As many of you have likely heard by now, Yale, Harvard, and now Berkeley have announced that they will no longer participate in the US News and World Report law school rankings process. More schools are likely to follow in the days and weeks to come. The US News rankings have long been a staple in law school admissions. I’ve been through law school, several of my own admissions cycles, and hundreds more cycles by proxy through my students, and no single event has come anywhere close to the level of impact this will have. So let’s break down what this means and how it affects applicants.
#####What were the US News rankings?
This part is perhaps the most confusing aspect in all of this. The US News rankings were just what they sound like: The law school rankings established by one random publication--The otherwise unremarkable US News & World Report. There are other rankings by other entities--The ATL rankings are a great alternative--but for some reason it was the US News rankings that became the "official" rankings. The T14 schools were the schools ranked in the top 14 in the US News rankings. There is no particular reason for this ever having been the case. US News has no special indicia of legitimacy making their rankings supreme. Despite the arbitrariness of it all, it has provided a universal standard.
#####How were the rankings determined?
Here's the methodology, copied straight from US News:
####Quality Assessment
Quality assessment was composed of two indicators of expert opinion that contributed 40% to the overall rank.
Peer assessment score (weighted by 0.25): Law school deans, deans of academic affairs, chairs of faculty appointments and the most recently tenured faculty members rated programs' overall quality on a scale from marginal (1) to outstanding (5), marking "don't know" for schools they did not know well enough to evaluate. A school's score is the average of 1-5 ratings received. U.S. News administered the peer assessment survey in fall 2021 and early 2022. Sixty nine percent of recipients responded.
Lawyers and judges assessment score (0.15): Legal professionals – including hiring partners of law firms, practicing attorneys and judges – rated programs' overall quality on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding), marking "don't know" for schools they did not know well enough to evaluate. A school's score is the average of 1-5 ratings it received across the three most recent survey years. U.S. News administered the legal professionals survey in fall 2021 and early 2022 to recipients that law schools provided to U.S. News in summer 2021.
####Placement Success
Placement success is composed of five indicators that total 26% (previously 25.25%) of each school's rank. The two most heavily weighted indicators pertain to employment.
Employment rates for 2020 graduates 10 months after graduation (0.14) and at graduation (0.04): For both ranking factors, schools received maximum credit when their J.D. graduates – in alignment with ABA reporting rules – obtained long-term jobs that were full time, not funded by the law school, and where a J.D. degree was an advantage or bar passage was required. In contrast, jobs that were some combination of short term, part time, funded by the law school and/or did not require bar passage received less credit by varying amounts, determined by the combination. For a more detailed explanation, see Notes on Employment Rates, below.
Bar passage rate (0.03, previously 0.0225): U.S. News revamped its treatment of bar passage rates to incorporate all graduates who took the bar for the first time. Computations were further modified to de-emphasize the impact of geography on law schools' relative performance.
Specifically, the bar passage rate indicator scored schools on their 2020 first-time test takers' weighted bar passage rates among all jurisdictions (states), then added or subtracted the percentage point difference between those rates and the weighted state average among ABA accredited schools' first-time test takers in the corresponding jurisdictions in 2020. This meant schools that performed best on this ranking factor graduated students whose bar passage rates were both higher than most schools overall, and higher compared with what was typical among graduates who took the bar in corresponding jurisdictions.
For example, if a law school graduated 100 students who first took the bar exam – and 88 took the Florida exam, 10 the Georgia exam and two the South Carolina exam – the school's weighted average rate would use pass rate results that were weighted 88% Florida, 10% Georgia and 2% South Carolina. This computation would then be compared with an index of these jurisdictions' average pass rates – also weighted 88-10-2. (For privacy, school profiles on usnews.com only display bar passage data for jurisdictions with at least 10 test-takers.) Both weighted averages included any graduates who passed the bar with diploma privilege. Diploma privilege is a method for J.D. graduates to be admitted to a state bar and allowed to practice law in that state without taking that state's actual bar examination. Diploma privilege is generally based on attending and graduating from a law school in that state with the diploma privilege.
In previous editions, U.S. News divided each school's first-time bar passage rate in its single jurisdiction with the most test-takers by the average for that lone jurisdiction. This approach effectively excluded many law schools' graduates who took the bar. Dividing by the state average also meant the location of a law school impacted its quotient as much as its graduates' bar passage rate itself. The new arithmetic accounts for average passage rates across all applicable jurisdictions as proxy for each exam's difficulty and reflects that passing the bar is a critical outcome measure in itself.
