In 1994, BU was ranked 38th.

http://www.prelawhandbook.com/law_schoo ... _1987_1999

It is now ranked 20th.

How high do people think it can climb?

BU is overraTTTed

Can anyone imagine it ever being ranked higher than UCLA?

no. unless california falls into the ocean. then only by default.

BU cut its class size, and hugely increased their selectivity, student to faculty ratio and overall educational quality a few years back.

Also, the culture among the teachers is one that puts a lot of pressure on them to be great in the classroom, and it really shows.

However, there is a huge wall at the UCLA line. I think the question is if BU can really distinguish itself from Washington, GW, USC and the like. That seems hard.

At best, BU can continue to improve gradually and cement itself as a top 20 and move into the Vandy/UT/UCLA/(maybe USC) tier. But that would not be easy.

Honestly, i think they should cut the class size another 50.

NO

EDIT: 40% of the ranking score comes from the assessment measures (link). Until people actually start to think of BU at a top 20 school, its going to be dragged down by its middling reputation.

WUSTL is too good at gaming the system and TX/UCLA/Vandy seem to be closer to GULC then the schools behind them.

I say no.

fixt.

Ever notice how USC manages to stay up in the rankings despite reputation scores a good deal below UT/Vandy/UCLA? They fudge the overhead$/student numbers they report (unless they really do have the resources of NYU and Columbia).

I would think their UG ranking needs to be improved too. But seriously, their more than a point rise over the last 15 years is pretty amazing. If we can get a film industry in MA

http://www.mafilm.org/

and + 1 billion a year spent here on Enterrtainment, I would think there would be even more $$$ jobs for lawyers here, which might help continue the climb.

In fact, from reading TLS a bunch, an even + or - 5 point jump isn't unprecedented.

P.S. if you can't tell, I am kinda into BU right now.

Not really.

(a) The difference in overall score (in USNWR rankings) between #39 and #20 is 6 points. Its easy to shoot up the rankings when schools are clustered together like that. For comparison, 6 points is also the difference between #18 USC and #20 BU. On this trajectory (unlikely to hold), it'll take 15 years to catch USC.

(2) Its been mostly a series of cosmetic improvements. Reputation is still stuck where it was from a while ago.

Qualification: BU is a good school. Just don't allow the rankings to artificially inflate your perception of the school. Its still a regional school likes its peers from #20-#40.

I agree that this is definitely holding them back, especially in as much as its reputation affects rankings. That said, its UG reputation is improving pretty quickly as well. I wouldn't be surprised if in 15 years BU UG was on par with NYU UG.

would the somewhat anti-bu people on this thread argue that bc would be a better call if you got into both?

i am under the impression that for anything BESIDES boston firm life (other regions, govt, etc), bu is better. thoughts?

Since reality = anti-BU, I'll just post some data. Make of it what you will.

You can decide (link 1), (link 2, see lawyer/judges reputation scores).

Look at BU's and BC's employment breakdowns, by region. Probably the best place to get an answer to a question that is difficult to answer.

I would personally take BC over BU if I had to choose one. I think overall the reputation of BC is better. For Boston, I don't think the difference is that big, not nearly like that between UCLA and USC, so either way you'd be in about the same position. That being said, if you don't want Boston, you shouldn't be going to either of them. Take the best T20-40 in the region you want to work in, or the T2/3/4 in that region that gives you serious $$$...

As someone who has never lived in the Northeast (closest was DC) and who did not really look at applying to schools in the area, I still really have trouble distinguishing between BU and BC.

I would take BU over BC, because it's actually in Boston. Small difference, but that would be a huge QoL thing for me.

This made my eyeballs bleed, though: http://www.prelawhandbook.com/law_schoo ... _1987_1999

If someone tries doing that to my school again (the 1999 rank), I'll [redacted, but it would definitely be punishable as both a crime and a tort].

And yeah, school wealth matters. USC has money, though I'm not sure it has NYU or CLS style money. I know my school suffers because we are on the larger side, and have modest $$$ with which to buy high scoring students. I think Fordham should get points for efficiency, though. We get a shitload done with the budget we do have. Rondemarino and I have had this conversation before, so I'll try not to provoke him, though he knows the depth and breadth of my hatred of the rankings.

