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Pittsburgh Dean Discusses His School's Decline From #69 to #91 in the U.S. News Rankings

Pittsburgh Dean William M. Carter, Jr. discusses his school's decline in the U.S. News rankings from #69 in 2013 to #91 in 2014 (Pittsburgh ranked 67-73 in 2009-2012):

(Hat Tip: Brian Leiter.)

Two More Schools Join Rankings Hall of Shame

Robert Morse (Director of Data Research for U.S. News & World Report), Updates to 2 Schools' 2013 Best Colleges Ranks:

Two schools – University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and York College of Pennsylvania – recently advised U.S. News that they submitted inflated data that were used in the 2013 Best Colleges rankings, resulting in their numerical ranks being higher than they otherwise might have been. In both cases, the same incorrect data were also reported to many other parties including the U.S. Department of Education.

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, a Texas school in the Regional Universities (West) rankings category, advised U.S. News that it reported an acceptance rate (which accounts for 1.5% of the overall ranking) of 27.4%, rather than the actual 89.1% rate.

York College, a Pennsylvania school in the Regional Universities (North) rankings category, advised U.S. News that it reported average SAT scores (which account for 7.5% of the overall ranking) of 545 (math) and 532 (critical reading), rather than the actual 527 (math) and 516 (critical reading) SAT scores. York College admitted that it has been misreporting SAT scores for more than a decade.

Other members of the Rankings Hall of Shame:  Bucknell, Claremont McKenna, Emory, George Washington, Illinois, Tulane, and Villanova.

2013 World Law School Rankings

2013 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World Law School Rankings (methodology: academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper, h-index per faculty member), along with the latest SSRN World Law School Faculty Rankings:

1. Harvard (#1 in SSRN)
2. Cambridge (#39)
3. Oxford (#19)
4. Yale (#6)
5. Melbourne (#26)
6. NYU (#7)
7. London School of Economics (#96)
8. Columbia (#4)
9. Stanford (#5)
10. Sydney (#27)
11. University College (London) (#55)
12. New South Wales (#79)
13. Monash (#132)
14. Australian National (#102)
15. Chicago (#3)
16. King's College (London) (#128)
17. UC-Berkeley (#13)
18. Université Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne (#758)
19. Victoria University of Wellington (#148)
20. University of Hong Kong (#133)
21. University of Toronto (#25)
22. National University Singapore (#105)
23. Georgetown (#9)
24. University of Auckland (#385)
25. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (#160)

Other law faculties in SSRN's Top 25 are George Washington (#2), Tilburg (#8), Pennsylvania (#10), Northwestern (#11), UCLA (#12), Illinois (#14), Vanderbilt (#15), Duke (#16), Michigan (#17), Minnesota (#18), George Mason (#20), USC (#21), Virginia (#22), San Diego (#23), and Fordham (#24).

ATL Law School Rankings

Above the Law, Most People Attend Law School to Obtain Jobs as Lawyers. (Not Butchers or Bakers, or Candlestick Makers.):

If law school was just a cool place to chill out for a few years without building specific job skills, they'd call it "college." Jobs are important, and we think that law schools should be competing to place students in the best jobs, not the best libraries. And given the cost of obtaining legal education, we want to know which law schools put you in jobs that pay you money, instead of jobs the law school pays for. With that in mind we present our inaugural ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings.

Here are the Top 20 (and their U.S. News ranking):

1. Yale (#1 in U.S. News)
2. Stanford (#2)
3. Harvard (#2)
4. Chicago (#4)
5. Pennsylvania (#4)
6. Duke (#11)
7. Virginia (#7)
8. Columbia (#4)
9. UC-Berkeley (#9)
10. NYU (#6)
11. Cornell (#13)
12. Michigan (#9)
13. Northwestern (#12)
14. Texas (#15)
15. Vanderbilt (#15)
16. Georgetown (#14)
17. UCLA (#17)
18. Notre Dame (#23)
19. Georgia (#33)
20. USC (#18)

Hre are the schools that most outperform their U.S. News ranking:

