Or, so they say. The school reported yesterday that it "accepted 110 of 2,741 applicants to fill its 68 first-year positions, for an acceptance rate of 4%. By comparison, Yale Law School at 7%, and Stanford Law School at 9%, are the only other law schools with single-digit acceptance rates." Wait, what is UC - Irvine Law again? Oh yeah. It is the law school started last year by (now Dean) Erwin Chemerinsky, the same guy who wrote the comprehensive treatise I used for Constitutional Law during 1L.While still patiently waiting for its ABA accreditation, the school is off to a fantastic start with respect to its numerical student performance data as well: "The incoming class will have a median grade point average of 3.65 and a median LSAT score of 167."
"We are extremely pleased to have fielded such a high-caliber inaugural class," noted Dean Chemerinsky. High-caliber it is indeed. But how did they accomplish such a miraculous feat? Dean Chemerinsky attributes the success:
to the strength and support of the University of California, Irvine, to the high quality of the founding faculty, and to the three-year, full-tuition scholarship offered to each member of the first-year class. (emphasis added)
The scholarships were ostensibly the driving factor for these impressive numbers--particularly given the current economic climate. But the other factors cannot be ignored, and what Dean Chemerinsky and his staff have done is remarkable. This is fantastic news for UC-I Law, its students and its top faculty. Look out UCLA, UC-B (Boalt?), UC-D, and UC-H--there's a new (UC) law school on the block.
