Competitive law schools and rankings Forum

[callipygian]

Many t-20 law schools highlight that they do not publish class rank, and that by not doing so I creates a more collegial atmosphere than their peers. But it seems like every school claims not to publish rankings. Does anyone know which t-20 DO publish them?

[TripTrip]

If you mean "publish" as in "publicly proclaim the order of who is the best, name by name" then no, nobody does that.

In every school (except Yale), students are still graded and can claim to be "top 10%" or cum laude or what have you.

[callipygian]

I meant released to students, privately or otherwise.

Eg GW doesn't rank but let's you know if you fall in some top %.

Fwiw, I believe some law schools even prohibit you from estimating your rank (Duke comes to mind).

[alwayssunnyinfl]

This would actually be really useful information to have all in one place. However, I think more important than what students know and how they perceive themselves amongst their peers is what employers know and how easily they can determine your class rank and use that in hiring.

[ndirish2010]

It's not true at every school you can claim to be top 10%. At NDLS, CDO tells us not to because there are no percentile ranks given out. I wish we would rank, or at least tell people if they are top 10%/top 25%/median/etc.

[TripTrip]

It's not true at every school you can claim to be top 10%. At NDLS, CDO tells us not to because there are no percentile ranks given out. I wish we would rank, or at least tell people if they are top 10%/top 25%/median/etc.

NDLS still has GPA and a Dean's List. Even though that doesn't allow for exact percentile rankings, it can still distinguish one student from another.

[kd5]

At UMN you can find out your exact class rank for limited purposes, like when you're applying for judicial clerkships. They also release the quartiles for each year every summer, so if you're close to a cut-off point you'll have a pretty good idea of your overall rank. For the 2011-12 year, for example, the top quartile for the class of 2014 begins at about a 3.6 and there were 60 students in each quartile. So if you had a 3.59, it's a pretty safe bet that you're ranked 61st or slightly lower.