UCB joins Harvard and Yale in opting out of U.S. News & World Report's rankings Forum

[EmilyM54]

What are the potential implications of prominent law schools opting out of U.S. News & World Report's rankings for other law schools across the country? How will this shift impact the admissions process and competition? I personally believe that it will be interesting to see how the legal education landscape changes over time. What are your thoughts?

[jamestaylorrecordsas]

Do you have a theory of why they're opting out? I see you're new to TLS. This topic was discussed on TLS about 2 months ago. Click on word search and type in USNWR and it should come up.

[melgibsonfan]

What are the potential implications of prominent law schools opting out of U.S. News & World Report's rankings for other law schools across the country? How will this shift impact the admissions process and competition? I personally believe that it will be interesting to see how the legal education landscape changes over time. What are your thoughts?

UCB now gets to have its name next to H and Y, which is a win for them. Other schools will opt out because being #1 without a few of the T13 in contention is meaningless and does not make the school look great. If U. Iowa or BU becomes slotted to #1, it could be worth it to them in that applications will increase from 0Ls who do not know the history of the rankings with as much nuance as here.

[butonawednesday]

Yes, but the real issue is why is all this happening

[butonawednesday]

Oddly, a few Youtube channels say that USNWR will still rank the law schools, even after they opt out. USNWR can still get much of the data about the schools from ABA. Enough to do a meaningful ranking.

[melgibsonfan]

Yes, but the real issue is why is all this happening

Because they want the latitude to accept students with low GPAs and low LSATs without bearing the cost of doing so, which is a lower ranking. By dropping out of the horse race entirely, they can move underperforming matriculants off the books Enron style.

[butonawednesday]

Yes, but the real issue is why is all this happening

Because they want the latitude to accept students with low GPAs and low LSATs without bearing the cost of doing so, which is a lower ranking. By dropping out of the horse race entirely, they can move underperforming matriculants off the books Enron style.

Excellent info but isn't it true that USNWR can still rank them even after they drop out of the race. I'm seeing that on a few Youtube channels. It's not up to the law school if they want to be ranked by USNWR, which can get enough data from ABA to rank the school, with or without the school's cooperation.

[melgibsonfan]

Yes, but the real issue is why is all this happening

Because they want the latitude to accept students with low GPAs and low LSATs without bearing the cost of doing so, which is a lower ranking. By dropping out of the horse race entirely, they can move underperforming matriculants off the books Enron style.

Excellent info but isn't it true that USNWR can still rank them even after they drop out of the race. I'm seeing that on a few Youtube channels. It's not up to the law school if they want to be ranked by USNWR, which can get enough data from ABA to rank the school, with or without the school's cooperation.

Not all of the data is public knowledge and schools have been dinged in the past for fudging their numbers, both to USNews and the ABA. If Yale drops to three after claiming they’re not partaking in rankings, they have a handy excuse for the slide.

My own two cents is that the rankings damaged many applicants’ decision making abilities. Going to Harvard with significant debt is an idiotic decision when you can go to uva for free.

[Rooks]

It's not just UCB that has joined in opting out. Below is the compete list of schools that have decided to opt out:

Yale Law School
Harvard Law School
University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Georgetown University Law Center
Columbia Law School
Stanford Law School
University of Michigan Law School
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Duke Law School
New York University School of Law
University of Virginia School of Law
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
UCLA School of Law
University of California, Irvine School of Law
University of California, Davis School of Law
University of Washington School of Law
Campbell University Law School
University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law
Southwestern Law School
California Western School of Law
University of Idaho College of Law
St. John's University School of Law

Further, U.S. News & World Report sent a statement to law schools regarding methodology changes for the upcoming 2023-2024 rankings.

Key takeaways that we can draw from this statement:

U.S. News will decrease the weight of the peer assessment scores.
U.S. News will increase the weight of outcomes measures (employment and bar passage).
U.S. News will rank all law schools using publicly available data, which leads us to conclude that they will be entirely eliminating the expenditures and debt metrics.
U.S. News will no longer penalize schools for school-funded employment outcomes relative to non-school-funded jobs, at least for this upcoming rankings edition. They will also give full weight to grad school as an outcome, at least for this upcoming rankings edition.

Source:
https://www.spiveyconsulting.com/blog-p ... s-rankings
https://www.spiveyconsulting.com/blog-p ... tter-2023/

[Allegro3935]

What are the potential implications of prominent law schools opting out of U.S. News & World Report's rankings for other law schools across the country? How will this shift impact the admissions process and competition? I personally believe that it will be interesting to see how the legal education landscape changes over time. What are your thoughts?

Nothing will change. USNWR will continue ranking the schools the same way it always has. The T14 will have the usual suspects with UCLA and Gtown battling it out for 14. Law schools will continue posturing, and impressionable 20-something undergrads will keep applying to the same schools as if nothing happened. Stare decisis bro, the legal profession hates change. We still haven't gotten past the "socratic" method of teaching (it's in quotes because one person grilling the class on a reading assignment is neither socratic nor a dialogue). The other day, I saw a state prosecutor call IT support because she couldn't get a 2008 Sony disk player to work. It held up the trial by half an hour.

The schools' reason for opting out of USNWR rankings is dubious. Dean Gerkin of Yale Law School says, “[o]ne of the most troubling aspects of the U.S. News rankings is that it discourages law schools from providing critical support for students seeking public interest careers and devalues graduates pursuing graduate degrees." If only law school was more affordable! Suddenly the overpaid deans are on the side of the little guy. One begins to suspect that schools are holding USNWR hostage for some reason or another.

[Allegro3935]

What are the potential implications of prominent law schools opting out of U.S. News & World Report's rankings for other law schools across the country? How will this shift impact the admissions process and competition? I personally believe that it will be interesting to see how the legal education landscape changes over time. What are your thoughts?

Nothing will change. USNWR will continue ranking the schools the same way it always has. The T14 will have the usual suspects with UCLA and Gtown battling it out for 14. Law schools will continue posturing, and impressionable 20-something undergrads will keep applying to the same schools as if nothing happened. Stare decisis bro, the legal profession hates change. We still haven't gotten past the "socratic" method of teaching (it's in quotes because one person grilling the class on a reading assignment is neither socratic nor a dialogue). The other day, I saw a state prosecutor call IT support because she couldn't get a 2008 Sony disk player to work. It held up the trial by about 15 minutes.

The schools' reason for opting out of USNWR rankings is dubious. Dean Gerkin of Yale Law School says, “[o]ne of the most troubling aspects of the U.S. News rankings is that it discourages law schools from providing critical support for students seeking public interest careers and devalues graduates pursuing graduate degrees." If only law school was more affordable! Suddenly the overpaid deans are on the side of the little guy. One begins to suspect that schools are holding USNWR hostage for some reason or another.

[nixy]

Thought this might be relevant to the thread:

[jamestaylorrecordsas]

It was a funny and thoughtful vid and the lessons it teaches will be ignored by everyone