Top Law Schools

I'm curious about why the school I'm considering attending, GW, posted such relatively good numbers (80.7% employed, 8.3% underemployed) for 2011 data on lawschooltransparency, and actually improved over its numbers in 2010 (75.8% employed, 15.6% underemployed). The metric it did drop in was large firm placement, from 27% to 20%.

Could GW be inflating its numbers, or did c/o 2011 actually do better than c/o 2010 somehow, or I am not reading the numbers well? I noticed that other schools have gotten killed with the c/o 2011 data, so GW's improvement seems a little optimistic or suspicious to me.


--LinkRemoved--

--LinkRemoved--

Wily wrote:I'm curious about why the school I'm considering attending, GW, posted such relatively good numbers (80.7% employed, 8.3% underemployed) for 2011 data on lawschooltransparency, and actually improved over its numbers in 2010 (75.8% employed, 15.6% underemployed). The metric it did drop in was large firm placement, from 27% to 20%.

Could GW be inflating its numbers, or did c/o 2011 actually do better than c/o 2010 somehow, or I am not reading the numbers well? I noticed that other schools have gotten killed with the c/o 2011 data, so GW's improvement seems a little optimistic or suspicious to me.

Answer to the bolded: probably. If you take out the positions funded by GW itself, the employment rate drops from 80% to about 66%, which is closer to what you'd expect. Source.

There's an ongoing argument about what these positions actually are, but there's no question that they're driving a decent portion of that 80% number.

JusticeHarlan wrote:

Wily wrote:I'm curious about why the school I'm considering attending, GW, posted such relatively good numbers (80.7% employed, 8.3% underemployed) for 2011 data on lawschooltransparency, and actually improved over its numbers in 2010 (75.8% employed, 15.6% underemployed). The metric it did drop in was large firm placement, from 27% to 20%.

Could GW be inflating its numbers, or did c/o 2011 actually do better than c/o 2010 somehow, or I am not reading the numbers well? I noticed that other schools have gotten killed with the c/o 2011 data, so GW's improvement seems a little optimistic or suspicious to me.

Answer to the bolded: probably. If you take out the positions funded by GW itself, the employment rate drops from 80% to about 66%, which is closer to what you'd expect. Source.

There's an ongoing argument about what these positions actually are, but there's no question that they're driving a decent portion of that 80% number.

I see. The % school funded did jump from 5% to 15%, which I just noticed. Thanks for the explanation.

wow that big of a drop in large firm placement? that is upsetting...