Law Students
Yale 1L Bemoans ‘Almost-Darwinian’ Admissions Race and the Not-So-Nice Winners
Posted May 2, 2008 5:10 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A first-year law student at Yale takes on her Ivy League colleagues who don’t always practice what they preach about making the world a better place.
In an opinion column published by the Washington Post, student Amelia Rawls writes that her sister, who just won acceptance at an Ivy League college, asked her what students at top colleges are like. Rawls, who attended Princeton as an undergraduate, realized she was disturbed by her answer.
“These youths live a life of superlatives, a life in which being No. 1 is not just an aspiration but the status quo,” she writes. “They can be inspirational, and I am lucky to be able to learn from them. But they are not always nice people.”
Rawls explains what she means by being nice. It means sharing notes with a student who is sick or lending a textbook to a friend who doesn’t have one. Students who turn their backs on their colleagues or the needy may at the same time tout their volunteer service on school applications.
“Sometimes some of these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless,” she says. “They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash.”
These not-so-nice people rise to the top on the backs of nicer students who let the climbers steal the spotlight, she says. “I wonder if our society is crippling itself by subjecting its youths to an almost-Darwinian college selection process.”
A Princeton website says Rawls wrote her senior thesis on the problems caused by linking U.S. refugee and asylum policy to general foreign policy goals.
A hat tip to Above the Law, which posted Rawls’ column.
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Comments
Paul Black
May 2, 2008 7:12 AM CST
Hmmm. By and large, my law school 1L classmates take good care of each other. When I missed class, classmates sent notes. I have done the same for them. When exams come, we often share outlines and critique each other’s answers to practice questions. Don’t get me wrong- we do compete. But we were told from the outset- and I think it is quite true- that our good relationships with our classmates would be among the most important resources- even as important as our degree and any academic accomplishments or honors.
Perhaps things are more hostile at a Top 20 law school. Even the fact that Yale has no required grading curve and does not calculate class rank doesn’t mean that the uber-competitive traits which got some students there willl not persist.
As for the two people I knew at Princeton who then went to Yale Law, they were both smart, very hardworking, and team players- everything you could want in a classmate or an attorney.
In other words, I suspect that this student’s experience, while valid, is only representative of one part of a much larger picture.
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Rick
May 2, 2008 7:40 AM CST
Welcome to adulthood, children.
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3L
May 2, 2008 8:47 AM CST
In every school, there will be the hostile gunners and the group of nice people. I don’t think it can be isolated to a Top 10 school type behavior. I’m almost done from a not-so-top-N school and we’ve got the same types of behaviors among the 1L class. By the time we get to our 2L and 3L years, we pretty much know the team players from the “me me me” people.
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StrengthNeedsHope
May 2, 2008 10:29 AM CST
Step into the ocean, and wow, there are lots of different life forms!
Killer Whales, Bluefin tuna, Great White sharks, Oh My! Watch out.
Dolphins and porposises will actually protect people from sharks, and hunt the evil sharks, but you can not count on that while in the ocean.
The best rule of advise, row your boat gently down the stream. Look, research, ask around before you leap.
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msg
May 2, 2008 12:15 PM CST
And these crybabies are supposed to be the future leaders of America? Grow up and get real! It is only liberals who pretend to care about world peace but can stab you in the back. A conservative would never do that.
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youm
May 2, 2008 1:56 PM CST
My experience with many 1L classmates at Yale Law School was invariably positive. I have to scour my year-long diary at YLS for what Ms. Rawls implies. All of my 1L dorm mates never hesitated to help me in and outside the classroom. It was not a case of quid pro quo for us.
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Penn06
May 6, 2008 12:45 PM CST
I think this article is everything an op-ed should be: provocative, thoughtful, and worth the read, regardless of whether you agree or disagree. Of course some people have had different experiences, and good for them. But I personally know exactly what the author is talking about. Pointing out that there are some nice individuals in the world doesn’t undermine her point that there are some nasty ones too, and that maybe they go on to be our leaders and politicians. I suspect there’s also a lot of jealousy among her classmates for getting published in the Wash Post; I know there would have been at Penn.
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