Law School Deans, Law Schools

Cornell 1L Loses His Damn Mind On Message Board, Spars With Dean

Some 1Ls drop out of law school. Some leave flaming bridges as they go. This kid is the latter.

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Law school is a few weeks in now, so it’s about time for that first wave of intellectual attrition as students who spent their whole lives being told they were genius snowflakes begin to realize that they just can’t hack the rigors of law school. Usually these students silently slip out of class with nary a word to anyone. But sometimes, just sometimes, they erupt in a public spectacle of whack-a-doo for all the world to enjoy. This is one of those times and it’s amazing.

Based on our tips, a Cornell 1L took to the class Facebook group — at 3 in the morning, mind you — to complain about how terrible Cornell Law School is compared to more illustrious T14 programs. As “mistakes to make at 3 a.m.” go, at least this one didn’t end with the clap. On the other hand, it did end with a starring role on Above the Law so you decide which is worse.

The most ridiculous twist to this whole affair is that, according to our tips, this kid got into Cornell off the waitlist. Dude, maybe lay off the YHS love if you’re barely getting into a T14 as it is.

Do we have screenshots? Of course we do. In keeping with our usual practice for “dumb things 1Ls do” we’re blocking out identifying information for both Whiny McWaitlist and all the innocent students who argued with him. The only person in the whole exchange that we don’t blot out is Cornell Law Dean Peñalver, who joins the fray as a special guest star.

Frankly that’s not fair. They may just have figured out after four years that Ithaca absolutely sucks in the winter and they’d take their chances in Chicago before going back to brave deadly gorges.

We get it, YHS and Chicago are all better schools than Cornell. How does this diminish Cornell in any way to fall somewhere slightly behind the handful of the most elite institutions in American legal education? Run the numbers on the professors who went to Ave Maria or Thomas M. Cooley and we’ll talk. There doesn’t seem to be an endgame here: this top-tier school isn’t as good as some other top-tier schools so we should… what, go to the other schools we couldn’t get into? Good plan! Especially for someone waitlisted by this allegedly inferior institution.

If this reflects his LSAT Logical Reasoning skills, then I’m starting to understand his relegation to the waitlist. Why are any of these students even bothering to fight with this guy? Isn’t there anything better you could do with your time? Oh, wait, you live in Ithaca so there probably isn’t. But it’s still not worth it when the Interwebs offer so many fantastic distractions. There’s only one person in the Facebook group who has a professional obligation to jump in to defend the honor of the school. Here he comes now…

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The ole “Yale is professorial training camp” argument is usually clichéd, but it’s amazingly relevant to a discussion where the sole metric the kid’s using is academic job placement. Double f**king newsflash, if you’re not planning to be a professor this is basically a non-sequitur. Perhaps someone should direct him to Cornell’s whopping employment scores — particularly among Biglaw firms — instead?

What did the kid do after Dean Peñalver offered some real talk?

Rumor has it he quit Cornell. Sure that makes sense.

Hopefully a “rumor” is all it is, and this kid’s settled down and figured out he’s at a great school with a promising career ahead. Or maybe he’s really off trying to get into Yale.

Whatever. Chase that dragon.

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