*Either T14 or located in a state you want to practice in (aka live in the rest of your life) when you pass the bar
-->4-5 in your LSAT/GPA range
-->4-5 above it, and
-->4-5 below (safeties)...
*What percent have great job prospects after graduation (defined for me as 90% or above employed within 9 months of graduating)
*What percent of graduates pass the bar on the first try (and which bar they usually take...New York, Calfornia, and apparently Louisiana bars are the hardest, La.'s for a different reason than the first two)
*THE ATTRITION RATE (what percent fail out! Accepting you knowing you have a good chance of not making it is a cruel thing to do but these law schools are doing it and taking your money for nothing, don't fall for that!!!!!!) ...I would say attrition rates worse than the T-14's average or most frequent attrition rate is bad, and in the double digits means you should cross that school off your list.
*The unusual requirements (which ones REQUIRE more than two LORs? some allow you to send more than two but only require two, some REQUIRE more than two...or which require Dean's certification letter from your UG major's department dean? If you're applying to Yale, the Yale 250 falls here)
*The OPENING deadline (closing shouldn't even matter to you, plan your business to get your stuff in as close as possible to when each school begins accepting applications)...9/1? 9/15? 9/30? 10/1? etc.
Those are things you need to know to make an informed decision and a competitive application.
THEN also note on the chart you're making of your school choices (you are making one, right?) which schools OF THE ONES THAT MAKE THE OBJECTIVE CUT ABOVE are having trouble getting URMs to enroll (by minority percentages--keeping in mind some of that is Asian--relative to the rest of schools on your list, cause that's what's important, the position of the schools on YOUR list relative to each other), or which you can guess probably have trouble based on things like a hicktown (or hick region) location, bad press (UVa just had a lacrosse student murder another lacrosse student he apparently use to date, Duke and the lacrosse/stripper thing and the national racial tensions the mishandling of it caused) or 100 feet of snow every winter. lol This could be a good thing if it's just something like an awfully isolated location, or a bad thing if the school is in the Virginias or somewhere else especially noted for being more racist than its neighbouring states...Arizona is potentially not the place to be going to school right now if you're Hispanic. Why spend 3 years in that state when you can spend 3 years somewhere the laws treat you better?
If you're a parent this also means making a note of which of these schools are in good public school zones so your child isn't going to school in a ghetto while you pursue your legal dreams. Or you can make up your mind to live further away from the school but that's inconvenient. This involves finding out what school(s) the family/married housing dorm address(es) is/are zoned for, then looking them up on greatschools.net. If you are open to living off campus you can put off this part until you know where you are accepted places.
And of course note which ones on the list are a favourite for sentimental reasons that have nothing to do with logic...I have a school that is my favourite because my grandma got her PhD there and I'm just partial to it for that reason. It happens to be an Ivy, so that just makes it even more attractive than it already was (aside from meeting all the above criteria).
You can also cross off schools you just don't like for similarly emotional reasons...if you called there to get info and their admissions office had a bitch attitude, by all means, x it out. UF is off my list for that very reason.
I made this a new thread because it occurs to me that from what I can tell, certain URMs don't even know how to go about choosing a school, there's no method to the madness outside of what they "heard"...Like a friend in NJ kept trying to convince me Seton Hall was a great school cause that's what he heard...I looked up the ranking for him and told him they are number 72 on the list (at the time) and most of the schools above them have higher middle 50s GPA and LSAT numbers, so from those 3 things alone, no they are not one of the best choices.
