Cause if you chose GULC or NU, there's a 70% chance you'll get zero grant money, whereas with UCLA, there's only a 35% chance you'll get zero grant money (and now they have tuition revenue to plow into financial aid).

Also, LOL @ anyone who think law students, on average, are rational consumers of legal education. This is a profession for status whores. We all wish OTHERS would be scared away by price, but how many of us would actually pass up our dream school for reasons of cost.

These two statements don't really add up.

1) If pre-law kids are debt-conscious, I suspect they might take a school that is slightly lower, or similarly ranked but offering more money. Or consider that someone who only just got into GULC and would be expecting to pay sticker, probably won't get that much in the way of scholarship money from UCLA.
Alternatively, if one is out of state for UCLA, the tuition will be 50K. NW is about 47k, GULC is about 44k (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm getting these numbers off this site). Importantly, they are less than what OOS UCLA would be. So, even if UCLA gave some scholarship money, the costs might not be wildly dissimilar. That is, even if you have a 35% of getting a 10k scholarship, a 4k deduction on tuition per year from UCLA might not look as good as a GULC degree. And anyway "how many of [these students] would actually pass up [their] dream school for reasons of cost"? Especially when the cost difference is not that great.

2) If, on the other hand, pre-law kids are not rational consumers and are prestige whores, then they will take the higher ranked school and not care that there is a 70% or 35% (or whatever number you're making up) chance of scholarship money somewhere else. So, on those assumptions, few people would choose UCLA.

Right. We're all hoping it gets others not to apply so we can sneak in.

And yes, you mention the one part we haven't discussed much - the UC's are raising tuition so they can give more financial aid - it's sort of a number-gaming gimmick - instead of just being cheap, charge more, and then give the difference (or a portion of it) as scholarships, and suddently you get great grant aid numbers.

But as for who would pass up dream school for reason of cost, when you are talking UCLA vs. USC, I think they are so close any substantial cost difference could sway many people. Also, kind of agree with above poster, there were plenty I'm sure who gave up GULC/Cornell/NU because UCLA was only 20Kish for years 2 and 3. UCLA will lose those - and very possibly a number of those killer GPA people who would have chosen UCLA first may now take those GPA's to T14 since cost is now a wash. (Of course, the scholly issue could offest some -.)

Right now the UCs currently take away aid for 2L/3L year before you see if you get in-state residency. (What I mean is, if they say they will award you "need based aid" over a period of three years, you are likely only to get 1/3 of that. They say they reevaluate your need based aid every year, but this usually just means that they take away the aid. This has happened to numerous people I know.) Are they suddenly going start legitimately giving aid 2L/3L year? I'm really skeptical.

Sorry. Just working off your assumptions. To be clear, I don't think tuition rates will significantly alter student behavior. But you do. Since you do, I pointed out the grant aid distribution. If there are comparison shoppers of they type you suggested, UCLA is only $10k/yr off from where it was before the tuition hikes. With extra tuition revenue coming in, they should have no problem coming up with the grant money to be as competitive as they were in price a couple of years ago.

So for UC, the value of a couple GPA/LSAT points just went up by some tens of thousands.

Its possible, but I doubt a significant number of students chose UCLA for reasons related to cost. It should have able to attract better numbers than it did with the huge cost advantage it enjoyed though much of the decade. Yet UCLA's 75th percentile LSAT scores were lower than NUs or GULCs.

That's the theory.

Well, if they pull that off, and so buy better numbers, and can post the increased grant aid numbers, that could somehow add to a climb in rankings, which I think was their point.

The biggest factor in deciding future rankings is employment prospects post-meltdown, and that in turn making more people debt averse rather than risk loving/risk neutral. Once Class of 2011 employment statistics are posted, I could see that heavily influencing demand. Unfortunately despite the low opportunity cost of information dissemination, a lot of applicants previously had no idea what employment statistics were. Luckily, thanks to TLS, information is far more easily dispersed and people have more access to information. I have no idea what the statistics are, but I could see the demand for certain schools being more inelastic than for others. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens. I just think the tuition hikes are coming at the worst time - when job prospects are dim and students outside of the elites (HYS) are struggling to find jobs.

