International

Jon Hodge is the owner of Strictly English TOEFL Tutors.

I ask all our clients when they begin studying for the TOEFL, "what schools are you applying to?" I ask this because we need to know from the start what TOEFL score the student will need. If they want to attend Harvard Business School, they will need a 109, but if they want to attend Suffolk for an MBA, then they will only need an 80. Obviously, this will change the amount of time they need to prepare and the way we customize the student's course of study.

One answer to this question always surprises me. Every once in a while I get a student who says, "I'm not deciding on what schools to apply to until I get my TOEFL results." The applicants then explain that they will apply to the schools that have TOEFL requirements equal to their scores.

Let me make this very clear: This is a very bad way to choose the schools you will apply to.

First of all, a large part of your admissions file is your personal statement or statement of purpose that explains, among other things, why you want to attend the school you're applying to. Schools use this part of the essay to determine if you're serious about their program specifically. If the only reason you've chosen their school is because it matches your TOEFL score, then you will have nothing substantial to say about their program and why you like it better than other programs. Sure, you could invent some reason by looking at their website and finding something to talk about, but admissions offices can always tell when a student doesn't have a genuine passion for the school they are applying to.

Second, keep in mind that you'll want to be working on all of your admissions materials at the same time. You should be studying for the TOEFL while you're also working on your letters and other standardized tests. If you are waiting for your TOEFL results before applying to schools, you will most likely be left with very little time to prepare the rest of your materials. Especially because the students who decide to let their TOEFL score determine the schools they apply to are also the students who keep taking the TOEFL over and over again until the last minute. And this leaves them no time to craft powerful resumes and statements of purpose.

But let's stop here for a minute and think harder about the fact that applicants who want their TOEFL score to pick their schools are also the people who keep taking the TOEFL. Why take the TOEFL over and over again if you don't care what school you go to? Repeatedly taking the TOEFL suggests that these people really do have a goal they are trying to achieve, a school they passionately want to attend, but they are afraid to admit it, or they are afraid of failure.

If it were really true that they didn't mind that their TOEFL score would determine the schools they were going to apply to, then they would simply take the test once and, with their results in hand, they would pick their schools. In fact, they would be the first to complete and submit their applications! But this is not the case.

Therefore, I encourage everyone who picks their schools based on their TOEFL scores to question this decision. What might really be behind this presumably "practical" choice? Most likely, you do have a school that you feel passionate about. Don't be afraid to go for it! Work hard to raise your TOEFL results to the score you need for the school you love. You'll need this kind of dedication and perseverance once you're in graduate school anyway, so it's a good thing to begin training yourself now to achieve your goals. With the right support, you can achieve anything, even a high TOEFL score! 

Continuing my Q&A with colleague Marlena (see also Parts I and II):

Anna: We hope this series is helping you get ready for Round One. But how do you decide where to send your applications?

There are several reasons why this BBC article is very, very funny. Among them:

For those of us old enough to have used Walkmen (Walkmans?), it's hilarious to read about someone from the iPod generation experimenting with his dad's antediluvian portable music device. ("It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape." "I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.")

And while I can't speak for this particular writer -- I can't accuse the writer or the BBC of anything -- I suspect that the person who wrote these words is not, in fact, 13 years old. ("Genre-specific"? Please.) Examples that set off my Dad-Wrote-This detector:

• "So it's not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing choice of music player."
• "From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets."
• "But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down 'rewind' and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured."
• "Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis."
• "Not long after the music warbled into life, it abruptly ended."
• "Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?"
• "But given the dreadful battery life, I guess this was an outright necessity rather than an extra function."

I don't have any trouble believing that these observations came from someone so young that he can't fathom a device that doesn't shuffle your music for you. But I do suspect strongly that dad had a hand here in a ghostwriting capacity. The examples I quoted above are not the vernacular that typically emerges from the mouths of 13-year-old boys, even in the U.K. (Americans seem to think that all kids over there sound like Harry Potter. They do not.)

Why do I dwell on this? It's a hilarious article, I'm glad they wrote it, and it made me laugh. Hats off to them. However... it reminds me to remind you (especially the parents out there) that when you meddle too much with your child's writing in the application process, admissions officers can smell that A MILE AWAY. They want to receive applications from your kids, not from you.

