Here are the rankings based solely on Peer Evaluation (25%), Judge/Lawyer Evaluation (25%), LSAT 25-75 midpoint (30%) and GPA 25-75 midpoint (20%). I used the LSAT score rather than the LSAT %ile, because using percentiles like US News does makes the LSAT meaningless for the high-ranked schools. I used the mid-point of the 25-75 because it's easier to conceal something in a median (you could have very low tails).

1. Yale 100
2. Harvard 98
3. Stanford 94
4. Columbia 92
5. NYU 89
5. Chicago 89
7. UVA 86
8. Michigan 85
8. Berkeley 85
10. Penn 83
10. Duke 83
12. Georgetown 82
13. Cornell 80
13. Northwestern 80
15. UT 75
16. Vanderbilt 74
16. UCLA 74
18. USC 68

The pegs I used were 1.5-4.8, 1.5-4.8, 149-173.5 and 2.9-3.87. The lower pegs for peer evaluation may not be exact, but are close enough to not make a difference (and there's no reason any particular value would be more "correct" anyway)

Why the other categories are garbage:
Employment %s don't say anything about the quality or type of the job and, at least among the top schools, just reflect gaming and a few individual students' choices rather than the school's ability to get you a job (Berkeley does not place better than every other school, George Mason doesn't place better than Duke).

Acceptance rate means absolutely nothing - yes, a lower acceptance rate may allow a stronger class, but that is already accounted for in the LSAT/GPA.

Bar passage ratio gives an unfair advantage to schools in states with low overall passage rates - if your state has a 60% rate, your 90% is a 1.5 ratio, so the school in a state with an overall rate of 80% can't compete, no matter how good they are.

Library volumes isn't worth anything significant in the rankings anyway, sheer size doesn't account for quality, duplicates and age, and the era of the internet makes it less important.

Student/faculty ratio is unfair to larger schools, since it doesn't account for economies of scale. Also shared LLM/JS.D faculty are counted, while LLM/JS.D. students are not. Since it doesn't account for hours teaching, it may not say anything about actual class size.

Expenditures per student is completely messed up. It doesn't account for economies of scale, so larger schools are at a disadvantage (every school needs basic infrastructure, one copy of each important book, subscription etc. but just because you are twice as large doesn't mean you need twice as much). It assumes constant marginal returns (twice as much spending is twice as good) which is untrue pretty much always. Perhaps most importantly, it depends largely on accounting practices and gaming. You can define the same spending in different categories and have different effects on your ranking, and some schools include types of spending which other schools don't (e.g. their portion of the whole university's utilities). Just to illustrate how it doesn't reflect actual quality: for two schools, identical in every way, but one owns a building, while one rents, the renter would be higher-ranked, because it is spending more per student (even though it is providing exactly the same value). It also counts spending on all students, but only counts JD students for the divisor, so the larger your LLM and JSD programs, the more of an advantage you have, since all spending on them is complete gravy.

What's left:
Given how much these rely on the peer and lawyer evaluation scores, it's worth noting that these are fairly questionable (although slightly less so when we are talking about only the top schools). The response rate is quite low and not allowing fractional scores may create some undue variability. The small differences are likely not too reliable (NYU was better than Michigan last year, but suddenly it became worse?).

GPA/LSAT medians do not reflect other non-numerical variation in student quality. A school which values an MIT electrical engineering GPA more than a Florida State sociology GPA would do worse than one which didn't (maybe slightly mitigated in the long run through lawyer/judge evaluation). Upward trends, work experience and extracurriculars are similarly absent.

What could be added:
The final pared-down ranking doesn't directly include the quality of teaching (peer evaluation may capture some of this) or the placement (class strength and lawyer/judge evaluation probably captures much of this). I decided to stick to US News data, though, because it's simple, uniform and available.

There are some decent measures of faculty quality out there, which could be added, but quality of scholarship may not reflect quality of teaching, and there may be some weird effects with size since these are per capita measures.

There isn't any really reliable data on placement available, imo, and that would be the single most valuable thing to have (but is also very hard to calculate, given self-selection).

i really like this analysis. it seems logical and valuable. the ranking order makes sense under these conditions, as do the differences between schools. thanks for posting it.

any other thoughts? (especially from people better at math than i am!)

Nice work.

Good analysis--similar to what I do mentally. One interesting factor that is not used was suggested by Judge Posner.

The "dispersed LSAT" rank = the difference between the 25th and 75th percentile LSATs. He suggests that a law school with a uniformly intelligent student body will provide the best learning environment.

Some interesting tidbits from Posner's article:





Full article
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cf ... 21&mirid=1

i don't think that this addition enhances the OP's system in any way. that, to me, falls into the category of "garbage." OP, your thoughts?

This was Posner's idea not mine, and he is certainly more qualified to come up with a legal ranking system than you, anyone on this forum, USNEWS, or Vault.

Can you do the rest?!?

so i'm not allowed to think that anything he says is invalid? or that having a wide range of LSAT scores does not automatically equate to the "dumbing down" of the education at a school? why should any of us even bother to comment, then?

and by the way, i'm sorry if my original post came off a little harsh. i was trying to use "garbage" in a light-hearted sense because it was in the thread title, but i didn't mean to employ the full power of its negative connotation, i was just trying to make a joke. i'm not sure if my joke came off clearly, though.

tone is lost on the internet

but anyways, I think it is an extremely useful concept, and I suggest actually reading his full article before making a judgment. He is one of the most renown legal professors in the world, so his opinions on what makes good learning environment are probably valid... Clearly he has run nto situations where he felt a wide gap in the intelligence of the student body made it harder to teach; you can't just dismiss this as garbage!

