PR rates Vanderbilt 4th for career prospects!? Forum

[canuck]

Many of you have probably seen this, here are Princeton Review's new career prospects rankings: http://www.princetonreview.com/schoolli ... e=r&id=684

As you can see Vanderbilt is rate 4th, ahead of Harvard. Ummmm, how? Does anybody really believe their career prospects would be better after a Vanderbilt Law education than the would be after a Harvard Law education?

Anyone have any insight as to what might be behind these rankings? I looked for a methodology but could only find: "Based on the Career Rating".

Thanks!

[bk1]

They are dumb.

/thread

[canuck]

They are dumb.

With respect, your analysis leaves something to be desired.

[kams]

Yeah, I wouldn't pay attention to the PR rankings, as there really is no methodolgy.

[showNprove]

.

[bk1]

With respect, your analysis leaves something to be desired.

Probably about as much as their analysis of career prospects.

[WestOfTheRest]

Many of you have probably seen this, here are Princeton Review's new career prospects rankings: http://www.princetonreview.com/schoolli ... e=r&id=684

As you can see Vanderbilt is rate 4th, ahead of Harvard. Ummmm, how? Does anybody really believe their career prospects would be better after a Vanderbilt Law education than the would be after a Harvard Law education?

Anyone have any insight as to what might be behind these rankings? I looked for a methodology but could only find: "Based on the Career Rating".

Thanks!

I refuse to speak to purple font.

On topic, there's probably more mcdonalds around vanderbilt.

[blurbz]

Yeah, it's a joke. Read this.

http://abovethelaw.com/2010/10/the-prin ... k-awesome/

[observationalist]

Aren't these based only on student surveys? If so, all it says is that Vanderbilt students feel like they have the 4th best career prospects in the country. If you have talked to any Vandy students on here (cue Observationalist), this wouldn't surprise you.

They are indeed based on student surveys, which means I don't think they're useful for ranking purposes. Depending on how the surveys were administered, I do think they could shed some light on what it's like to attend a particular school. And it's at least possible that the Princeton surveys could be more representative of an entire class than other outcome-related reports that focus only on top performers (like the NLJ250 rankings, for which both Vanderbilt at 47.1% and HLS at 47.6% placed about the same portion of the class in large law firms back in Pre-ITE 2009). With the surveys unsuccessful graduates are able to weigh in, ranking their school poorly if they feel like they deserved better than what they got in the job search. That could bring down the overall scores for schools like HLS that offer excellent prospects to most students but still leave some hanging and feeling like they deserved better.

On that point I think a person in my class (VULS '10) who got shut out of biglaw post-ITE might be less inclined to view that as a total failure than an HLS student who got shut out, given the different pedigree of the two schools and the expectations we all had going into law school. Smaller schools also might offer more personally-tailored support for individual graduates who struggle in the job market, which means initially-unsuccessful graduates may appreciate the school's efforts. Someone at Vanderbilt who might otherwise feel frustrated in the job search at a larger school could therefore find less to complain about.

Then again, the Princeton surveys might only be administered to top performers, and in a manner that encourages those performers to rank their schools highly. If that's the case then I would be highly suspicious of the Princeton surveys offering any insight into what it's like to attend a particular school. I loved my time at Vanderbilt and I've been very happy with my job prospects, but I don't speak for everyone and I can't even say I wouldn't have had a better time of it had I applied and somehow been accepted to HLS.

[hipstermafia]

blue hurts my eyes