I have had a number of conversations with parents that go something like this:

Anna: Very nice essay.

Dad: Yes, we (!) really like it.

Anna: I'm hearing more [dad] in here than [daughter].

Dad: [Protracted silence.] Wow, you can tell?

Anna: Yep. Did you write the whole thing?

Dad: Well... uh. It's really her ideas.

Anna: She needs to write it, too.

Dad: So you're telling us to scrap this and start over?

Anna: Yes.

Many parents tell me that they are "best friends" with their kids, and they seem to think that means they have picked up the vernacular so well that they can mimic their children in their written work. But people who read essays from teenagers every day can tell the difference between the voice of a forty-something (or older) and the voice of a teenager.

So my advice, as always, is to keep a proper distance from your kids' writing. It's OK for you to help them generate and evaluate good essay ideas and topics, teach them how to improve their grammar and their spelling and their punctuation, encourage them to edit and edit and edit again, teach them how to proofread, and help them as they make editorial decisions about what to cut and what to keep.

Ghostwriting, though, is not OK, and parent-written essays uniformly end up being worse than the real thing. They are too safe, they are too boring, they sound phony, and they don't capture, in any way, the quirky and very fleeting way that teenagers observe their world or describe it. That quirkiness should be embraced, not stamped out.

And that's true for admissions consultants as well: your/our job is to draw out the best material and writing from applicants, in their own words and in their own voices. More than that crosses a line.

As Part II of our series "Rescue Your Round-One Application," Anna Ivey and Marlena Corcoran continue their Q&A. (Read Part I here.)

Couldn't people put this all off for a while, and apply in Round Two or Round Three? Do they really need to go for Round One?

Marlena: Round One, hands down. Admissions officers who are asked this question are quick to say, "Apply when you are truly ready." Well, sure, but my advice is, "Get ready for Round One."

Just think about it. If enough great candidates apply in Round One, a lot of slots are filled. We're not just talking absolute numbers, but kinds of applicants. A committee cannot accept a class composed entirely of, say, engineers. And if they already accepted a large number of engineers in Round One, you may apply in Round Three with engineering qualifications that are just as good, but you're going to need some major sparkle to make the committee say, "Move over, we've got another great engineer."

How about schools like LBS and Columbia that have rolling admissions?

Marlena: If you're applying to a school that has rolling admissions, bear in mind that with every week that passes, you must be more impressive than every candidate they've seen so far—and distinctive enough to create a slot for yourself.

Now, I did not say that every program has a quota. I am saying that the next time you listen to an admissions committee member waffle on this one, you should put on your common-sense spectacles.

But what about European MBA programs? Aren't they geared toward a more leisurely schedule?

Marlena: There's no need to glorify procrastination by dubbing it "Euro-chic." If you're putting off the GMAT now, you may find yourself putting it off six months from now.

Yes, it is worth noting that INSEAD admits two classes per year. Also, INSEAD has three rounds for the January intake and four rounds for the September intake. You may have overheard the INSEAD rep at the AIGAC [Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants] conference in New York last week sigh, "There is never a time when we are not reading." This is a lifesaver for applicants!

But remember: INSEAD is the exception. "Rescue Your Round-One Application" is a series for applicants who are aiming at the top U.S. MBA programs. I think you would agree, Anna, that when it comes to those schools, there is no doubt about it: Submit your application in Round One.

Not only will you be on time for the U.S. schools, but you might make the first-round deadline at INSEAD, too.

 

Dr. Marlena Corcoran studied for two years at the École normale supérieure in Paris and holds a Ph.D. in English from Brown University. She has held research appointments at Harvard, Princeton, and Brown Universities, and at Wolfson College, Oxford. She has many years' experience teaching and has also worked in the business world. In 2004, she published two novels designed to help non-native speakers improve their English. In 2003, she received an award from Brown for her work with the international community. Marlena speaks fluent German and French in addition to her native English.

Marlena works with college applicants, applicants to masters and PhD programs, international LLM applicants, and MBA applicants. 

I did an online Q&A recently with Dr. Marlena Corcoran, one of our educational consultants who counsels international MBA applicants. Marlena is based out of Boston, Massachusetts, and Munich, Germany.

Marlena, what's the biggest mistake you see non-US applicants make in applying to the top U.S. MBA programs?

