U.S. News Law School Rankings for 2010

Back in October, we linked to an important announcement made by U.S. News & World Report that the magazine would be ranking part-time law schools for the first time in 2009. We endorsed the decision, noting that it would affirm both part-time programs and the ranking system itself. Less clear was whether U.S. News would be folding part-time matriculation numbers (mainly average GPA and LSAT) into its general rankings, which was another topic of discussion on this blog. Well, the magazine has gone all the way, adding part-time numbers to its rankings, which is big news indeed.


Part-Time Programs

The whole "part-time stats" situation is important because the fact that such numbers were not included in the law school rankings in the past presented an ongoing scenario whereby schools could game the numbers to soar up the charts. By admitting students with substandard academic profiles into the part-time program, schools could keep enrollment up while protecting the class profile that was used for purposes of ranking the various institutions.

Robert Morse of U.S. News was up front about the reasons for adding part-time numbers then and he and co-author Sam Flanigan shoot from the hip again in yesterday's announcement.

In the article, Morse and Flanigan write:

This year, we modified our main law school rankings methodology. We used the combined fall 2008 class admissions data for both full-time and part-time entering students for the median LSAT scores, median undergraduate grade-point averages, and the acceptance rate in calculating the school's overall ranking. U.S. News's previous law school ranking methodology used only the full-time entering student data for those three admissions variables. This change improves the methodology because U.S. News is now comparing each law school's entering class against every other's based on the entire student body, which produces the most complete comparisons

"Part-time program" is about to become a very buzz-worthy phrase in the law school space over the next several days and weeks, as the change to the rankings elevates the profile of part-time programs. In fact, U.S. News ran an accompanying article today by Nikki Schwab that highlights some of the virtues of part-time law school and you can be sure that some of the highest ranking part-time schools will take full advantage of their suddenly official place at the top of a list. That list is likely to be DC-heavy, as the nation's capital placed four of the top five part-time programs: Georgetown (1), George Washington (2), American (4), and George Mason (5).

New Rankings

Of course, all of the talk of part-time programs was just an undercard for the main event, which is the new rankings, including the top 20 schools for 2009:

Current rank [Previous rank] School Name (Rating) [Previous Rating]
1 [1] Yale (100) [100]
2 [2] Harvard (95) [91]
3 [2] Stanford (93) [91]
4 [4] Columbia (88) [88]
5 [5] NYU (87) [85]
6 [7] Chicago (84) [80]
6 [6] Berkeley (84) [81]
8 [7] Penn (82) [80]
9 [9] Michigan (81) [79]
10 [12] Duke (80) [77]
10 [9] Northwestern (80) [79]
10 [9] Virginia (80) [79]
13 [12] Cornell (78) [77]
14 [14] Georgetown (75) [74]
15 [16] UCLA (74) [71]
15 [16] Texas (74) [71]
17 [15] Vanderbilt (73) [72]
18 [18] USC (72) [68]
19 [19] Washington U. (69) [67]
20 [21] Boston (66) [64]
20 [22] Emory (66) [63]
20 [23] Minnesota (66) [63]

There isn’t a lot here to go crazy about if you are someone who lives and dies by law school rankings. Virtually every school in the top 20 saw its raw score go up from last year (Columbia being the exception), so it is hard to say that any top law school “got worse” even if it went down in the rankings. The “T-14” (top 14) remains unchanged, with only subtle shifts within that list, while UCLA and Texas stayed in lockstep moving up together from a tie for 16 to a tie for 15 (with identical raw score increases from 71 to 74). Aside from top 20 newcomers Emory and Minnestoa, Duke made the biggest forward move going from 12 to 10, while Chicago was the biggest “score” gainer, moving back into the number six spot while enjoying a raw score increase of four points.

Perhaps the most interesting change is that after being tied last year and enjoying a score increase from 91 to 93, Stanford wasn't able to push past Harvard into the number two spot. For followers of this blog, you could see this coming, thanks to the impressive work of departed dean Elena Kagan, as well as the school’s aggressive hiring practices. It will be interesting to see if Harvard can hold off Stanford without Kagan at the helm.

George Washington was the only school to fall out of the top 20, plummeting to 28, with a score decrease from 65 to 63. This comes as a surprise to many who saw the school trending up. Plus, with the school’s lofty part-time ranking, one wouldn’t assume that GW was guilty of stashing weaker students in its part-time program to game the rankings.

Application Tips

One area that was lacking in the flurry of articles from U.S. News? The application tips posted on the publication's website. For more meaningful and useful advice on law school applications, visit our Veritas Prep Law School Application Tips, or explore our various consulting services. And, be sure to follow us on Twitter!