ATL's Law School Rankings Forum

[Lavitz]

I just noticed that when you click the school's name, you see how the students and alumni rated it.

Guess I'd better get ready for Cornell's B- social life.

[masked kavana]

I just noticed that when you click the school's name, you see how the students and alumni rated it.

Guess I'd better get ready for Cornell's B- social life.

That's what video games are for

[DorianGray89]

Sure, there is stuff wrong with these rankings, but there is with all of them. People give different weights to different things. Here ATL is telling you based on these things, this is how these schools stack up against each other. If you want to give different weight to different things, do it on your own, they are going by what people told them was more important.

Anyways, I'm happy to see Duke getting the acknowledgement it deserves.

[Lavitz]

That's what video games are for

Let's not derail yet another thread into a video game discussion.

But yeah, I'm not taking it too seriously.

[sabanist]

.

[rad lulz]

3) I'm a little confused by the "Cost" methodology. Are they just using tuition as the metric for cost? Because some schools are incredibly stingy and others very generous. I couldn't really understand what they meant when they explained their methodology here.

They use cost, and it makes sense until schools start releasing "average tuition paid" numbers

They like to keep that lil cross subsidization thing on the DL

[dixiecupdrinking]

"we don't use inputs. we consider school costs"...

If you think about it as "student indebtedness" then it's more clearly an outcome and not an "input."

These are not half bad, grain of salt as usual but no less instructive than any other ranking system I've seen. (Edit: actually, they are half bad—also relying on their own alumni scores? Who knows who is providing that info. And the SCOTUS + judge thing is pretty stupid. But contrast to USNWR which is like 75% bad, and half bad is not that bad.)

[sinfiery]

They could probably incorporate a conservative across the board estimation using the data on LSACs website with % of students receiving grant aid, amount of said median aid, % receiving more than half, full tuition, etc. But that's a lot of work..

[ms9]

Here is some real quick analysis. Trust me, I am trying to add grids.

ATL v. USNWR @http://spiveyconsulting.com/blog/238/

This was done on the fly, please PM me with errors.

[Lavitz]

This made me check out Harvard's, and...

Notable alumni include: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Mitt Romney, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Antonin Scalia, Elena Kagan, Lloyd Blankfein, Rutherford B. Hayes, and most importantly Elie Mystal

I knew there had to be a catch.

Currently reading the student and alumni reviews of the schools. I also noticed you can still click "rate your school" and fill out the survey.

[JamesDean1955]

Problem with these rankings is that they don't correct for self-selection of those with prior work experience into particular schools. That is why Penn and NU occasionally outperform peers.

Why is Penn being included into your assessment? Just curious, bc I didn't think that relative to V/M/D/C (well, every T14 other than NU basically) they had substantially more people with significant WE (3+ years and/or sought after WE like investment banking). Quality of work experience matters too. From speaking with both Penn and NU students I got the impression NU students had more/better quality WE on average than Penn students.

If there's a compilation anywhere of which schools have what percentage of people with 3+ years of experience, I'd like to see that.

If you're right, guess my WE won't stand out as much as I thought

[untar614]

This made me check out Harvard's, and...

Notable alumni include: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Mitt Romney, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Antonin Scalia, Elena Kagan, Lloyd Blankfein, Rutherford B. Hayes, and most importantly Elie Mystal

I knew there had to be a catch.

Currently reading the student and alumni reviews of the schools. I also noticed you can still click "rate your school" and fill out the survey.

Time to start screwing with every school above yours? You can even pretend to be an attorney!

[banjo]

People who just want a rough idea of where law schools stand (laypeople) will still go to USNWR. Law school applicants will continue to go to LST.

[Borhas]

Lol, SCOTUS clerkships as a percent of the ranking

other than that it's pretty reasonable

[untar614]

Lol, SCOTUS clerkships as a percent of the ranking

other than that it's pretty reasonable

nah, including cost in the rankings makes no sense. these are things that should be evaluated separately.

[JXander]

Stolen from the thread that apparently missed mine :

Here is some real quick analysis. Trust me, I am trying to add grids.

ATL v. USNWR @http://spiveyconsulting.com/blog/238/

This was done on the fly, please PM me with errors.

[romothesavior]

3) I'm a little confused by the "Cost" methodology. Are they just using tuition as the metric for cost? Because some schools are incredibly stingy and others very generous. I couldn't really understand what they meant when they explained their methodology here.

