BTL

I think you would need a little bit more than a, bacon tomato lettuce, sandwich to get into college.

Some people go to law school. Depends on the school. Others go into business.

I highly doubt that Harvard accepts ppl with a btl. Harvard has over 10000 applicants a yr and only around 450 are accepted. They would problem accept the ppl with a ligit degree than the ppl with a fake degree like a btl. And don’t try to argue that it is not a fake degree, face reality

1. It has no value or prestige within the frum community.

2. It meets the legal requirements for a bachelors (“first”) degree, so any program that says “you need a bachelors” without being more specific will be satisfied. Thus, in theory, a BTL and the right courses could get you into medical school. In all fairness, most graduatge programs require any bachelors and no more. However most graduate programs require specific courses (among other things), and a yeshiva won’t offer such courses but they could be taken at a secular university.

3. In some cases, if you can prove you’ve spent four or more years in yeshiva learning full time, a graduate school would say that is the equivalent of a bachelors. It’s up to the school.

The typical requirements are an accredited bachelors degree (though in some cases, an equivalent can do) and whatever courses they list in their list of admissions requirement (for medical schools it is very set, for business and law its whatever catches the fancy of the admissions officers, for most non-professional graduate programs it is the equivalent of a BA major program in the subject). Then there are the standardized exams such as the LSAT.

Once you meet the minimum requirements, the trick is to convince the admissions officer that you are interesting. Some programs have essays and interviews. You have to convince them your background is a good fit for their program. It is actually quite subjective.

Also remember that the prestige of a school doesn’t necessarily correlate with employability. If your goal is to be a lawyer in the frum community (i.e. a small firm in Boro Park), a degree from Harvard or Columbia may be less valuable than one from a lower ranked school that specializes in preparing students to practice in Brooklyn rather than working for “Big law.”

We’ve conclusively decided that there are very few students at Harvard these days who don’t have a BTL.

And those few are Touro grads.

I heard that last year there was even a Touro grad who turned down her acceptance to Harvard. Which clearly proves that Touro is better than Harvard.

RF: If she didn’t want to go to Harvard then she lost nothing- the fact that it’s so selective is a point in her favor because, after all, she GOT IN. Turning it down is her prerogative.

I have known frum girls who have applied to Ivies just to see if they can get in (I considered it but I decided to save my parents the $200 even though they said it was fine). While most did not get in, as the acceptance rates tend to be in the single to low-double digits, the ones who did turned them down because they were just satisfied knowing that they COULD HAVE gone.

RF: Getting in does not mean very little. Harvard Law’s acceptance rate is about 15% and its graduation rate is 99%- meaning that her odds of either happening are roughly the same assuming she’d accept the offer.

There are plenty of other fantastic, Top 14 law schools- someone above mentioned NYU, which can be a bonus if only because of location. Others include Columbia (a good choice for a similar reason), Cornell (where I believe jfem said her husband goes- correct me if I’m wrong), UPenn (also lots of frum Jews), etc. Harvard is not the be-all-end-all. In fact, for what it’s worth, Yale is ranked above Harvard.

As far as the $200 is worth, that’s precisely why I didn’t do it. Obviously the people who did it didn’t worry about that. The fact is that those who did had the stats to at least be in the running for Ivies. (One of them, IIRC, applied to Columbia and actually ended up going- this was a while back so I could be confusing it.) Face it, people have different priorities and different outlets- exceptional SAT scores aren’t exactly exalted in the frum community.

T613T- Absolutely, and even if you don’t get in. My friend is applying and she says that while if she gets in it’ll be awesome, if she doesn’t, she’l just blame it on the 5.9% acceptance rate. If you don’t get into Harvard only an idiot would say it’s because you’re not smart. Plenty of 2400 SAT scorers (yes, old people, it’s got three parts now) and 4.0 GPAers who do every cool extracurricular on the planet get rejected every year.

If you can afford what it costs, applying to Harvard is practically a no-brainer, in a weird convoluted way.

Those who apply to Ivy League schools “just to see if they can get in” should strongly consider the consequences of their actions. Ivies have a quota of how many people they will take from one school, and at my high school (I have heard this happens elsewhere) the top students got into Ivies and declined them, with the result being that other high-performing students who actually wanted to go there were rejected.

Regarding the BTL –it is accredited nationally by the US dept of education under –Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools, Accreditation Commission (AARTS)

1974/2013/S2015-C—see http://www2.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/accreditation_pg7.html

There is another type of accreditation called regional accreditation which is what most grad schools require(most BTL granting yeshivas/schools dont have that because it requires a lot more general studies requirements, i believe ) — however depending on the type of school, area located , deals with local BTL granting schools, and other factors such as pre-required coursework and resume and high standardzied test scores — a student potentially can get into high level grad schools — and more likely in law schools.

Also most of these BTL yeshivas/schools have deals with local programs to accept some or most of the BTL credits towards transfer credit to that school to be completed there – and receive a regional diploma from that university

Well done golfer

Akuperma: what you are espusing is very difficult, maybe harder than getting biglaw. There are no jobs waiting there for the skads of students who want to practice law in brooklyn.