Why are Cornell and Georgetown's US News scores so low? Forum

[thatsnotmyname]

So the overall U.S. News score for BMVPDN are all in the 82-85 range. However, it drops to 78 for Cornell and 77 for Georgetown. What component of the ranking methodology keeps the scores for these two schools relatively low? I don't think such a gap can be explained by the LSAT scores/GPA for Georgetown because Georgetown has a higher median LSAT than some schools above it I believe. Likewise, the peer and lawyer/judge assessment scores for both Cornell and Georgetown are comparable to the rest of the T14. So what accounts for the score gap?

[holydonkey]

So the overall U.S. News score for BMVPDN are all in the 82-85 range. However, it drops to 78 for Cornell and 77 for Georgetown. What component of the ranking methodology keeps the scores for these two schools relatively low? I don't think such a gap can be explained by the LSAT scores/GPA for Georgetown because Georgetown has a higher median LSAT than some schools above it I believe. Likewise, the peer and lawyer/judge assessment scores for both Cornell and Georgetown are comparable to the rest of the T14. So what accounts for the score gap?

reality

[CyLaw]

It is based on the 12 parts published here.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/educatio ... l?PageNr=1

Bear in mind there is also a similar gap between Yale and Stanford, Harvard and Columbia, and Stanford and Chicago.

[ggocat]

read this: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... _id=937017.

Impossible to answer your question.

Basically, normalized overall score differences depend on a multitude of factors, including the school's own reported data for each variable and the reported data from every other school (particularly the anchor schools--the schools with the highest and lowest overall scores).

[09042014]

Cornell loses on LSAT median. Georgetown on spending per student, faculuty per student etc etc because they are huge. Both have high acceptance rates.

USNews approximates what schools are best, but its methodology is arbitrary. Looking at difference as being significant is misguided.