If you have applied to a higher-education institution, you likely have heard of the U.S. News & World Report school rankings. The publication’s Best Law Schools list has established the “T14,” which refers to the top 14 schools in the rankings. Many people view the T14 as the “elite” law schools that offer the best career opportunities for graduates. The rankings are also relevant for schools in the top 20, top 50, and top 100.
People generally use these rankings as quick differentiators between schools. For example, if an applicant gets into a school ranked 27th and a school ranked 88th, they might choose the school ranked 27th because they believe it will offer better career prospects. In addition, unranked schools are often seen as risky choices because they typically have weaker employment numbers than ranked schools.
With all of this in mind, it is clear that for many prospective JDs, the U.S. News rankings matter a lot. As you may have heard, the publication’s law school rankings have undergone many changes recently: U.S. News changed its methodology just a year ago, and some schools later chose to withdraw from the rankings due to concerns about the publication’s criteria.
In this blog post, we at Stratus help you make sense of the latest U.S. News rankings and the new methodology behind them.
New Methodology
As we have previously covered, the decision of law schools to withdraw from the U.S. News rankings meant that those schools would no longer share information with the publication, such as average student debt, school spending per student, and peer survey results. However, U.S. News could still obtain information that law schools are required to make public, such as admitted student scores on entrance exams, undergraduate GPAs, bar-passage rates, and employment numbers.
U.S. News recently announced yet another change to the rankings calculations: employment outcomes 10 months after graduation now account for 33% of a school’s score, instead of 14%. In addition, the first-time bar-passage rate accounts for 18% of the score, instead of just 3%. U.S. News also added a criterion for ultimate bar-passage rate, covering people who fail the bar the first time but subsequently pass it, which accounts for 7%. Together, these three factors constitute 58% of a school’s score.
U.S. News also adjusted the weight of the peer assessment score, which formerly accounted for 25% of a school’s score, to 12.5%. In addition, the assessment of lawyers and judges is now weighted less: 12.5% instead of 15%. If schools did not provide these criteria, their score was calculated without them, which caused the other factors to be weighted more heavily.
Interestingly, the weight of two selectivity factors was cut. Median LSAT and GRE scores previously accounted for 11.25% of a school’s score but now constitute 5%, while the weight of undergraduate GPAs was cut from 8.75% to 4%. The acceptance rate continues to account for 1% of a school’s score.
The weight of student-faculty ratio increased, now constituting 5% of the score rather than 2%, while the weight of library resources doubled from 1% to 2% of the score.
Major Changes in the U.S. News Rankings
The new methodology brought many changes to the U.S. News 2023–2024 Best Law Schools list, which was released earlier this month. Within the T14, Northwestern moved up three spots to tenth place (tied with UC Berkeley and Michigan), while the University of Pennsylvania gained two spots and was ranked fourth. Additionally, Stanford now tops the list (up from second last year) along with Yale. Harvard dropped one spot to fifth place (tied with NYU and Duke), while UCLA was ranked 14th.
Outside of the T14, there were more stark changes. For example, Duquesne moved up 40 spots to 89th, while Florida International gained 38 spots and moved to 60th. Meanwhile, the University of Maine moved down 32 spots to 146th, and the University of Hawaii–Manoa dropped 44 spots and now sits at 135th.
What to Do with the Rankings
As we have previously stated, no aspiring JD should select a law school based solely on rankings. This is even more true this year, given the drastic changes to the U.S. News rankings methodology. The fact that some scores are calculated using information from the law schools and some are not makes it difficult to determine which factors are proving crucial to the rankings.
All rankings are subjective, regardless of their methodology. But even if rankings were 100% accurate in terms of a law school’s worth, there are still factors that vary per applicant, such as the cost of attendance, where the applicant wants to work, the type of law the applicant wants to practice, and the amount of debt the applicant wants to take on. When considering all of these factors, for some students, it might make more sense to attend the 50th-ranked school than the top-ranked school.
Many of the factors that determine a law school’s ranking, particularly the employment and bar-passage rates, are components that applicants should consider when researching schools. However, this data is available in a law school’s American Bar Association 509 disclosure, which you can find by searching online.
Additionally, you should research law schools to see if they meet your particular needs. For example, find out what clubs, clinics, and classes law schools offer in areas of law that interest you. You can also reach out to alumni who are working in those legal fields and ask how the school helped or hindered them in landing a job in that area. If you are concerned about your ability to repay loans, look at a law school’s website to see if it offers loan repayment assistance programs and scholarships. Also, search on forums such as Reddit to see if a school is known for giving merit aid. If you want to go into big law, investigate how many graduates a school feeds into big law markets and whether most of its alumni end up in geographies with a substantial big law market.
Conducting all of this extra research is a lot more work than just looking up rankings, but it will pay high dividends in the long run.
If you are looking for advice on how to craft your law school application, schedule a free consultation with one of our Stratus counselors!