They do not allow enough time to compose a convincing application. If your goal is to start at a top U.S. MBA program in the fall of 2010, I sincerely hope that you began preparing your application last winter. If you didn't, this newsletter is for you! Please remember that we will not be discussing an ideal scenario, but how to rescue your round-one application.

That sounds dramatic. Just to put this in context, how do non-U.S. applicants fall into this predicament?

Here in Germany, the problem arises from the difference between the general university admissions processes in Germany and the United States. German secondary-school students must wait until they have their diploma, or Abitur, before they can apply to university.

So that means they apply in, say, July, to begin their bachelor's studies in the fall?

That's right, Anna. And from the German point of view, it is just as startling to hear that the American admissions process is so complicated—and so long. In Germany, it's pretty much point-and-click. Unless you want to study, for example, medicine at a popular location, you can expect to be accepted at the university you designate. People will tell me smugly, "I want to do my MBA at Stanford." They assume that all they need to do is let Stanford know they are coming.

Do MBA-hopefuls still have a chance to prepare for Round One, if they begin today?

Yes. Sit down right now and make yourself a schedule for the next months. Fill in the big rocks, such as:

• take the GMAT
• take it again
• research programs
• draft your essays
• choose and approach your recommenders
• submit transcripts
• enter program deadlines

You'll be surprised at how few weeks are left in which to accomplish all of this before the October deadlines are upon us.

They had better start practicing for the GMAT soon . . .

Today would be good. Go to http://www.mba.com/mba/thegmat and download the free test preparation software. Set aside time to complete a full-length test. The full test is more grueling than you think. It's not only about content. In fact, a large part of success on the exam is developing habits of delivering consistently correct responses over a long period of time and under a great deal of pressure. This can be trained! As one of our GMAT trainers, a brilliant woman from Beijing, says: "I have been taking tests all my life." No wonder she has nerves of steel! You should start training today.

(Read Part II of our Q&A here and Part III here.) 

Marlena Corcoran studied for two years at the École normale supérieure in Paris and holds a Ph.D. in English from Brown University. She has held research appointments at Harvard, Princeton, and Brown Universities, and at Wolfson College, Oxford. She has many years' experience teaching and has also worked in the business world. In 2004, she published two novels designed to help non-native speakers improve their English. In 2003, she received an award from Brown for her work with the international community. Marlena speaks fluent German and French in addition to her native English.

Marlena works with college applicants, applicants to masters and PhD programs, international LLM applicants, and international MBA applicants.

Just received the following press release about a new program that employs social marketing to achieve measurable conservation goals around the world:

Rare---in Partnership with University of Texas-El Paso--Launches Groundbreaking Program in Four Locales, including Georgetown University in U.S.

(New York, NY; May 19, 2009) In a recent, much talked about Op Ed in The New York Times, Mark C. Taylor opines that we must “end the university as we know it” and make higher education “more agile, adaptive, and imaginative” if we want to solve the real problems facing the world today. An existing Master’s degree, with a new partner, is designed to better prepare community leaders to advance global conservation -- offers a look at how things might be done differently.

The majority of this Master’s Degree in Communication -- launched by the environmental non-profit, Rare (www.RareConservation.org), in partnership with the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) -- takes place ‘in the field.’ Students from areas of highest biodiversity around the world implement an entire social marketing campaign designed around a specific conservation goal, by mobilizing constituents in their communities. Rare’s CEO, Brett Jenks, emphasizes that, “The Master’s program participants do not graduate until they’ve made a measurable difference in the way people think about and practice conservation in their communities. Essentially, these students don’t graduate until they change the world…at least, their part of it.”

The program is administered in four languages by regional university partners in Mexico, China, Indonesia (as of late 2008), and, as of Spring 2009, at Georgetown University in the U.S. All graduates receive an accredited Master’s Degree from UTEP’s Department of Communication. UTEP has a strong commitment to grounding cutting-edge research and theory in real world applications. It is academic home to Dr. Arvind Singhal, one of the world’s foremost researchers and authors in the field of communication for social change. Dr. Singhal believes that the Rare/UTEP partnership “is a model of strategic alliance for conservation and beyond. It is a model of how social change should happen.” Rare’s Jenks adds: “We believe our partnership with UTEP fills a real educational gap in the conservation field – arming leaders with practical tools and solutions for mobilizing millions and changing behaviors as we race to stem the tide of species and habitat loss.”