Average debt incurred obtaining a J.D. at graduation (0.03) and the percent of law school graduates incurring J.D. law school debt (0.02): According to a 2021 American Bar Association report, many new lawyers are postponing major life decisions like marriage, having children and buying houses – or rejecting them outright – because they are carrying heavy student loan debts. J.D. graduate debt is impacting Black and Hispanic students the most since they borrow more, according to the ABA. For the second consecutive year, the ranking includes two indicators that took into account this J.D. graduate debt load and its impact on law school graduates, the legal profession and prospective law school students.
This data was based on J.D. candidate graduates in 2020-2021. The indicators were calculated by comparing each school's value with the median value (midpoint) for that indicator. Schools whose values were farthest below the median scored the highest, and schools that were most above the median scored the lowest on each indicator.
####Selectivity
Selectivity is a proxy of student excellence. Its three indicators contributed 21% in total to the ranking.
Median Law School Admission Test and Graduate Record Examination scores (0.1125): These are the combined median scores on the LSAT and GRE quantitative, verbal and analytical writing exams of all 2021 full- and part-time entrants to the J.D. program. Reported scores for each of the four exams, when applicable, were converted to 0-100 percentile scales. The LSAT and GRE percentile scales were weighted by the proportions of test-takers submitting each exam. For example, if 85% of exams submitted were LSATs and 15% submitted were GREs, the LSAT percentile would be multiplied by 0.85 and the average percentile of the three GRE exams by 0.15 before summing the two values. This means GRE scores were never converted to LSAT scores or vice versa. There were 59 law schools – 31% of the total ranked law schools – that reported both the LSAT and GRE scores of their 2021 entering classes to U.S. News.
Median undergraduate grade point average (0.0875): This is the combined median undergraduate GPA of all 2021 full- and part-time entrants to the J.D. program. Law schools with higher median GPAs scored higher on this indicator.
Acceptance rate (0.01): This is the combined proportion of applicants to both the full- and part-time J.D. programs who were accepted for the 2021 entering class. A lower acceptance rate scored higher because this indicated greater selectivity.
####Faculty, Law School and Library Resources
Faculty, law school and library resources is comprised of four indicators weighted at 13% (previously 13.75%) of the ranking and is composed of two indicators on expenditures, one on student-faculty ratio and one for library resources. The two metrics on expenditures per student, below, pertain to the 2020 and 2021 fiscal years.
The average spending on instruction, library and supporting services (0.09) and the average spending on all other items, including financial aid (0.01): The faculty resources calculation for instruction, library and supporting services is adjusted for cost of living variations in law school salaries between school geographic locations by using publicly available Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities index data.
Student-faculty ratio (0.02): This is the ratio of law school students to law school faculty members for 2021. The student-to-faculty ratio definition that U.S. News uses is a modified version of the Common Data Set's definition, a standard used throughout higher education based on the ratio of full-time equivalent students to full-time equivalent faculty. For law schools, full-time equivalent faculty is defined as full-time faculty plus one-third part-time law school faculty. Full-time equivalent students are defined as full-time law school students plus two-thirds of total part-time law school students.
Library resources and operations (0.01, previously 0.017): Following additional examination of their data, U.S. News has discontinued using the seven library indicators used once in the previous ranking. In their place is one new indicator: The ratio of full-time equivalent professional librarian positions as of June 30, 2021 (or the close of a law school's fiscal year) to fall 2021 full-time equivalent law students.
#####Why are schools opting out?
Like most things, Erwin Chemerinsky said it better than anyone else could. Professor Chemerinsky is the dean of Berkeley Law School, probably the greatest living Constitutional Law scholar, and hopefully the next Supreme Court Justice of the United States:
After careful consideration, Berkeley Law has decided not to continue to participate in the US News ranking of law schools. Although rankings are inevitable and inevitably have some arbitrary features, there are aspects of the US News rankings that are profoundly inconsistent with our values and public mission.
