nothingtosee wrote:Skool wrote:Tiago Splitter wrote:jenesaislaw wrote:
I'm hesitant to even talk about this stuff, though. US News is a toxic influence on prospective students and law schools, and is doing serious damage to the legal profession and the people who eventually join it.
It's not all bad. If schools stopped caring about LSAT and GPA medians we'd be in a lot of trouble.
Curious to hear the rationale for this.
JFO1833 wrote:I hope that US News does not follow the lead of Above the Law and include cost in its ratings. Since many people do not pay sticker including cost can damage the usefulness of the ratings.
For example:
Imagine a student is choosing between two schools, a highly prestigious school at sticker, a less prestigious school at half price. This is not an uncommon scenario and renders the ratings useless for comparing these choices, if the sticker price is a factor. The appropriate question to ask is if the difference in price is worth the additional prestige.
No matter the reality of what students pay, it would actually build an incentive into rankings for schools to control cost. That would be a good thing for students. Plus, it's not as if the USNWR criteria correspond much to the value a school adds to a law student anyway. What's a little more fantasy added to a stupid system.
Soft factors benefit those from higher income levels who know how to play the game.
Hard factors also benefit the wealthy (they can spend money on prep or take a gap year without having to have a job), but less so than soft factors. Also, it seems that with the LSAT, tutoring can only take you so far, and the highest levels are just repetition, practice, and review.
I don't doubt that the wealthy are better off than everyone else under either arrangement.
I'm not sure I'm persuaded by the above that one is less favorable than the other.
And frankly, it's not an either or. It's really a matter of the crazy weight they receive, such that the two are pretty much dispositive for an application. I have a friend who is finishing up a PhD in Philosophy at elite institution. When he applied a few years ago, his department didn't even require the GRE and he received funding for his studies. Obviously there are differences in the goals of This Thing of Ours and his Philosophy program (actual commitment to education and scholarship for instance), but the point is, things don't have to be the way they are.
I haven't heard of a graduate program that runs quite the same way that law schools do. Maybe if they cared a little less about LSAT/GPA, the whole system would be better off. For instance, there might be more money for a general cost reduction, rather than simply purchasing 3.8s and 173 LSAT scores.