Top Law Schools

1. Why is Iowa ranked so high when it is sitting in a core field (in my mind) and has no placing power in major markets?

2. Does Iowa scholarship info come with the admission letter or a few days afterwards?

Thank you TLS

1. US News does not distinguish between placement in major and smaller markets, and Iowa places very well in Iowa/midwest small markets, so it's going to perform really well on the placement success ranking criteria, which is worth 20% of the total score. Iowa also has a pretty high bar passage rate of ~90%, a healthy endowment/student expenditure for its size (10% of ranking), very low student faculty ratio (3%), and a really big library (0.75%). All these little gains add up, and likely carry Iowa over most of the other schools ranked 20-50, most of which have similar GPA and LSAT ranges.

2. Iowa sends out scholarships sometime after acceptances. There is no standard timeline.

Iowa also places better than many people might expect in Chicago; Ihave a few friends who got Chicago biglaw out of Iowa (disclaimer: not a likely outcome, but not unusual).

RedPurpleBlue wrote:1. US News does not distinguish between placement in major and smaller markets, and Iowa places very well in Iowa/midwest small markets, so it's going to perform really well on the placement success ranking criteria, which is worth 20% of the total score. Iowa also has a pretty high bar passage rate of ~90%, a healthy endowment/student expenditure for its size (10% of ranking), very low student faculty ratio (3%), and a really big library (0.75%). All these little gains add up, and likely carry Iowa over most of the other schools ranked 20-50, most of which have similar GPA and LSAT ranges.

2. Iowa sends out scholarships sometime after acceptances. There is no standard timeline.

That's very helpful. Is there a ranking that can normalize different job markets (i.e. weigh more for more prestige jobs)?

chicagoburger wrote:1. Why is Iowa ranked so high when it is sitting in a core field (in my mind) and has no placing power in major markets?

2. Does Iowa scholarship info come with the admission letter or a few days afterwards?

Thank you TLS

They also cut their class size significantly, about a 100 people, so they can keep their LSAT and GPA medians where they were. So as schools dropped in the rankings by letting in people with lower scores and GPAs, Iowa naturally rose.

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