Rare’s proven, honed model for changing local awareness, attitudes, and behaviors regarding climate change is called a ‘Pride’ campaign, so-called because it inspires people to take pride in, learn about, and act to preserve the precious natural resources that make their homes so unique. All students in the Master’s course are simultaneously ‘Pride’ campaign managers throughout the two-year program.

The Master’s program includes classroom training where participants -- most of whom are already career environmentalists chosen by Rare’s local partners -- learn how to change attitudes and behaviors, inspire support for environmental protection, and reduce threats to natural resources. The curriculum includes topics from social marketing and messaging, to threat analysis and multi-disciplinary strategic planning, as well as organizational, intercultural, and environmental communication and both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

The ‘in the field’ multi-media, social marketing component of the program includes the design of 30+ marketing vehicles, i.e., posters, mascots, bumper stickers, radio spots, press releases, festivals, school activities, sermons, workshops, billboards, etc., used to change minds and behaviors. Rare campaigns have been used to create new protected areas, reduce destructive fishing and illegal logging, and increase adoption of more sustainable agriculture, among other outcomes.

I've written before about the significant quality control challenges that law school study-abroad programs pose. Here are some perspectives, courtesy of the Chronicle of Higher Education, from the business school side about global MBA programs and exchanges, from a recent meeting of 400 business school deans last week, where they raised questions "about whether the sweeping globalization of management education amounted to more rhetoric than reality." Bullets below are direct quotations from the article:

• Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor of global strategy at IESE Business School... argued that most of the international collaborations business schools have been touting on their Web sites are limited to student and faculty exchanges, with little meaningful exchange in the curriculum. "If that's all we do, we risk becoming a specialized segment of the travel and hospitality industry."... He also dismissed a "globaloney" the premise that global borders matter little today in solving the world's business problems. "If you're an MBA student, what could be more seductive than being told the world is one, and you're now perfectly equipped, once you get your degree, to go out and stamp out global management programs, wherever they spring up -- kind of a global SWAT team."
• "It's time to stop pretending that we're doing more than we really are," Edward A. Snyder, dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, told a packed audience at the annual deans' meeting....  "Given the worldwide economic meltdown, fewer MBA programs will be able to recruit students from around the world, educate them at an overseas campus, and then place them in high-level jobs, Mr. Snyder said. "The good number of jobs that will justify the cost of bringing people in will decline."
• Blair H. Sheppard, dean of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, said Duke is moving ahead this summer with an expanded version if its "cross-continent MBA," in which students will do much of their work over the Internet, but also spend periods working and studying at campuses in Britain, China, India, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Duke's main campus in North Carolina."

 

A while back I wrote about the predicament of an American law student who feared he was wasting his summer working for a non-profit in Cambodia. He felt frustrated by the corruption, the non-existent law enforcement, and the inertia he was witnessing in the legal system, and he was feeling useless and a bit depressed:

When I'm asked to comment on what I did and how I liked it, I don't want to be too negative or dishonest. But honestly: "I sat around a lot in a foreign country, went to meetings that I didn't understand, and helped absolutely no one, in part, because the judicial system is utterly corrupt" is probably a conversation killer.

I advised him:

You're there to help people, right? OK, you can’t do much legally, and I think you're right about that part of it. But you can do two things – you can learn and you can help. You should learn all you can about Cambodian law and government so that if it ends up being a country you care about, you can work for change there the rest of your life. You should go out into the community and do anything you can to help them. Teach English. Help with infrastructure projects. Pitch in at the local medical clinic. Anything. You went there not only to get experience for yourself, but to serve, right? So serve in whatever way you can, whether it's through your NGO or not. You'll be helping the people you came to help, albeit not in the way you originally intended.

Turns out, I was wrong. There are things you can do wearing your legal hat. This week's New Yorker has an article about a Harvard and Chicago trained attorney named Gary Haugen who went to Cambodia to offer legal services to the poor. In particular, he focuses on the absence of proper law enforcement -- the "abusive police, entrenched bribery, mismanaged courts.... The poor didn't just need lawyers; they needed new legal systems." In short, he's out there helping to fix all the things that were getting our intern down.