I think it's an interesting point about dispersion. Certainly the wider the spread of students, the harder it is to go at a pace that fits all students, and it may impact the quality of class discussion. I wouldn't have any clue how to rate it relative to other factors though.

I would be hesitant to do the rest because the rep ratings really start to become guesswork at lower ranks. Ratings of schools most professors/lawyers have barely heard of may not reflect reality. Also, regional placement becomes more important, and this may deviate more from the rep ratings.

i tried to read the article, but too much math!

part of the appeal of the OP's analysis for me, was that it was (relatively) easy to understand and seemed to only focus on the most important factors. i personally apply the term "garbage" to not only worthless measures, but also measures that are extremely tedious, yet add only a small amount of value. comparing the OP's system to Posner's, the OP not only cuts out the valueless measures (which I assume Posner does too), but also cuts out a lot of extremely complicated, but not really that important measures (which i feel posner does not do, and i include the two measures you posted in this category as well). a major part of the joy of the OP's analysis is its simplicity.

I take issue with equating LSAT score with intelligence. If this were so, the correlation between LSAT score and 1L GPA would be much stronger than it is. You also wouldn't be able to take a class and improve your score. And is there really a difference between having a range of, say, 164-170 and having a range of 165-169? Are the people with 165s that much smarter overall than those with 164s? And are those with 169s that much dumber overall than those with 170s?

Formerbruin: Have you ever taught, tutored, TAed? From my experience, the difference between a 160 LSAT and a 170 LSAT is pretty large, and Berkeley almost certainly has many students with 10 point gaps. Maybe I am biased because Berkeley rejected me, but I was already wavering away from them after learning more about the setting/environment.

I often ponder if the difference between 160 and 170 is merely knowing how to study for the LSAT and having the right resources.

160 to 170 could be that.

But it could also reflect the amount of dedication and serious desire that a student has to succeed in law school admissions. If you are serious about going to law school, then you will find a way to learn how to study and you will find those right resources.

Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

I don't think the dispersed lsat is as big a deal as Posner does- though I think it's much bigger than Bruin or SJax seem to think.
Yes, the difference between 160 and 170 is often the desire and the resources to prepare- but those scores post preparation from two students typically (but of course not always) do indicate a real gap between them.

Both Berkeley and Yale have brilliant students- and some of them have lower than the average school lsat- just like there are people who aren't brilliant that may have good scores. However- the chance that nearly everyone at Yale is brilliant is much higher- and the lowest common denominator at Yale is much higher than at Berkeley. I'd probably struggle either place.

As for the OPs removal of "garbage" I think that a lot of the things removed are actually extremely important and it would be valuable if we could more accurately measure them and give more weight to them. For most people the actual job prospects provided by a school are a huge part of what determines which schools are best. For someone interested in biglaw the reputation of a school among lawyers and judges is less important than reputation among hiring partners, which is less important than actual hiring practice of hiring partners.
Things like rate of employment at graduation and 9 months after graduation are criticized for being given too much weight this year- but they are actually very important factors for people who I don't know... plan on getting jobs. This is especially true for schools outside the t14- but it matters there as well. If placement into prestigious jobs could be more accurately measured then I think that could be a help for the rankings in the t14.
Basically, if the common knowledge within academic circles is that UVA is a better school than Penn- but the job prospects for biglaw were actually better for Penn- then in some regard that means the common knowledge is wrong" if what you want out of a law school is great biglaw placement.

I've said it before, but the big problem with rankings is that it's really hard to say something is definitively better when we can't agree on what we should value.

I am saying that the variables used are garbage, not what they are attempting to measure. Among the top schools, the employment rates say nothing about how much they help you get a job, since everyone can get SOME kind of job, and working in document review (or even at Starbucks) counts the same as being a Supreme Court Justice. Harvard is at 96.4 and 98.1, not quite the best in it's own city, with BU at 96.3 and 98.7... BTW, Penn is 95.3 and 98.2, while UVA is 96.8 and 99.6, so it's not like this statistic would help Penn's case to superior placement vs. its reputation (which I think it might indeed have). As I said, a good measure of placement would be GREAT, but those in US News just aren't it.

The OP generally covers dispersion by using the LSAT midpoint. It isn't perfect, but it's a good approximation, and given the data available, I think it's the best possible.

Nicely done.

USNews really needs to use different criteria for ranking the top schools than it uses for ranking the lower schools.

good to see penn and chicago in their proper places

Wow, that's the sanest ranking I've ever seen. You should send that to USNews

No kidding. That is almost exactly how I had ranked them in my head.

Haha. NOW do you concede that Posner is more qualified than you?

That's some fine detective work there, Lou.

Still, these rankings can only be so valuable without library hours and school square footage factored in.

of course he is, but did you see my later posts? i thought i addressed it pretty well

and to brokendowncar: i agree, these rankings mirrored exactly how i had the schools ordered in my head (maybe part of the reason why i liked them so much! )