Short version: BU is credited, even if it won't overtake Vandy/UCLA/UT any time soon.

No boston school will break into the teens.

(Link). The answers to all your overhead$/student questions. It plays a HUGE role in determining order of the T-14.

(Link). The 2010 Overhead$/Student rankings are....

1. Yale

2. Stanford
3. Harvard

4. Columbia
5. NYU
6. Northwestern
7. Chicago
8. USC

9. Cornell
10. Berkeley
11. Michigan
12. Penn
13. Duke

14. Vanderbilt
15. GULC

16. Iowa
17. Washington & Lee
18. WUSTL
19. UCLA
20. UVA

It seems like the reputation assessments matter more than any other. If not for the reps, NU would be somewhere between MVPB and CCN. If that were XLS/XLSX instead of GIF, I'd paste the numbers; most of them aside from peer & bar rep put NU equal to or just behind CCN.

Reputation is 40% of the rankings.

Right. Should have phrased my point better. There's very little daylight between the schools in almost all other categories (as the graph illustrates). The overhead$/student is what appears to "lock" some blocks into place CCN vs. HYS, CCN vs. MBP. Of course, there are the cases of UVA (no money) and Northwester (a lot of money).

I won't say anything else. There's nothing else to say. Iowa and W & L, though, above UVA? WUSTL doesn't surprise me. USC surprises me, but only because I didn't realize they had quite that much.

My attempt to read link #2 made my eyes bleed, but I assume it confirms my suspicions that there are a decent number of very good schools that are penalized for modest spending per student.

EDIT: I really do think rep scores should be re-evaluated as well. I mean, is there any way to make them even slightly less subjective? I've always argued that if employers are eager to hire students from School X, that's all the reputation it really needs. Schools that are not as well known outside their regions probably get hurt here, and it's irrelevant to 99% of my own classmates (to use a ready example) what judges in Kansas or Georgia think of our school.

This is the only useful part of the rankings IMO. If I looked up Fordham's employment numbers (which are good), there's a chance I'd consider it for CA employment (a bad idea). But a quick look at the reputation scores makes think its not quite as portable. Reputation scores are a good proxy for degree mobility. I am fine with it.

Also, if you just published salaries, or % of private practice graduates in the NLJ 250 you end up screwing over people in non-NYC markets. It isn't Biglaw or killself on the west coast or in the southeast (both of which have large legal markets)

Plus, aren't job offers made on subject judgments anyway?

I was kind of expecting WUSTL to be higher, since everybody says they buy their ranking. Maybe they do, but the fact that school #19 is ranked 18 in spending doesn't strike as evidence of it.

It will probably be subjective as long as it's based on surveys. I agree that more employment-based data is what would be most useful. What would be better is if they were to divide the country into a couple dozen markets and then rank the schools based on hiring manager assessments and hiring rates.

It would be nice to know also how the schools compare to each other in certain markets (e.g. does WUSTL outplace UIUC in Chicago?) but that would be a tremendous undertaking and could easily be skewed by the particulars of individual candidates.

I like NayBoer's suggestion about dividing up the rep scores. I don't have a problem with measurement of degree portability, but it should be noted as such. It's also quite easy to look up where Fordham graduates go upon graduation. (Interestingly, our JD is portable for PI kids.) As the rankings currently stand, lower rep scores could just as easily imply that schools like mine are not well thought of in the markets where they do place. I'd be willing to bet my school has quite good rep scores in the tri state area, though of course there is no way for me to find this out. Fordham is loved in NYC. Not loved as much CLS or NYU, obviously, but employers probably exist who would take one of us over a similarly ranked student from a much "better" school elsewhere in the country.

I agree that employment evaluation should not be based solely upon salary. That might discourage schools from allocating resources to PI students, who would only lower salary medians. Schools do need to penalized for poor response rates, though. I don't subscribe to biglaw or killself myself, though I do subscribe to perfect grades or killself. I adore TLS, and debating with you, but I should be reading right now. FML.

BC is the more national school, but BU competes fairly well against BC and Harvard in Boston. I don't see BU rising much higher. I was suprised they jumped as high as they did.