U.S. News Announces Release Date For Brand New Law School Rankings Forum

[CondescendingLiberal]

The biggest issue I have with getting rid of traditional metrics like the LSAT is that the proposed alternatives are, to put it as kindly as I can, total f***ing bulls**t. Yeah, it sounds great to talk about a "holistic admissions process that looks at every aspect of the applicant", but who are we fooling? Admissions offices don't have the time, resources, or ability to do this. You're telling me ~5 admissions staff are going to a meaningful "holistic" review of 20,000+ applicants? Give me a break.

They are just replacing objective metrics with fancy-sounding work-arounds that let them fill up their classes with the people they want (ie. a pre-determined number of rich, well connected white people to keep the donations flowing and a pre-determined number of each other group that has nothing to do with merit) without sacrificing their rankings.

Is the LSAT perfect? Hell no. But it is an opportunity for applicants who went to non-prestigious undergrads and don't have the other markers of prestige to get into top law schools. I'm worried we are closing that door in favor of this hypothetical "holistic" process that no one actually believes is going to work the way it's described.

To the above, I don't have a problem with taking other factors into account, especially if people have exceptional, non-academic credentials. But how many people does that describe? For every Navy SEAL or Olympic athlete we are giving preference to, there are 50 people getting preference based on summer internships, study abroad bulls**t and other rich-kid nonsense that is off-limits to most other applicants. Studying hard for the LSAT is doable for everyone. That's it's main selling point for me, not it's "predictive ability" or anything else.

The LSAT/GPA numbers game was one thing I found refreshing about the law school application process. Unlike undergraduate admissions, which purported to weigh your entire life story and consider whether it was worthy (that isn't how it works, but it was what I was lead to believe as a 17 year old), law school was always sold as a simple question of whether you had a high enough score and high enough GPA, with exceptions for the tippy top schools and "softs" being tiebreakers. Get a 4.0 and 175, and Harvard is probably yours. You don't need to cure cancer, be the world's greatest underwater ping pong player, or have your wealthy parents pull political strings.

The fact of the matter is that 99% of applicants do not have particularly remarkable soft factors. GPA can be helpful, but it's nearly impossible to get a fair comparison. We all assume that a 4.0 in Physics from MIT is quite a bit more impressive than a 4.0 in communications from directional state U, but most undergraduate records don't have such obvious differences.

With all their flaws, standardized tests are the one thing in the admissions game that is the same for all applicants. Of course not all applicants have equal access to test prep and the like, but inequality factors into every intangible factor too. For this reason, I think the death of the LSAT is highly exaggerated. Most schools will still rely on it heavy, even if they don't admit it.

As far as the rankings themselves: the year-by-year horse race was always silly and continues to be. The U.S. News has generally been reasonably accurate in sorting schools into broad categories for those who have no familiarity with such things, but beyond that it has little to offer other than entertainment value.

Agree with all of this except for the last paragraph. This year U.S. News fully beclowned itself

[nealric]

The biggest issue I have with getting rid of traditional metrics like the LSAT is that the proposed alternatives are, to put it as kindly as I can, total f***ing bulls**t. Yeah, it sounds great to talk about a "holistic admissions process that looks at every aspect of the applicant", but who are we fooling? Admissions offices don't have the time, resources, or ability to do this. You're telling me ~5 admissions staff are going to a meaningful "holistic" review of 20,000+ applicants? Give me a break.

They are just replacing objective metrics with fancy-sounding work-arounds that let them fill up their classes with the people they want (ie. a pre-determined number of rich, well connected white people to keep the donations flowing and a pre-determined number of each other group that has nothing to do with merit) without sacrificing their rankings.

Is the LSAT perfect? Hell no. But it is an opportunity for applicants who went to non-prestigious undergrads and don't have the other markers of prestige to get into top law schools. I'm worried we are closing that door in favor of this hypothetical "holistic" process that no one actually believes is going to work the way it's described.

To the above, I don't have a problem with taking other factors into account, especially if people have exceptional, non-academic credentials. But how many people does that describe? For every Navy SEAL or Olympic athlete we are giving preference to, there are 50 people getting preference based on summer internships, study abroad bulls**t and other rich-kid nonsense that is off-limits to most other applicants. Studying hard for the LSAT is doable for everyone. That's it's main selling point for me, not it's "predictive ability" or anything else.

The LSAT/GPA numbers game was one thing I found refreshing about the law school application process. Unlike undergraduate admissions, which purported to weigh your entire life story and consider whether it was worthy (that isn't how it works, but it was what I was lead to believe as a 17 year old), law school was always sold as a simple question of whether you had a high enough score and high enough GPA, with exceptions for the tippy top schools and "softs" being tiebreakers. Get a 4.0 and 175, and Harvard is probably yours. You don't need to cure cancer, be the world's greatest underwater ping pong player, or have your wealthy parents pull political strings.

The fact of the matter is that 99% of applicants do not have particularly remarkable soft factors. GPA can be helpful, but it's nearly impossible to get a fair comparison. We all assume that a 4.0 in Physics from MIT is quite a bit more impressive than a 4.0 in communications from directional state U, but most undergraduate records don't have such obvious differences.

With all their flaws, standardized tests are the one thing in the admissions game that is the same for all applicants. Of course not all applicants have equal access to test prep and the like, but inequality factors into every intangible factor too. For this reason, I think the death of the LSAT is highly exaggerated. Most schools will still rely on it heavy, even if they don't admit it.

As far as the rankings themselves: the year-by-year horse race was always silly and continues to be. The U.S. News has generally been reasonably accurate in sorting schools into broad categories for those who have no familiarity with such things, but beyond that it has little to offer other than entertainment value.

Agree with all of this except for the last paragraph. This year U.S. News fully beclowned itself

I fully agree with that.

When I say it has been "reasonably accurate in sorting schools into broad categories", I mean that it can tell you that the University of Michigan is in a very different tier from Penn State (something that might not be totally obvious to someone who knows nothing about law schools). Those who actually know the legal market never needed a magazine to tell them the general pecking order. But it was always extremely silly to argue whether NYU is the 4th, 7th, or 10th best law school based on the vicissitudes of U.S News. Or even worse, promoting/demoting administrators and having contentious school wide meetings over some directional state school moving up or down 10 or 15 spots. This year just added an extra layer of silliness.

[lynagitat]

Sorry, relying on rankings for precise rankings can be silly. The obsession over small fluctuations and the resulting debates are unnecessary. This year's challenges have only added more silliness to the ranking circus. Rankings should be a starting point, not the sole basis for decisions.