A new (?) idea for a ranking Forum

[PomasThynchon]

For the life of me I will never understand the factoring of yield rate into the rankings. It just seems like a self-perpetuating thing. People go to Yale because it's Yale, more people give up less prestigious schools because they apply to a dozen or more places and give them up for higher-ranked schools. It just doesn't seem like a solid enough metric, in that it doesn't measure anything beyond student-perceived prestige or desirability. I care about employment/clerkship placement, LRAP and little else

Well, USNews doesn't actually use yield rate per se (percentage of offers accepted). It does use selectivity (percentage of applicants admitted), but it isn't weighted very strongly.

Yeah I know. The argument can be made that the stats should be publicized for students to see, but I don't think it should be weighted at all.

[paulinaporizkova]

Are people here just repeating what they've heard other people say and are now taking it as the god given truth?

Welcome to TLS.

[showNprove]

The problem with this ranking is illuminated by its treatment of Yale: despite sending 50% more students to Article III clerkships than Stanford, Stanford gets more points. Yale sends 200% more than Columbia does, yet Columbia gets more points in the ranking formula.

This comment begs the question outright by assuming that the ranking mistreats Yale. The point of the ranking is precisely to compensate for the phenomenon that at different schools, the gross body-count heading into clerkships and firms varies. What this ranking does is to point out that, for instance, both a lower percentage of Yalies going to clerkships get Article III positions and a lower percentage of Yalies going to firms land in the top 250 of those. Now, as for Columbia, it ranks below Yale because the use of the (geometric) mean penalizes that school's lopsided performance.

You missed my point entirely. I didn't say it mistreats Yale. Rather, I'm saying that this formulation doesn't actually tell us what you're claiming it tells us.

Sure, a lower percentage of Yale's clerks were Article III than Stanford's--but this doesn't say anything about the students who wanted any clerkship but didn't get one. You're assuming that the 4% "other clerkships" at Yale are people who settled for a "mediocre" clerkship--and you penalize Yale for it--while simultaneously assuming that only 1% of Stanford students had to settle and ignoring the fact that another 12% may have gotten shut out entirely--and you're rewarding Stanford for it.

Just think about this intuitively: would you rather be at a school that is able to place 32% of its students into Article III clerkships or a school that is able to place 22%? If I'm at the 67% in Yale's class, I know I'm sitting pretty with a great chance at an Article III gig; if I'm at the 67% in Stanford's class, I'm worried whether I'll get a clerkship at all. The former is obviously stronger, yet your methodology suggests the opposite.

[abl]

but at YS and probably H, a student whose lone goal is a V100 firm will have little difficulty getting there.

is there any data to back this up?

I hear this all the time on TLS yet there is never any tangible proof.

Are people here just repeating what they've heard other people say and are now taking it as the god given truth?

I'm a 2L at HYS. I don't have any data, and I doubt any data exists that supports this point. However, I don't know a single person who wanted biglaw and didn't get it, nor do I know of anyone who shied away from biglaw given their grades. Looking at my above quote, I think I overstated things a little, however--there are a handful of students (such as those who have all Ps) who will find that biglaw jobs don't just fall in their laps. It would be fair to say that for those students, getting a biglaw job was a "little difficult." However, there are few people (if any) at HYS who cannot easily overcome such small obstacles, and therefore you'll struggle to find students at these schools who wanted, but could not get, biglaw.

This is all besides the point, though--your methodology is premised on the assumption that biglaw jobs and clerkships are fungible, and that couldn't be further from the truth (whether or not every single person at HYS who wanted biglaw was able to get it).