Top Law Schools

Can someone give me a real and scientific answer as to why Hastings isn't ranked higher than it is? As a California native and a Berkeley undergrad alum ive known many UCLA/Berkeley caliber (number wise) applicants who went to Hastings because they didn't get offers from the previously mentioned schools and found the 15k a year tuition (we graduated in '03 before everyone lost their mind and priced the UC's higher than Yale and Harvard for out of staters) and because they wanted to stay in the bay area. The same people all went on to corporate jobs at the top going pay (160k for cali jobs in the 06-08 or so time frame) where they were recruited by firms on campus. My question is this really this: If youre getting the same jobs as the UCLA law and your peer assessment score is one tenth of a point away from UCLA Laws (3.8 vs. 3.9) then why is Hastings ranked so far below Davis and UCLA?

the library

crossingforHYS wrote:the library

lol

Student-faculty ratio too high.

LSAT/GPA median too low.

Reported job figures too honest.

The library thing is funny. But I imagine the raw scores of the 20-50 ranked schools are so close that something as silly as buying up another 100,000 library volumes or "equivalents" could help. Sadly, that is not on the to-do list that the administration has drawn up to help it game the rankings improve the quality of our legal instruction and job placement.

sashatheturk wrote:Can someone give me a real and scientific answer as to why Hastings isn't ranked higher than it is? As a California native and a Berkeley undergrad alum ive known many UCLA/Berkeley caliber (number wise) applicants who went to Hastings because they didn't get offers from the previously mentioned schools and found the 15k a year tuition (we graduated in '03 before everyone lost their mind and priced the UC's higher than Yale and Harvard for out of staters) and because they wanted to stay in the bay area. The same people all went on to corporate jobs at the top going pay (160k for cali jobs in the 06-08 or so time frame) where they were recruited by firms on campus. My question is this really this: If youre getting the same jobs as the UCLA law and your peer assessment score is one tenth of a point away from UCLA Laws (3.8 vs. 3.9) then why is Hastings ranked so far below Davis and UCLA?

Good question. I haven't bothered to study the US News methodology in scientific detail, others on here have so they'd know more precisely, but my general impression is that for the past several years Hastings has just done its thing and basically allowed its ranking to languish, while other similar schools have actively focused on catering to US News' methodology.

There might be larger realities Hastings could never change, but small things like how it chooses to communicate with prospective/admitted students or "brand" itself among similar schools add up. Hastings' admission letter and packet were by far the most underwhelming out of all the schools I got into. Davis' materials, for example, were not extravagant but gave a far more convincing case for why I should attend there. And if this is the way Hastings chooses to interact with its future alumni base, we can only imagine how it's dealt with larger institutional issues over the years that also relate to higher ranking.

Fortunately, the new dean is forced to confront this now more than ever, as state funding dries up and Hastings must increasingly rely on alumni donations. Alumni who, as you say, rightfully think of themselves as having attended a law school on par with Cal and UCLA.

Hastings is really a peer to UCLA/Berkeley? This is news to me.

FiveSermon wrote:Hastings is really a peer to UCLA/Berkeley? This is news to me.

Not really, though historically (and maybe even today), not as far off as today's ranking disparity suggests. Or at least this seems to be OPs point and it's definitely the view of many Hastings faculty & alumni, who of course are not impartial observers here. And it's certainly the hope of every current Hastings student.

What difference does it make, the world is ending next year anyway.

Yeah Hastings used to be a T-25 staple like U of Iowa and Wash and Lee. Hastings didn't report to US News one year and has never recovered.

I assume Hastings' expenditures per student are not up to par. It's been proven that Yale would still out rank Harvard if Yale had an LSAT median of 150 and Harvard had one of 180.

Why?

Yale spends far more per student.

Moral of the story: it's no secret that elite schools lose money on their law schools. It's like investing in their students - by spending more on them while they are in school, they will spend more on the school after graduation. It appears that that theory has been working for elite schools. Hastings, with its large classes, likely cannot afford high expenditures per student.

I do agree that Hastings has a marketing problem. It's weird how irrelevant little things like a crappy-looking website, stocked with early-90s era pictures, and shabby brochures can leave such a bad impression. But leave one it does. Just compare, say, the Davis website with Hastings. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. But one of the sites looks like it belongs to a good law school. One does not.