For certain. The above was likely their thinking when they initiated all this a few years ago. But the economy is just making their decision look like one of the dumbest/worst-timed ones ever.

Right about the emp stats too - bad stats combined with costs will kill. Tragic part is if the UC's would have remained cheap, this could have been their time to soar in the rankings, as extra GULC/Cornell/etc. flocked to top-notch/cheap UC's.

Are you not seeing the tradeoff? Higher numbers vs. overhead$/student? If the UCs "soar" in one category now, they are going to sink in the other. Also, you are overestimating the impact of LSAT scores on the rankings. Moving up to a 170/171 median (up from current 168) wouldn't alter things too much, if any.

Maybe. I think this all comes down to F$%*%& the damn US News. Look at what schools are doing just to try and get a leg up in their A$$ Ho$&$^ rankings. When you see the Cornell dean saying he declines students he wishes he could take because of them, and then public universities like this jacking up tuition partly because of them... what an aid to the legal profession.

It's a darn magazine people - why don't the law schools get together and fund one independent ranking system that doesn't suck ass.

Everyone wants to be #1. See Cooley rankings.

EDIT: Where did you read that bit about the Cornell dean?

BTW, if you want to bitch about USNEWS, give this guy an earfull (link).

It's in the TLS interview with him.

True about everyone wanting number one, but I think at least the T20 could start a revolt, stop submitting, make some criteria that sort of focuses on what they think is important while maintaining the general order of the moment. But yeah, I guess all the 20's would want to become 14's, etc so it wouldn't work.

Well, I have some months to kill doing nothing but waiting for decisions/typing on TLS. Maybe I'll call around to schools and ask some questions and do my own rankings.
I'll give points for schools that self-report:
1) Excluding high GPA/LSAT people who sound kind of douchey
2) Accept at least a couple people without the best #'s not because they had good WE/PS, but just for fun/via throwing darts
3) Do their rejections by phone, rudely. Bonus points for using profanity.

I'll think over a few other criteria...

I wouldn't be surprised if the unemployment rates end up peaking with the c/o 2010. I'm not sure how generous firms were in general in terms of giving offers with deferred start dates to last summer's SAs, but I'm thinking that there are enough unemployed members of the c/o 2010 that the at-graduation jobless statistics will be worse for this year's 3Ls than for next year's. 2011 was definitely hit harder in terms of OCI hiring, but 2011 grads still have a year and a half to adjust their aims and secure low-paying work. The 2011 statistics will probably only substantially affect application rates if U.S. News reliably reports the steep decline in average salary rates among students with jobs lined up.

"Regents Raise College Tuition in California by 32 Percent" was on the front page of nytimes.com & latimes.com tonight.

I'm just waiting for the Regents to auction off the schools for naming rights. "The Twitter University of California at San Francisco," "The Qualcomm University of California at San Diego," "The Larry Ellison University of California at Berkeley."

lol. that is great.

I'm interested to see what happens with applications for UC's like Hastings and Davis (less UCLA and Irvine) as far as who accepts their admissions offers. I would think that less median and higher students accept a UC over a private for less money.

They'll still fill their classes as long as they are in operation. Tuition can be 100k per year and they would still fill their class. The thing that irks me the most about the increases is that the UC regents know this and are exploiting it (on purpose or not, I don't know).

Ha! This is too true. Cal already has the "Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science" fer chrissakes, so selling off the name of the whole university is not far down the slippery slope.

If I recall correctly, not too long ago the idea of shutting down UCR, UCSC, UCM was brought up but dismissed after some discussion. I fear that this might be a possibility somewhere down the line.

The Regents aren't exploiting anything.

We have a serious budget issue in the UC system. We're still asking for a $913M increase over last year's budget from the state.

And you're right, people will fill the classes. The UC's will continue to be strong (as a result of this move) and everyone will profit eventually. (Well, at UCB, at least.)