+55: St. Louis (#47 Above the Law, #102 U.S. News)
+48: Rutgers-Camden (#43, #91)
+38: New Mexico (#26, #64)
+28: Seton Hall (#36, #64)
+27: Miami (#49, #76)
+26: SMU (#22, #48)
+14: Georgia (#19, #33)
+14: Illinois #33, #47)
+13: Houston (#35, #48)
+12: Georgia State (#42, #54)

Here are the schools that most underperform their U.S. News ranking:

-21: Arizona State (#50 Above the Law, #29 U.S. News)
-15: Indiana (#40, #25)
-13: University of Washington (#41, #28)
-13: Minnesota (#32, #19)
-12: Washington & Lee (#38, #26)
-11: Iowa (#37, #26)
-10: George Washington (#31, #21)
-10: Ohio State (#46, #36)
-10: Fordham (#48, #38)
-7: UC-Davis (#45, #38)

Methodology:

• Employment Score (30%) -- full-time, long-term jobs requiring bar passage (excluding solos and school-funded positions)
• Quality Jobs Score (30%) -- We’ve combined placement with the country’s largest and best-paying law firms (using the National Law Journal’s “NLJ 250”) and the percentage of graduates embarking on federal judicial clerkships.
• SCOTUS Clerk & Federal Judgeship Scores (7.5% each) -- We simply looked at a school's graduates as a percentage of (1) all U.S. Supreme Court clerks (since 2008) and (2) currently sitting Article III judges. Both scores are adjusted for the size of the school.
• Education Cost (15%) -- [A]s a proxy for indebtedness, we’ve scored schools based on total cost. For those schools placing a majority of their graduates into the local job market, we’ve adjusted the score for the cost of living in that market.
• Alumni Rating (10%) -- This is the only non-public component of our rankings. For the purposes of the ATL Top 50, we only counted the alumni rating.

Press and blogosphere coverage:

• ABA Journal, Yale Tops Blog’s Alternative Law School Rankings; Focus Is on Schools Delivering Quality Jobs
• Ann Althouse (Wisconsin), Above the Law Produces a "Top 50 Law School Rankings"
• Brian Leiter (Chicago), Yes, Yet Another Ranking of Law Schools
• Brian Leiter (Chicago), New ATL Law School Rankings Do Not Include JD Advantage Jobs...
• Elie Mystal (Above the Law), Everything That Is Wrong With the Above the Law Law School Rankings
• Usha Rodrigues (Georgia), ATL's Law School Ranking
• Dan Rodriguez (Dean, Northwestern), Non-Legal Careers and the Northwestern Advantage
• Eugene Volokh (UCLA), Above The Law’s Employment-Based Law School Rankings

Rapoport: U.S. News Rankings Management, Law Schools Gone Wild, and Enron

Nancy B. Rapoport (Interim Dean, UNLV), Managing U.S. News & World Report -- The Enron Way, 48 Gonz. L. Rev. 423 (2013):

This essay suggests that lying about the numbers that schools report to US News is no better than the lying that Enron did about its various methods of "earnings management." It also suggests that administrators -- being humans -- can talk themselves into lying about the numbers for all sorts of (very bad) reasons.

There have been a few big law school scandals that are either clear manipulations of data designed to game the U.S. News & World Report rankings or are reactions to the pressure of making the U.S. News “numbers” and filling a class. That yearly March-April collective decanal shudder or sigh of relief is much like how CEOs and CFOs must feel when they find out whether their quarterly earnings met, exceeded, or failed to meet their projected earnings. Make no mistake: the repercussions that accompany a school’s drop in the rankings (or when companies don’t meet their projected earnings) are ugly. That’s why schools spend so much time playing to the rankings and why companies can find themselves in hot—sometimes felonious—water with unsavory “earnings management” decisions that push a company into outright dishonesty. ...

With so many examples of “schools gone wild,” it’s difficult for law deans and law faculties to tell their students that lawyers shouldn’t lie. The law schools that have misstated their stats are sending the message that lawyers shouldn’t lie, unless: (1) lying will make their lives easier; (2) verifying the facts is too much trouble; or (3) the likelihood of getting caught—and punished—is low. That’s not the message that we should be sending. ... “Rankings management” just reminds me too much of the “earnings management” that I followed when I devoured every news article out there about the Enron scandal. ...