For instance. Check this out. (LinkRemoved) Embarrassing and shitty representation of what it looks like to go to school here.

Then again, do I want the administration to take a bunch of our tuition money and divert it to stupid things like improving the website and brochures? Maybe not. Depends on whether the money would be shifted from, say, faculty salary or Beer on the Beach.

Bay area native here as well. I had a chance to speak to a Hastings prof about this recently (it was near the time the new usnwr rankings came out) and according to him, it is much a matter of Hastings not caring enough about it's rating. He spoke of faculty and administrator meetings where decisions were made with complete lack of thought as to what would happen to the rank. He was adamantly advocating for Hastings to "play the game" because it was hurting the school's national reputation, but he was in the minority. Just an anecdote.

FireNextTime wrote: For instance. Check this out. (LinkRemoved)

camelcrema wrote:Bay area native here as well. I had a chance to speak to a Hastings prof about this recently (it was near the time the new usnwr rankings came out) and according to him, it is much a matter of Hastings not caring enough about it's rating. He spoke of faculty and administrator meetings where decisions were made with complete lack of thought as to what would happen to the rank. He was adamantly advocating for Hastings to "play the game" because it was hurting the school's national reputation, but he was in the minority. Just an anecdote.

at the most recent ASD, i talked to a professor about this, and he said the exact same thing: that they hadn't previously taken into account the usnwr rankings when making decisions.

he also told me that now under dean wu, they recently have become more conscious of the rankings and reverse engineered the us news ranking methodology, yielding some kind of algorithm that allows them to calculate how something may positively/negatively affect their raw score/rank if all other schools stay stagnant. i believe this is one reason they are really looking to shrink their class size.

not sure if the effects of this new found awareness of the rankings will close the disparity in rank, but it probably won't hurt.

also, he even brought up the crappy website (which he considered almost a joke now), though it didn't seem like he expected them to actually improve it.

Teoeo wrote:What difference does it make, the world is ending next year anyway.

Egregious anti-Mayan trolling

drdolittle wrote:

FireNextTime wrote: For instance. Check this out. (LinkRemoved)

Although the view of SF Bay is amazing.

I think of Hastings more as the Fordham of Cali.

FiveSermon wrote:Hastings is really a peer to UCLA/Berkeley? This is news to me.

im comparing Hastings and UCLA/Davis which, according to the good people at US News who surveyed hiring firms and judges, are separated by one tenth of one point in their assessment score. Never would i call UCLA peer to Berkeley, as while UCLA consistently makes a fine point guard, Berkeley is where Oppenheimer invented the atom bomb.

I in fact was asking why UCLA/Davis (whom US News seems to consider Hastings peers) are ranked so much higher than Hastings.

sashatheturk wrote:

FiveSermon wrote:Hastings is really a peer to UCLA/Berkeley? This is news to me.

im comparing Hastings and UCLA/Davis which, according to the good people at US News who surveyed hiring firms and judges, are separated by one tenth of one point in their assessment score. Never would i call UCLA peer to Berkeley, as while UCLA consistently makes a fine point guard, Berkeley is where Oppenheimer invented the atom bomb.

I in fact was asking why UCLA/Davis (whom US News seems to consider Hastings peers) are ranked so much higher than Hastings.

class size, faculty/student ratios, expenditures per student(?) and hastings' more transparent employment numbers seem to be big reasons why.

a few changes here and there, and a newfound commitment to playing the rankings game, would probably see hastings jump up a couple numbers.

sashatheturk wrote:

FiveSermon wrote:Hastings is really a peer to UCLA/Berkeley? This is news to me.

im comparing Hastings and UCLA/Davis which, according to the good people at US News who surveyed hiring firms and judges, are separated by one tenth of one point in their assessment score. Never would i call UCLA peer to Berkeley, as while UCLA consistently makes a fine point guard, Berkeley is where Oppenheimer invented the atom bomb.

I in fact was asking why UCLA/Davis (whom US News seems to consider Hastings peers) are ranked so much higher than Hastings.

Well lsat/gpa, Jobs, and class expenditures Hastings is nowhere near UCLA. Maybe the peer scores are close, probably because Hastings has a good reputation and History ( I think something like half of CA judges are alumnus).

This may be my own biased UCLA trolling but the reality is that UCLA is closer to Berkeley then Hastings is to UCLA.

Davis has probably "gamed" the ranking more.