They use cost, and it makes sense until schools start releasing "average tuition paid" numbers

They like to keep that lil cross subsidization thing on the DL

But what is "cost"?

Cost = Tuition + cost of attendance?

That's all well and good, but you really need to factor in scholarships to make it a meaningful metric.

[romothesavior]

Threads merged.

[rad lulz]

3) I'm a little confused by the "Cost" methodology. Are they just using tuition as the metric for cost? Because some schools are incredibly stingy and others very generous. I couldn't really understand what they meant when they explained their methodology here.

They use cost, and it makes sense until schools start releasing "average tuition paid" numbers

They like to keep that lil cross subsidization thing on the DL

But what is "cost"?

Cost = Tuition + cost of attendance?

That's all well and good, but you really need to factor in scholarships to make it a meaningful metric.

I guess they could use this:

They could probably incorporate a conservative across the board estimation using the data on LSACs website with % of students receiving grant aid, amount of said median aid, % receiving more than half, full tuition, etc. But that's a lot of work..

It would be better

[beepboopbeep]

That's all well and good, but you really need to factor in scholarships to make it a meaningful metric.

I think ATL is aware of that, but there's just no way to get that information right now.

Is it worth including, given that everyone making an actual decision will be looking at different numbers? Probably not. But I appreciate what they're trying to do.

[LSATSCORES2012]

They could probably incorporate a conservative across the board estimation using the data on LSACs website with % of students receiving grant aid, amount of said median aid, % receiving more than half, full tuition, etc. But that's a lot of work..

That's all well and good, but you really need to factor in scholarships to make it a meaningful metric.

I think ATL is aware of that, but there's just no way to get that information right now.

Is it worth including, given that everyone making an actual decision will be looking at different numbers? Probably not. But I appreciate what they're trying to do.

Sure, there is stuff wrong with these rankings, but there is with all of them. People give different weights to different things. Here ATL is telling you based on these things, this is how these schools stack up against each other. If you want to give different weight to different things, do it on your own, they are going by what people told them was more important.

Anyways, I'm happy to see Duke getting the acknowledgement it deserves.

Shameless plug: --LinkRemoved-- - incorporates all this stuff


(but I do like the ATL rankings... more than USNews, and even more than LST. I think custom rankings are just confusing, and that LST provides so much information it can be hard to understand)

[06102016]

..

[SportsFan]

Problem with these rankings is that they don't correct for self-selection of those with prior work experience into particular schools. That is why Penn and NU occasionally outperform peers.

Why is Penn being included into your assessment? Just curious, bc I didn't think that relative to V/M/D/C (well, every T14 other than NU basically) they had substantially more people with significant WE (3+ years and/or sought after WE like investment banking). Quality of work experience matters too. From speaking with both Penn and NU students I got the impression NU students had more/better quality WE on average than Penn students.

If there's a compilation anywhere of which schools have what percentage of people with 3+ years of experience, I'd like to see that.

If you're right, guess my WE won't stand out as much as I thought

This is pretty off topic, but tbh I have no idea what he's talking about. I think ~35% of the 1L class at Penn is K-JD, there there's another 10-15% who took a year or 2 off but didn't do anything really substantial (worked retail, taught the LSAT, travelled, etc.), which accounts for like half the class. Then the other half of the class is a big mix between people who did Teach for America, worked as paralegals, did financial work, etc. So really, IMO you end up with 40-50% of the class not really have much pre-law school WE (outside of summer internships or whatever), then ~25% of the class with the really desirable WE you describe (3+ years, investment banking, etc.), and the rest with good but not great WE. At least, this is what my impression has been.

[laxbrah420]

Do these rankings competitors that always bash the library inclusion in USNWR not understand that looking library size/collection is just a proxy for determining overall quality --and not a direct support that having more books is better?

And likewise, higher cost probably signals being better, not worse.

[JamesDean1955]

@ SportsFan: Thanks, yeah that's what I picked up from speaking with people at ASW. Spoke to a couple people with awesome work experience doing the JD/MBA and my first thought was why they even bothered getting the JD degree when they would have Wharton on their resume (lucky people ). But people like that seemed to be the minority by far.

Anyways I don't think this was that off topic as the conversation was about ranking inflation due to students with work experience. I feel like a comprehensive study should be done on this (using public information posted by schools and surveying current students).