Since 1997, Haugen and his team of lawyers have provided legal assistance to almost 15,000 people in twelve developing countries: "bonded laborers, children who have been sold into prostitution, widows who have had land seized, poor people who...languish in jail for crimes they did not commit." 

Haugen has his critics, and his hiring practices in particular have come under fire (his organization is explicitly religious, and he requires a statement of faith from job applicants). But I wanted to share what he's doing because it demonstrates one way that people are using their law degrees to make real and immediate progress in the developing world.

A note of caution -- and career planning -- for law school applicants who want to do this kind of work. You'll need to get hands-on litigation experience before you become useful out in the field:

[H]e prefers to recruit government prosecutors, defense lawyers, and corporate lawyers who have extensive casework experience. "The circumstances afford no generosity for those who bring only good intentions, the best of motives or the most tender of hearts."

Recently I got an earful (or, more accurately, an inbox full) from some employers about the fine art of cover letters - mostly about what not to do. I'll paste in a sample below.

This is a good opportunity to remind my twenty-something crowd that there are often generational dynamics at work when you submit cover letters, to Gen Xers in particular. Overwhelmingly, my Gen X contacts recoil from what they perceive as extreme self-congratulation in Gen Y cover letters -- something to keep in mind when you're writing for a particular audience. Things that might fly with your own age group, or your boomer parents, or admissions officers don't necessarily go over well with everybody.

The other common theme is that long cover letters go straight into the trash, so keep your cover letters short and sweet.

Reactions? Advice? Anecdotes? Please share!

• So I am trying to staff my new office and am reviewing a few hundred resumes. Painful on many levels. Who the *hell* taught people to write cover letters that include phrases like "My analytic ability is keen" or "my written and oral skills are exceptional" or "I am confident you will find my communication skills outstanding" or, my favorite, "I am tomorrow's strategic executive."???? Literally every other letter includes this crap. Anna, save these people.
• I've been doing interviews for internship positions for the past few weeks. I've noticed how little I pay attention to the cover letters (I skim...I'm talking 30 seconds, tops). If the cover letter takes up the entire page, I almost never read it (I just look at the length and say, "too long").
• I've now read or skimmed a few hundred cover letters in the last 48 hrs and have learned nothing positive from a single one. Cleverness comes off as defensiveness and confidence as boastfulness. I don't even think the negative impressions I'm left with are necessarily deserved, and I've decided to give some interviews in spite of the letters. People need to shut up.
• They need to use extremely conventional resume formatting because I refuse to look at "Skill Profile" sections and resumes divided into quadrants and school listings that fail to show me grad dates. I shudder to think that the cover letters for my own 20 year old internship applications could even conceivably still exist somewhere. I committed all these sins in spades.
• I think cover letters should be extremely straightforward, repeat little that is in the resume, and never try to be boastful or cute. I know this is tougher for recent college grads - they presumably need to show why they want a particular job. But then just say that. Shut up about supposed attributes. If they want to be clever (and they shouldn't) then save it for the resume in the extracurriculars.
• I can think of a lot of scenarios when a cover letter is essential -- esp. when you are explaining a non-traditional path or a not-obvious transition. I just haven't seen many done well.
• First rule of cover letters is: do no harm. They can help, but rarely do, and the assumption in some professions is that the decision makers never see/look at the cover letter anyway, just the resume. So the goal is to write something that doesn't end up in your file with a highlighted part and a note that says "what a dolt!"
• I got 180 applications for the last position I had - for a job that includes lots of writing and even more editing. More than half the apps got thrown out based on the cover letter alone. Not just bad writing, but misspellings, grammar problems, proofreading errors, and one reference to "The Lord led me to you [sic] job decsripton [sic]." You've got to wonder what they thought they were going to accomplish.

I've written previously about the obsession among law school applicants with "international law" (which they can't even define, in most cases), and how law schools are responding to that obsession by slapping the "international" label on everything possible and furiously peddling their study abroad programs.

The "international" label is a great marketing tool for law schools, and they are no doubt responding rationally to demand from applicants for whom they compete. However, I continue to question the underlying merits of that obsession. I also have doubts about the quality control among these many study-abroad offerings, as well as the assumptions applicants make about what "international law" actually is, or what an international practice actually looks like.