Berkeley Law is a public school, with a deep commitment to increasing access to justice, training attorneys who will work to improve society in a variety of ways, and to empowering the next generation of leaders and thinkers, many of whom will come from communities who historically were not part of the legal profession. We are also committed to excellence: in our programs, scholarship, financial support, research, and certainly among our students. We take pride in producing attorneys who are highly skilled, highly sought after, and dedicated to public service and pro bono. This is who we are.
Rankings have the meaning that we give them as a community. I do not want to pretend they do not. And rankings will exist with or without our participation. The question becomes, then, do we think that there is a benefit to participation in the US News process that outweighs the costs? The answer, we feel, is no.
We want to be specific about the basis for this assertion. It is not about railing against rankings or complaining that they “hurt” us in some way. However, there are specific issues that we have struggled with for years, and raised with leadership at US News to no avail. These are:
Their ranking penalizes schools that help students launch careers in public service law.
Berkeley Law has a program where we provide students a fellowship for a year after graduation to work in a public interest organization. These positions include a salary comparable to an entry-level position in public service or public interest, as well as a stipend during study for the bar examination. We have done this for many years and 94 percent of those who receive such fellowships remain doing public interest law after the fellowship ends. But US News does not count these students as fully employed. This creates a perverse incentive for schools to eliminate these positions, despite their success and despite the training they provide for future public service attorneys.
Moreover, consistent with our public mission, we have one of the most favorable loan repayment assistance programs in the country. We have recently revised it to make it even more helpful to our graduates pursuing public interest and public service careers. US News pays no attention to this, measuring student debt but ignoring how schools are helping students who need assistance to repay it.
The USNWR ranking formula disregards and discounts graduates who are pursuing advanced degrees.
We are pleased that every year some pursue Ph.D. and MBA degrees. More than pleased; we are a law school that trains scholars, and seeks to add new voices to legal academia and other university spaces. Yet these graduates count as “unemployed” in the US News methodology. While we maintain a faculty committee dedicated to helping graduates and students pursue legal academia, we are one of the few law schools that does. This limits access to an important field and keeps in place traditional barriers to diversifying academia.
The rankings methodology creates incentives to de-prioritize things we think are critical to our profession and role in society.
One of the most pernicious aspects of the US News rankings is its measure of per student expenditures. There is no evidence that this correlates to the quality of the education received. This works to the disadvantage of schools that have lower tuition and therefore lower per student expenditures.
US News discounts per student expenditures in some areas of the country by a cost-of-living adjustment that has nothing to do with educational quality. Again, I have complained to US News about this for years to no avail.
USNWR looks at student loan debt without appropriate context, creating incentives for law schools to admit high-income applicants (and those from high-income/high-wealth families) who can “afford to pay,” and will not take on much student loan debt. It also incentivizes the elimination of need-based aid. We have preserved a need-based aid program because we believe it is the right thing to do, but if we eliminated it we could certainly increase median LSAT scores and GPA by channeling all resources into recruitment of those students. This, we feel, is wrong – yet we understand why some schools do this, and the answer is because they fear to do otherwise will hurt their rankings.
Nothing about Berkeley Law is fundamentally changed by this decision. We will be the law school we’ve always been, and we will strive to improve – in accordance with our values. Now is a moment when law schools need to express to US News that they have created undesirable incentives for legal education. Accordingly, Berkeley Law will not participate in the US News survey this year.
#####What will be different moving forward?
I think this should be more of a discussion. No one really knows, certainly not me, so what do people think?
Congrats on the 170! While that's an incredible score that will open lots of doors, a retake would certainly not "just be for vanity." There is a huge difference between a 170 and a 173. Every point matters until around about a 175.
I retested a 170 and had lots of reasons to believe my retake would improve. My 170 was a greater underperformance than yours, and I was also able to diagnose and correct my last major weakness. Your 170 is in your score range, but you clearly can outperform it even with your present level of ability. You don't have much time to improve, but if you were to make the most of it, do you know what you need to direct your efforts at? I think that would definitely tip the scales for me towards a retake: If you can find a way to meaningfully improve, then I'd say for sure go for it. If not, it's a lot closer. Your expectation to improve is not particularly unreasonable, but it is much more speculative than mine was. Another thing to consider is that improvement probably helps you more than non-improvement hurts you. So if it's close, might be worth a shot.
Also, non-URM status may not matter as of today given the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's irrelevant, but it certainly is going to disrupt business-as-usual in admissions offices, and for now, it's hard to predict exactly what it will mean in practice.