When schools focus on chasing the U.S. News rankings, they’re not doing so because they really believe that what U.S. News measures is what law schools should be doing. They’re doing so because higher rankings have positive ripple effects. Higher rankings mean getting applicants with better and better “numbers” each year, which in turn leads to yet even higher rankings. Higher rankings increase the odds that a graduate of that school will have better job opportunities. Higher rankings also increase the odds of a faculty member placing her article in a “better” law review. And, of course, higher rankings make the lives of deans, associate deans, assistant deans, and other administrators much easier. Those effects are nothing to sneeze at, and so people push as hard as they can to move up the ladder. 

But cheating at the rankings also imprints a school’s students and graduates. The same administration that is stressing adherence to an honor code and the importance of professionalism and ethics may be the one “construing” its answers and developing very delicate loopholes. Bad LSATs? Move those students to the part-time program! Part-time program LSATs now being counted in the rankings? Cut the entering class and admit lots of transfers! Placement low? Hire graduates as research assistants, unless they’re not good enough to do that type of work (in which case, hire them to do filing)!

Don’t think that deans aren’t aware of these options. We are. Then we wrestle with our “blush factor”: which decisions are legitimate “lawyering” decisions (what we’re teaching our students to do), and which ones are desperate attempts to keep from sliding a tier down? Everyone reaches a different blush-factor decision. I’ve made my peace with mine.

• Wall Street Journal, Law Schools and the ‘Enron Way’

2013 Undergraduate Business School (and Accounting) Rankings

Bloomberg Businessweek: Best Undergraduate Business Schools 2013:

To identify the top undergraduate business programs among .. 124 programs, Bloomberg Businessweek uses a methodology that has not changed very much from our first ranking in 2006. It includes nine measures of student satisfaction, post-graduation outcomes, and academic quality (methodology here). Here are the Top 10:

1. Notre Dame
2. Virginia
3. Cornell
4. Washington (St. Louis)
5. Pennsylvania
6. Boston College
7. Emory
8. Michigan
9. Texas
10. North Carolina

Bloomberg Businessweek:  The Best Undergraduate B-Schools for Accounting:

Today we look at accounting, the area of focus for nearly a quarter of all undergraduate business students. The ranking is based on student responses to the question asking them to rank their program’s accounting offerings. Points are awarded for each response—one point for an “A” grade through five points for a grade of “F”—and averaged for each school. The ranking is based on the average; schools with the lowest average are ranked the highest. If a student did not have exposure to the area in question, they could answer NA, and their response was not included. The average accounting score for all 124 undergraduate business schools in the ranking was 1.37. At the top of the list is BYU, with a score of 1.067. 

1. BYU
2. Notre Dame
3. UC-Berkeley
4. Cornell
5. Illinois
6. Tulsa
7. Richmond
8. SMU
9. Wake Forest
10. Tulane

NLJ: Which Law Schools Are Tops for Jobs?

National Law Journal:  Which Law Schools Are Tops for Jobs?:

During the past two years, the ABA has significantly increased the amount and detail of information it requires law schools to report about job placement. It also has worked to get the information to the public much faster — the better to guide law school applicants. The organization breaks down the types of jobs graduates have landed and whether they are full-time, long-term or short-term positions, and identifies the three states where graduates of each law school were most likely to find work. The key takeaway is that the job market for new lawyers improved not much at all in 2012.

Read This If You Want a Legal Job
George Washington sent nearly 23% its class of 2012 into jobs paid for by the school itself. Rutgers–Camden sent the largest percentage of its class to state court clerkships. Those are among the thousands of nuggets of information contained in a data trove released recently by the ABA.

Where the Jobs Are
These 20 law schools placed the highest percentage of their 2012 graduates in full-time, long-term jobs that require bar passage.

Large-Firm Jobs
Want to work in Big Law? These law schools sent the highest percentages of their class of 2012 into permanent, full-time jobs at law firms of 100 or more lawyers.

Unemployed
These law schools had the highest percentage of their class of 2012 who were seeking jobs but had not secured any employment nine months after graduation.

Falling short of the Dream
Unemployment figures alone don’t offer a complete picture of law grads struggling the most on the job market because they exclude graduates in temporary or part-time work, or graduates in nonprofessional jobs.

School-Funded Jobs
These law schools had the highest percentage of 2012 graduates in jobs that were financed by the school itself.