I've received some interesting feedback from law school students and practicing lawyers alike, all of them questioning this uninformed (on applicants' part) and superficial (on the schools' part) international law "mania." And yesterday, this article appeared in the New York Times about young American lawyers flocking oversees during the downturn. (Not a bad idea, but far less glamorous than most law students assume it will be.)

This post will be long, because I'll let these students and lawyers speak for themselves. It's good stuff for applicants to hear.

From a student at a top-10 law school, thoughts on his study abroad program:

Mostly I find the other students disappointing. People don't seem to think critically. I know that's a huge generalization, but it's all I can say. Students are in this program from all countries of the world, and some are practicing attorneys. But most of them "know" various laws in their respective countries but are incapable of discussing them intelligently. So the professors dumb down the classes for them. All the program directors keep lauding the "internationalism" in the program. But what good are different perspectives if they do not contribute meaningfully to anything? For instance, a professor will ask, "according to the author, what is 2 plus 2?" and a student will respond, "in my country, 5 minus 4 is 1, and that is because historically in our legal system, 4 times 4 equaled 16". I hope my inept illustration makes sense. To make matters worse, the American students are no better. A student even asked the following question: "So, if a company manufactures a product in a given state, is that enough for it to be sued in that state?" I wondered if he was conscious during that entire semester of civil procedure.

From a student earning a joint American JD and and a law degree from another country:

I got offers at both [deleted] and [deleted]! Those two were my top choices (for the firms that actually called me back). I didn't get [deleted], which really depressed me.

I was also very angry, actually, because my dual degree was a huge handicap. I didn't even get callbacks at a lot of places I otherwise would have with my gpa and journal experience. I was very angry at my school for leading me to believe that if I did well, it wouldn't hurt my chances because it was in fact a huge factor. Most firms simply looked the other way as soon as it was mentioned. Even though I was top 10%, got on law review, got a [deleted] award, etc., I found that because I was getting specialized training in a civil law system, I was suddenly a disfigured burden that no one wanted, even though these firms claim to be "international." I was most disappointed about [deleted], [deleted], [deleted] and [deleted].

I would be happy to rant about my dual degree ‘till the cows come home. I hear about the next group of students coming in thinking they are doing something so valuable and I feel bad for them. And it is extemely valuable-just not on the market, and that is NOT what the schools tell us. In fact, it is even worse for the [non-US] students. Many of them (including my friend from this year) get NO offers at all. In fact, he not only got no offers, he got no callbacks after the initial interviews. And he has a B average from [top law school], which is not far off the curve, and he has a business degree from [deleted], one of the top business schools in Europe. That apparently means nothing to the "international" firms. Most of the interviewers didn't even believe that he was getting a JD. They kept saying, "Wait, so, you're getting an LLM?"

In case you haven't seen it-thought you might be interested in an article I just read in Financial Times about the increasing internationalness of commercial legal practice, with corresponding development in law schools. International-this and international-that has been a buzzword everywhere I've gone since I was in middle school, but it's taken me until law school to realize just how much of a marketing tool it is and how little substance there is to it.

Almost all of my interviewers in recruiting this fall responded that their firms had grown more "international" in the past few years. Even I thought I wanted to practice "private international law" when I came to law school, until I found out that it didn't exist. LOL And from what I have seen of international arbitration, I would be tempted to call it a trend. I am taking a class called "international business transactions," which sounded very interesting to me. Little did I know it would be the worst class I would probably ever take. In fact, the article mentions the growth of LLM programs and how useful they are. Maybe so, but [top law school] has one of the top ranked LLMs and this class I am taking is mostly filled with LLM students and they seem to find the platitudinous and simplistic discussions quite engaging. The LLM program seems to offer none of the rigor of the JD. And the FT article fails to mention that an LLM is in no way as marketable as a JD. Many LLMs from [top school] cannot get hired in the U.S. (although, of course, their degrees are quite useful in other countries).

Perhaps people and companies invest abroad more than they used to, and courts (mostly non-American ones) increasingly turn to decisions in other countries for guidance, and law firms (and possibly law schools) are responding to this. But to me, doing law and business remains country-specific and all the focus on internationalness often distracts and shoves quality down. Of course it helps to have cross-cultural experiences and speak different languages, as it always has. But I really wonder about the value of all this international mania in education.

