U.S. News’ law school rankings have been causing quite a stir lately. While the magazine holds some schools accountable for manipulating the rankings, certain law school faculty members are encouraging a boycott of the rankings altogether.
According to the Morse Code blog, several law schools are withholding their employed-at-graduation data from U.S. News, relying on the magazine’s formula to inflate their numbers. By the schools only releasing their rates of employment nine months post-grad, U.S. News will then have to take 60 percent to estimate the at-graduation employment rate, thus resulting in a higher figure.
In the latest rankings, almost twice the number of schools didn’t report their employed-at-graduation rate than in the previous edition. U.S. News will use a new estimating procedure for the next rankings, which will only be publicly released after the rankings are published.
Meanwhile, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) is hoping to mitigate the influence of the U.S. News rankings, as reported by The National Law Journal. Since a general boycott of the rankings would be unrealistic, SALT is focusing on the LSAT, urging law schools and potentially the American Bar Association to withhold LSAT score data. With U.S. News using the median LSAT scores as 12.5% of each school’s overall score, schools are more likely to accept applicants with high scores rather than admitting a more diverse class that may result in a lower average LSAT.
Robert Morse from U.S. News responds that by using median scores versus averages, schools can still admit students with lower scores without negatively affecting their ranking. He also contends that LSAT scores are standardized and thus easier to compare, and they are also the main factor in law school admissions, and should therefore not be removed from the rankings formula. Plus, even if SALT succeeds in withholding this data, U.S. News can gather the info from other means.
As stated by SALT’s Andi Curcio, “In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have U.S. News at all, but we don’t live in that world.”
Additional Resources:
- LSAT Prep Companies: In Their Own Words, a free, special report.
- Law School Personal Statements with Pizzazz, a webinar recording.
- “Application Add-on’s,” an article about addenda.
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Read the full article: Law School Rankings Backlash