Government and Public Interest
These law schools sent the highest percentage of their class of 2012 into either government jobs, such as prosecutors, or public interest jobs, such as public defenders or nonprofit attorneys.

Federal Clerkships
These schools sent the largest percentage of their class of 2012 into clerkships with federal judges.

State Clerkships
These schools sent the largest percentage of their class of 2012 into clerkships with state judges.

Jones: The U.S. News Law School Academic Reputation Scores, 1998-2013

Robert L. Jones (Northern Illinois) agreed to discuss his forthcoming article, A Longitudinal Analysis of the U.S. News Law School Academic Reputation Scores between 1998 and 2013, 40 Fla. St. L. Rev. ___ (2013):

Longitudinal Analysis summarizes the results of an empirical study of the U.S. News academic reputation scores (“peer assessment scores”) for the 172 law schools that received scores for each year between 1998 and 2013. The year 1998 was chosen as the start of the study because U.S. News adopted its current 1-5 scale for the scores in that year. All of the scores are catalogued in the appendices that appear at the end of the article.

When I began the study, I expected to find that the academic reputation scores had not moved appreciably over the last sixteen years. For the most part, the data confirmed this hypothesis. The average standard deviation for the 172 schools in the data set was only .074. The average range of movement for the schools was .248. On average, in other words, the law schools moved less than .3 (both up and down) for the entire sixteen year period. Approximately half of the law schools finished the sixteen year period with scores that were within .1 of the scores they originally possessed in 1998. The chart below helps to illustrate the stability of the scores.

In several important respects, however, the results of the study were quite surprising. While the overall lack of volatility for the scores was anticipated, the direction of the aggregate movement for the scores was not expected. Large amounts of resources have been expended over the last sixteen years in efforts to improve the scores. The academic enterprise itself, furthermore, would seem stronger today at law schools than it was two decades ago. Many faculties have grown in size as new academics with strong qualifications have been hired. Schools have devoted additional resources to facilitating scholarship and the exchange of ideas between individuals and institutions. Blogs such as these, and the SSRN network they often reference, are important examples of the ways in which scholarship is more widely distributed and discussed today than when the period began.

It was quite surprising, therefore, to discover that the majority of law schools had finished the sixteen year period with lower academic reputation scores. One hundred and eight law schools, 63% of the data set, finished 2013 with scores that were lower than the ones they possessed in 1998. Only thirty-three law schools (19% of the data set) were able to finish the period with higher academic reputation scores.  Only eighteen of these law schools, furthermore, managed to improve their scores by more than .1. A mere eight schools (a little less than 5%) succeeded in improving their scores by .3 or more. In contrast, seventy law schools saw their scores decline by .2 or more during the period. Twenty-seven law schools finished the period with academic reputation scores that were down by .3 or more. The chart below summarizes these results in a pie chart.

The data revealed, furthermore, that the downward trend in academic reputation scores has accelerated in recent years.  The year 2013 represented the largest annual decline to the academic reputation scores during the sixteen year period.  Ninety law schools in the data set (52%) suffered declines to their academic reputation scores in the results released a few weeks ago. In contrast, only ten law schools (6% of the data set) managed to improve their scores this year. The timeline below charts the aggregate movement for the academic reputation scores during the studied period. Among other things, the timeline demonstrates that the years between 2010 and 2013 constituted the worst three year period during the study.

Interestingly, the declines in academic reputation scores were in stark contrast to the substantial improvements that law schools enjoyed with respect to the reputation scores they received from lawyers and judges. The study revealed that 142 of the 172 law schools in the data set (83%) finished the period with higher lawyer/judge reputation scores. The improvements to these scores, furthermore, were often substantial. Eighty-three law schools (48% of data set) were able to improve their lawyer/judge reputation scores by .3 or more during the period. Only thirteen law schools (8%), furthermore, suffered declines to their lawyer/judge reputation scores during the period. In contrast, one hundred and eight law schools suffered declines to their academic reputation scores. Overall, the average change for the 172 law schools in the data set with respect to their lawyer/judge reputation scores was a gain of .256 for the period. The average change for these same law schools with respect to the academic reputation scores was a decline of .88. The following two charts demonstrate the disparity between the two types of reputation scores.

