time to reexamine.

Sounds as if this 1L is thinking about things sensibly. I'm curious to hear reactions from others. Thoughts? Please comment.

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who works (as I do) with lots of twenty-somethings. When we got around to the gratuitous praise to which Gen Y/the "Praise Generation" has become accustomed (phony praise that inflates their sense of achievement and rewards them for process rather than outcomes), he had this observation to share:

On all of this, I'll point out that, having worked with a literally never-ending stream of recent college graduates--half of everyone is 22 in my world--I notice that the people who consistently are the best to work with are ex-elite athletes. If you spent a substantial chunk of your life in sports, how could you:

• Think fairness is relevant? Losers talk about fairness.
• Fail to put stock in hard work, hoping to hide in the pack instead?
• Think hard work guarantees success?
• Fail to appreciate the importance of natural talent?
• Fail to focus on outcomes?
• Over-focus on process to the detriment of outcomes?
• Get confused by multiple goals and so fail to achieve any of them?

I say this as someone who frankly is more committed to the arts than to sports, but it has become clear to me that those who live a life in the arts and/or academics are prone to *ALL* of the fatal mistakes outlined above, and these are failures of outlook that wouldn't last past your first varsity season in high school, let alone college.

The difference is simple--top athletes are trained to focus on outcomes, period. Everything else is whining. Business is about outcomes, period. Non-athletes are shocked by that.

As an addendum, I was amazed when I got to [college] how many kids arrived there believing they had genuine artistic talent. They were going to be performers, or artists, for a living. They thought themselves that good.

No similar problem with sports. But in the arts, it's subjective. If you are the best in your high school, well, as far as you can tell, you're Kristin Chenoweth. There's no mechanism -- or incentive -- to level-set. In individual sports, there's no chance of this at all. In team sports, there's a little self-delusion, but not too much. [Anna asks: But what about teams where everyone gets a trophy? Helicopter parents invented that rank stupidity. Makes sense though that *elite* athletes don't suffer from this syndrome.]

Can I speculate that this problem is more an issue in law school, where kids majored in subjective disciplines like Poli Sci, Religon, and other stuff, and that math and physics grad programs don't have these problems? Even med schools probably don't have the problem as much?

Fascinating. Thoughts? Please comment.

BusinessWeek just launched a year-by-year guide to get you on track to apply to business school in five years. This is perfect for recent college graduates.

Here's their plan for Year 1, with special emphasis on your first job out of school.

Marketing guru (and Stanford GSB grad) Seth Godin makes this intriguing offer: Go intern for him for six months instead of getting an MBA. Deadline is December 14, 2008. Start date is January 19, 2009.

[Our law school admissions consultant David Yi is going to be contributing to the Ivey Files, starting with this post. Please welcome him to the blog! ~ Anna]

Why should the LSAT (Law School Admission Test) matter so much?

The obvious answer is: Because law school admissions officers will rely heavily on the LSAT in making admissions decisions.

The not so obvious answer (the one that most people don't like to hear) is: the LSAT is an extremely efficient test. It does what it is supposed to do very well, very quickly and very accurately.

What is the LSAT supposed to measure?

Well, it’s supposed to measure how well you will do during the first year of law school (see here and here). So is a low LSAT score (120) a definite prophecy of your imminent failure in law school? No.

However, if you did get a low LSAT score (120), there is a good chance you will fail. Although imperfect, the LSAT is as perfect as it can get in measuring an individual's success in law school.

My experience has been that the skills required to do well on the LSAT (reading vast and diverse amounts of information, and critically thinking and assessing the validity of these arguments/sets-of-facts; reading through dense and boring literature, and pin-pointing the flaws and main-points; quickly thinking of all the different angles and possibilities to a complex problem/situation) are also the skills required to do well in law school.

The only major flaw on the LSAT is the fact that it measures all of this in one sitting. I do believe that some people are not such good standardized test-takers. For these people the pressure of having to sit through a timed test chokes them. This is the only drawback to the LSAT's otherwise perfect (my opinion) testing.

Anyone who moans and groans about the LSAT's logic games and how they are irrelevant are simply in denial...trying to make themselves feel better about their failure.

I'm not an elitist; simply a realist.

Having said all this …

I firmly believe that ANYONE can do well on the LSAT. It comes only after great sacrifice and due diligence. The LSAT can be studied; people can learn to think more logically (unfortunately, many people's minds do not think very logically … I know, I've taught this thing).

In teaching this test to hundreds of students, I've seen it crop out the bright from the dense, the quick and keen from the slow and dull. The good news is that the LSAT can be studied, and that everyone who studies could improve (drastically).

The Financial Times has just released its latest rankings of European Business Schools. Its top 10:

1. HEC Paris
2. London Business School
3. INSEAD
4. IE Business School
5. IMD
6. ESCP-EAP European School of Management
7. IESE Business School
8. EM Lyon
9. Rotterdam School of Management/Erasmus
10. Vierick Leuven Gent Management School

Some oddities and observations in the accompanying articles (here and here):

• Eric Weber, the associate dean at IESE in Barcelona, "says that so far the school is not worried about job placements, but he acknowledges that student expectations may not be met." [I'm thinking maybe they should be worried about job placements, particularly when over half of their graduates in recent years have pursued finance careers.]

• Eric Cornuel, director general and chief executive of the European Foundation for Management Development based in Brussels, "believes that European schools are less exposed and less sensitive to the economic downturn than US schools" because "European schools have some degree of state support and few if any endowments, and will not be exposed financially to the same degree" as American business schools. [What's left unsaid is that publicly funded European schools have far less money to throw around than their privately funded counterparts in the United States, and their failure to raise money privately has arguably compromised their quality compared to American institutions.]

• The shorter MBA track at European business schools (one year, rather than two in the US) is usually considered an upside for many applicants, but in a down economy like this one, it might be better to ride out the downturn in a 2-year program than have to graduate at a low point. The opportunity costs of attending a 2-year program just got a whole lot lower, although the cost of an additional year can be an issue when credit is this tight.

I'm going to be moderating a panel of architects who specialize in designing the next generation of spaces for university students. Please weigh in with your wishlist, as well as any complaints or thoughts about the current state of your school spaces. Some topics to consider:

• Technology
• Dorms/Housing
• Safety
• Food
• Fun
• Fitness
• Athletics
• Performing Arts
• Religion/Spirituality
• Classrooms
• Study spaces

I realize it doesn't even make sense to break these out into separate categories, because Gen Y likes its spaces to be blended, so thoughts on blending are also welcome, and feel free to make up your own categories. Also, no details are too small or trivial. Be as picky as you like.

Please pass this around -- the more input, the merrier.

More info about the panel here.