Sunday, October 5, 2014

Vermont Gets Its Own Delaware Connection

On their mutual love of environmental law, the University of Delaware and Vermont Law School have decided to hook up.
The agreement provides that UD students who have earned bachelor’s degrees and who meet the Vermont Law entrance requirements will be guaranteed admission into its juris doctor, master’s or joint juris doctor/master’s programs.
Guaranteed!  More and more, we're seeing law schools make love connections with undergraduate institutions, sealing their devotion with a promise of guaranteed enrollment at the law school for special certain students.  Everyone wins, particularly the students who, like children of a happy marriage, grow up to be rich.

In the olden days, these types of relationships were mostly local affairs that made intuitive sense, like Suffolk and Wheelock College.  But now, law schools are making connections at places in other states!  This is sort of like when you're in high school and the clique-based relationships make intuitive and predictable sense, and then five years later, people have discovered all sorts of ways to surprise with their love lives, and then when they approach 40, it's like "wait, what, you're marrying THAT?"  And it's always beautiful, because that's what love is.

With law schools facing increasingly-difficult times, it's reassuring that Vermont is still a hot option for Delaware, and that in the age of the internet, these two institutions were able to find each other.  Also, thank God that academia is polyamorous.

With hundreds of undergraduate colleges out there, I can imagine that law schools are working through their little black books to find all sorts of new potential mates.  Could we see a Tufts - Tulane linkage based on alphabetical proximity?  Dakota Wesleyan and Southern Methodist on their shared faith?  Will Full Sail place into Southwestern for a shared destiny of entertainment law?  Could Angelo State and Fordham "ram" each other?  Thomas Jefferson University and Thomas Jefferson Law School?  Baker University and the Cookie Monster Law School (California accreditation pending)?

Someone should make this into a game show!

A hot young undergraduate school with massive...enrollment...blindly asks lurid questions to handsome law school suitors with massive...seats to fill.  It's The Matriculating Game, brought to you by FedLoan Servicing.  Here's your host, Wink Elsac...

I would watch.

6 comments:

  1. What about Third Tier Drake and Iowa's tiny Cornell College? What could be nicer than listing "Cornell" several times on its list of places where 1Ls graduated?

    http://www.cornellcollege.edu/

    I can see the sales pitch now:

    "Scored a 2.9 GPA at (illustrious) Cornell?! No need to take the LSAT! We'll guarantee admission to Third Tier Drake. Sure, it will hurt our numbers a little, but the reward can be much larger."

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  2. U of D actually has a pretty decent reputation. I wonder what's in it for them to hook up with a TTT like Vermont Law School? Is the promise of automatic admission to a crap law school really going to help U of D attract any applicants that it's not already attracting?

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  3. Brilliant and hilarious.

    I wonder if any of these love connections will result in morning-after regrets. I mean, there is more to a good relationship than a hot scam life.

    You are a respectable, if dull, University. All of the sudden, a wild young law school beguiles you with attention, promising growth and excitement, and you throw caution to the wind. Then, only when it is too late, you realize that you are in a very sticky relationship with a pathologically dishonest weirdo and financial basket case.

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  4. "The agreement provides that UD students who have earned bachelor’s degrees and who meet the Vermont Law entrance requirements will be guaranteed admission into its juris doctor, master’s or joint juris doctor/master’s programs."

    Vermont Law already has de facto open enrollment, how is this an advantage in any way?

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  5. This illustrates an interesting point. Due to the existence of law schools worth attending, admission to law school has been romanticized and mythologized to the point where automatic admission sounds like some kind of jackpot. In reality, it's a path to downward mobility and crushing lifelong debt. Not every law school is like Harvard or Yale.

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  6. I'm sure their "strict" admissions standards will include having a 2.0 G.P.A. and a 135 on the LSAT, and an approved GradPlus loan.

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