The improvements to the lawyer/judge reputation scores would seem consistent with the recent advances in legal academia and the large expenditures that have been devoted to improving reputation scores. Why, then, have the academic reputation scores declined so significantly over the last sixteen years? This author contends in the article that the declines reflect the influence of the U.S. News rankings themselves. The U.S. News rankings now exert an inordinate degree of influence in the world of legal education. The academics who fill out the surveys each year undoubtedly understand that their schools cannot improve in the rankings without a corresponding decline by their competitors. The zero sum nature of the rankings, therefore, provides academics with a powerful incentive to employ increasingly stringent standards in their evaluations of competing institutions. This is not to say that anyone has voted disingenuously in the rankings. It seems apparent, however, that the rankings themselves are exerting a significant influence on the way the academic reputation scores are now formulated.

The influence of strategic considerations on the voting process for the academic reputation scores constitutes a significant methodological problem for the rankings because such influences are fundamentally inapposite to the function of the scores as measures of performance. In fact, the data suggests that these influences have disproportionately impacted those schools that were perceived as the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the other schools. In the chart below, the 172 law schools in the data set were grouped according to the strength of their academic reputation scores at the beginning of the period. The chart demonstrates that there was an inverse correlation during the period between the strength of a law school’s academic reputation score at the start of the period and the ability of that school to maintain its academic reputation score during the course of the period. Law schools that began the period with the highest academic reputation scores suffered the worst declines as a group whereas the law schools that began the period with the lowest academic reputation scores enjoyed the most success as a group.

 

In light of these findings, the article calls into question whether the academic reputation scores are a valid basis for constructing a ranking methodology. At the very least, the article contends, the U.S. News methodology should be improved to address the distortions that have been introduced by these strategic considerations. To that end, the article proposes that academics should not be allowed to rank their own schools, that the highest and lowest scores received for each school should be excluded from the tabulations, that law school deans should not be included in the voting process, and that the voting process itself should be converted to an on-line system which includes information about each school in the survey. Note that two of these improvements have already been proposed by other scholars (Leiter and Seto) but the need for such changes is more pressing now that the data has revealed the extent to which strategic considerations appear to be affecting the voting process.

The reality is that most law schools will continue to devote significant resources to improving their academic reputation scores as long as the scores occupy a central place in the U.S. News ranking methodology. The study identifies, therefore, those law schools that have improved and declined the most during the course of the period and includes a brief analysis of some of the factors that likely contributed to the movements of the scores for these schools. Among other things, the data suggests that a number of the schools were subject to the “echo effect,” a phenomenon whereby a law school’s overall U.S. News rank tends to influence that school’s academic reputation score.

I hope the article proves useful for those who share an interest in improving legal education and the rankings process that impacts it now in so many ways.

The Most Underrated and Overrated Law Schools

J. Haskell Murray (Regent) passed along this spreadsheet which compares median LSAT and peer reputation in the 2014 U.S. News rankings:

The 20 Most Underrated Law Schools (Median LSAT > Peer Reputation):

Law School	Median LSAT Rank	Median LSAT	Peer Rep. Rank	Peer Rep. (1-5)	LSAT Rank - Peer Rank
Chapman	73	158	142	1.8	-69
Florida Int'l	97	156	158	1.6	-61
Regent	128	153	186	1.2	-58
Campbell	122	154	173	1.4	-51
Baylor	40	162	90	2.3	-50
Richmond	40	162	90	2.3	-50
Elon	113	155	151	1.7	-38
Texas Tech	97	156	130	1.9	-33
New Hampshire	97	156	130	1.9	-33
Drexel	88	157	118	2.0	-30
South Texas	128	153	158	1.6	-30
Western State	156	151	186	1.2	-30
Northeastern	51	161	80	2.4	-29
St. John's	73	158	102	2.2	-29
Whittier	156	151	181	1.3	-25
Penn State	66	159	90	2.3	-24
Samford	128	153	151	1.7	-23
Pepperdine	40	162	62	2.6	-22
Quinnipiac	97	156	118	2.0	-21
St. Louis	97	156	118	2.0	-21
McGeorge	97	156	118	2.0	-21
Tulsa	97	156	118	2.0	-21
Liberty	165	150	186	1.2	-21