And now turning to the lawyers (some of them also law professors). Their reactions:

• You'll be happy to know that when chatting with the student at [college] who was calling me for donations, I explained to him that very few people actually practice "International Law". I told him he'd better off getting a job that allowed him to develop his dual focus of economics and near-eastern affairs (already speaks Korean and is learning Chinese) than going straight to law school. Hopefully he'll take the advice to heart. I told him that law schools all offer International Law programs because that's what students want, but he shouldn't use that as a basis for his career.

• No law student should expect ex ante to have a career in int'l law, given how small the field actually is. But it's no wonder, as Anna suggests, that kids still buy into the myth--because schools like hls, nyu, and columbia (along with many lesser ones) have bloated int'l law programs that perpetuate and use this myth to sell themselves. Programmatic emphasis or deemphasis is a critical way in which to educate (or mislead) students. This naïve consumer interest is what justifies having a figleaf of int'l offerings. It's important for the school to be able to say it has *some* offerings in these areas. At the same time, students will in fact be better served if only a small amount of resources are expended in those directions.

• That's a vicious circle - one of the main reasons that the schools pump up those things is that the prospective students want them. When I stand behind a table for admissions fully 80% of the students ask about international law, and more than half of them say that's what they want to "do" after law school. They have no idea what it is. But it's very very important to them. It's quite mind boggling, really. Over half of them say they want to do public interest law, and most of them have no idea what that means either.

• [An aside, from someone who practices election law:] I get asked regularly questions about practicing election law, including "which law school should I go to if I want to practice ...?" I then explain that the number of actual practicioners is probably less than 100.

• [And another aside:] Are these the same people who think "environmental law" means "I heal the planet" versus "I litigate fights between companies as to who pays for it"?

• I don't think the vast majority of them think about "public international" as a category - I think most of them just like the idea of working overseas.

• I regularly give a speech where I explain that it doesn't make sense to pursue a "concentration" in international law (or any other subject). I explain that if three people are standing in front of me, one might be interested in international human rights, one in international business and one in international litigation. The three practice areas would have a relatively small number of relevant courses in common, yet all might be considered "international law," along with a variety of other things. I also explain that one can "practice international law" working in the US or overseas, for a law firm based here or overseas, working for our government or another government, working in the public interest here or there. Invariably, none of the people I'm talking to have ever thought about any of that, and express surprise at the variety of things one might do that could be considered "international law." All many of them know is that they want to live in another country.

• Most of the lawyers who work for "int'l clients" on int'l deals or litigation are actually consulted for their expertise in domestic law. I've done antitrust work on int'l deals. Our work was usually to explain to foreign firms whether US regulators would permit the deal--and then to shepherd the deal through. No int'l law involved--though sometimes int'l travel and clients who in addition to english also spoke japanese or french.

• A not insignificant percentage of them continue to ask about it in interviews for summer associate positions. When I get the question, I inquire what they mean and if they can articulate that they're interested in cross-border M&A and capital markets work, fine. If not, automatic ding.

• I would love to see a firm consolidate all of its major document production efforts in some warehouse in Paris or Rome or Tokyo or Singapore and then let all the 1-3 year associates who want international work go work there. And if we can work out the confidentiality issues, it will be a warehouse in Mumbai.

That's a lot for applicants to digest. If there are people out there who've had different experiences with international law, please leave a comment!

I'll conclude by pointing out my own "international law" experience, for what that's worth. When I was a film finance lawyer out in Los Angeles, every single one of our deals involved money from German investors because of a weird quirk in the German tax code. Every once in a blue moon some German would fly in to sign some papers, but despite the fact that I'm half-German, grew up in Germany, and speak German fluently, I never left the borders of L.A. County for a single one of those deals. Fact is, in the age of emails and PDFs and faxes, I never needed to. Each closing also involved contracts with non-US movie distributors covering just about every country on the globe. I'd review the contracts and make sure they were kosher (because they were collateral for the movie loans), I'd look at the faxed signatures (always faxed -- I never met these people), and then I'd slap those puppies in a closing binder (which also never left L.A. County). And here's the kicker: despite my language skills, nobody wanted to conduct business in anything other than English, which they all spoke flawlessly. People still ooh and aah when they hear the words "entertainment law" or "international law," but there you have it. It was a good job, and international film finance can be fun, but glamorous? Jet-setting? Polyglot? Not so much.

Edited to add: Follow-up posting is here.