My professor is an alumni from Colorado Law school and he wants to know why they dropped in ranking. He told me during his time (not sure how long ago) UC was in the 30's now its in the 40's. Can anyone help me out?

Because other schools went up in rankings.

In order to generate continued interest and, consequently, to sell magazines and remain relevant, US News developed a system of ranking that is arbitrary and induces rankings fluctuation; not to mention, they sometimes change the ranking metrics, as they did last cycle when they began to factor in part time rankings.

Difference between #30 and #40 is only 3 points (62 to 59), in terms of overall score. It doubt there's any meaningful difference between being ranked #30 and #40.

Thanks guys

I want to second what rondemario wrote by saying that there is only a 10 point difference between the mid 40s and #20.

Fortunately/unfortunately (depending), it provides support for the argument that schools outside the T14 and within the T50 (plus UF) are largely indistinguishable (in that they are all amazing and are all regional [even if those regions include more than one major legal market] - i.e. Vandy doesn't do CA/TX, GW doesn't do outside the East coast + GA, Tulane doesn't do IL/GA, most University of [insert state name] public schools only do their state + bordering states, etc).

It sort of makes things funny when people apply to schools like IUB or IUIC, when they are only applying because the schools are ranked high; the applicant has no interest in either aside from that reason. By that, I mean if either were ranked 40ish, these same people would stay away from them (I just used them as examples - they are good programs).

I'll tell you what the dean told us. The rankings are heavily based on "reputation," which is hard to quantify. So, basically, the rankings are not that good of a measure. Also, CU really takes reporting numbers seriously, and some schools don't. They fudge. I really don't care, but I think a lot of alums do, so it affects are donations and funding, maybe.

Plus, as others have pointed out, 40 is not much different than 30 when it comes to state schools. A big New York firm is not going to hire someone from CU just because a school is ranked 32 instead of 40. The regional market still knows that CU is a strong school.

And it's CU, not UC.

That rankings suck, but that's not why. Reputation scores correlate fairly well with employment outcomes. A school with a weak reputation probably isn't attracting the big NY/DC/CA firms.

I'm so disappointed in this thread. I was getting ready for a bloodbath...

UC= Chicago
UC= Berkeley
[strike]UC[/strike]= Colorado

You're right, but it should have been more like UC =/= Colorado. CU = Colorado http://www.colorado.edu/

So some schools fudge their LSAT/GPA stats?

I've always wondered how much accountability there is in the USNWR data reporting.

^ very little which justs points out how ridiculous it is that they govern law students lives. Probably almost every school cheats in some way given the pressure of keeping their rank up. Gov report came out citing the US News rankings as being the primary cause of increased law school tuition, no joke.