The 20 Most Overrated Law Schools (Median LSAT < Peer Reputation)::

Law School	Median LSAT Rank	Median LSAT	Peer Rep. Rank	Peer Rep. (1-5)	LSAT Rank - Peer Rank
Miami	97	156	51	2.8	46
Howard	141	152	102	2.2	39
Arkansas-Little Rock	141	152	102	2.2	39
UMKC	141	152	102	2.2	39
Syracuse	128	153	90	2.3	38
Vermont	128	153	90	2.3	38
North Dakota	165	150	130	1.9	35
Marquette	113	155	80	2.4	33
Dayton	174	149	142	1.8	32
South Dakota	174	149	142	1.8	32
Valparaiso	174	149	142	1.8	32
Loyola-NO	141	152	110	2.1	31
Indiana-Ind.	97	156	68	2.5	29
New Mexico	97	156	68	2.5	29
Kansas	88	157	62	2.6	26
American	66	159	42	3.0	24
Albany	141	152	118	2.0	23
Creighton	141	152	118	2.0	23
Suffolk	141	152	118	2.0	23
Baltimore	141	152	118	2.0	23
Widener	165	150	142	1.8	23
Touro	181	148	158	1.6	23

Angie's Law School List

The AALS, ABA, and LSAC announced today that they have partnered with Angie's List to construct a new law school rankings based exclusively on student reviews -- Angie's Law School List.  Beginning in Fall 2013, LSAC will provide funding for Angie's List subscriptions to all law students, who will be asked to review all aspects of their law school experiences.  Angie's List will compile the reviews and create rankings of all 200 law schools. From a spokesperson:

"I realized the need for such a rankings system when I had to hire a plumber last month. Following the U.S. News law school rankings methodology, I tried to select a plumber based on educational qualifications, reputation among other plumbers, and expenditures on their businesses. Then it hit me:  I only cared about the reviews of plumbers submitted by their customers.  I consulted Angie's List and found a great plumber, and thought: why not do the same thing for law schools."

For more, see here.

Update #1:  The Volokh Conspiracy:  Watch Out U.S. News, Angie’s List to Rank Law Schools, by David Bernstein (George Mason):

I wonder how giving all law students free Angie’s List memberships will skew local reviews of other businesses. Nascent lawyers are known to be, shall we say, more combative than the average twenty-something. Meanwhile, Paul Campos complains that Angie’s List will only survey current students, excluding those who (a) either failed out after falling victim to the law school scam or dropped out after recognizing that their job prospects were nil; and (b) law students who are so discouraged by the debt they are taking on that they are too depressed to respond to surveys. Thus, he claims, the rankings will actually be skewed in favor of bad law schools who are responsible for (a) and (b). 

Update #2:  ABA Journal, Is Angie’s List Getting Into the Law School Ranking Business?

The 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Employment Data (Part II)

Following up on yesterday's post, my colleague Derek Muller (Pepperdine) has delved deeper into the employment data in the 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings and created more Top 10 lists:

• We Take Care of Our Own (Graduates employed in law school/university funded positions)
• We Take Care of Our Own, Full-Time, Long-Term (Graduates employed in law school/university funded positions, full-time, long-term)
• Big Law, More or Less (Number of graduates employed in law firm / total graduates * graduates employed in law firms consisting of more than 100 lawyers, full-time, long-term)
• Federal Clerks (Number of graduates employed in judicial clerkships / total graduates * graduates employed in federal judicial clerkships, full-time, long-term)
• Elite Outcomes (Combined “Big Law, More or Less” and “Federal Clerks” categories)
• We Hang Shingles (Number of graduates employed in law firm / total graduates * graduates employed as a solo practitioner, full-time, long-term)
• Good Enough for Government (Number of graduates employed / total graduates * graduates employed in government, full-time, long-term)
• Save the World (Number of graduates employed / total graduates * graduates employed in public interest including public defender, full-time, long-term)
• But I Want to Do International Law (Number of graduates employed / total graduates * graduates employed in foreign countries)
• Far and Wide (Number of states where graduates are employed)
• The White List (Schools that reported zero law school/university funded positions 9 months after graduation)

