March 31, 2006

Ranking the law schools.

Paul Caron has figured out which law schools have moved up and which have fallen in the new U.S. News ranking. (Wisconsin stayed the same.) He's also pointing us to the rival rankings from the Princeton Review. Can Princeton Review challenge the market dominance of U.S. News? I don't think so. They are based so much on student surveys that the ranks seem mostly to reflect how eager the students are to help their school look good (and how uncritical the students are). Or do these lists just look all wrong to me because of their failure to resemble the U.S. News rank?

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Are the law schools ranked as incompetently as the undergraduate colleges?

Adam said...

Even based on the US News criteria, I don't see how NYU and Columbia are ahead of Chicago.

Balfegor said...

Even based on the US News criteria, I don't see how NYU and Columbia are ahead of Chicago.

Prestige! Well, for Columbia. I don't know what NYU is doing in there. (haha)

Jonathan said...

If two schools have the same bar passage rate in the same state, how does it make any sense to say that, all else being equal, the school w/ the higher LSAT and GPA numbers is the better school? If LSAT and GPA show are good indicators of the ability that students are coming in with, then the school that has a high bar passage rate despite starting with less refined students yields more value-added, and therefore is the better school. Of course I'm biased bec. I go to a school w/ a high bar passage rate to LSAT ratio (Cornell), but that doesn't mean my logic is flawed.

Diploma Priv said...

Does anyone have a tracking of schools from each year? WI has fallen from 23 to 32 over the past 10 years. Does anyone have a year by year comparison?