We Take Care of Our Own (Graduates employed in law school/university funded positions)

1. University of Notre Dame 22.6%
2. Boston University 20.9%
3. University of California—Los Angeles 18.6%
4. University of Virginia 17.0%
5. Phoenix School of Law 16.8%
6. Vanderbilt University 15.7%
7. George Washington University 15.6%
8. University of the Pacific 15.2%
9. Golden Gate University 14.1%
10. Florida Coastal School of Law 13.7%

We Take Care of Our Own, Full-Time, Long-Term (Graduates employed in law school/university funded positions, full-time, long-term)

1. University of Virginia 17.0%
2. George Washington University 15.4%
3. New York University 12.0%
4. University of Chicago 11.8%
5. Yale University 10.7%
6. University of Massachusetts—Dartmouth 5.9%
7. Harvard University 5.7%
8. Emory University 4.9%
9. University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign 4.2%
10. Georgetown University 3.0%

Big Law, More or Less (Number of graduates employed in law firm / total graduates * graduates employed in law firms consisting of more than 100 lawyers, full-time, long-term)

1. Columbia University 61.4%
2. University of Pennsylvania 58.0%
3. Northwestern University 53.3%
4. Stanford University 49.5%
5. Harvard University 48.7%
6. Duke University 45.0%
7. University of Chicago 44.9%
8. New York University 43.1%
9. University of California—Berkeley 41.6%
10. Cornell University 38.8%

Federal Clerks (Number of graduates employed in judicial clerkships / total graduates * graduates employed in federal judicial clerkships, full-time, long-term)

1. Yale University 33.2%
2. Stanford University 23.5%
3. Harvard University 16.3%
4. Duke University 11.1%
5. New York University 10.9%
6. University of Virginia 10.6%
7. University of Michigan—Ann Arbor 10.6%
8. Vanderbilt University 10.1%
9. University of California—Berkeley 9.7%
10. University of Chicago 9.4%

Elite Outcomes (Combined “Big Law, More or Less” and “Federal Clerks” categories)

1. Stanford University 72.9%
2. Columbia University 69.5%
3. University of Pennsylvania 67.1%
4. Yale University 66.4%
5. Harvard University 65.0%
6. Northwestern University 61.4%
7. Duke University 56.1%
8. University of Chicago 54.2%
9. New York University 54.1%
10. University of California—Berkeley 51.3%

We Hang Shingles (Number of graduates employed in law firm / total graduates * graduates employed as a solo practitioner, full-time, long-term)

1. Texas Southern University 18.4%
2. St. Mary’s University 11.7%
3. Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School 11.4%
4. Willamette University 10.9%
5. Mississippi College 9.1%
6. Texas Wesleyan University 9.0%
7. Southern Illinois University—Carbondale 8.2%
8. Oklahoma City University 8.0%
9. North Carolina Central University 7.7%
10. Thomas M. Cooley Law School 7.6%

Good Enough for Government (Number of graduates employed / total graduates * graduates employed in government, full-time, long-term)

1. Catholic University of America 21.8%
1. George Mason University 21.8%
3. University of Louisville 19.7%
4. Florida State University 19.3%
5. College of William & Mary 18.1%
6. University of Akron 17.2%
7. George Washington University 16.8%
8. University of New Mexico 16.5%
9. Howard University 15.9%
10. University of Iowa 15.3%
10. University of Oklahoma 15.3%

Save the World (Number of graduates employed / total graduates * graduates employed in public interest including public defender, full-time, long-term)

1. New York University 17.1%
1. CUNY 17.1%
3. University of Chicago 15.3%
3. Northeastern University 15.3%
5. University of Wisconsin—Madison 12.6%
6. Yale University 11.2% 6. University of Virginia 11.2%
8. University of California—Berkeley 10.9%
9. University of Michigan—Ann Arbor 10.5%
10. University of Arizona 9.5%

But I Want to Do International Law (Number of graduates employed / total graduates * graduates employed in foreign countries)

1. University of Detroit Mercy 18.2%
2. Washington University in St. Louis 6.6%
3. Yale University 5.9%
4. Michigan State University 5.7%
5. Cornell University 5.4%
6. Columbia University 5.1%
7. University of North Dakota 4.9%
8. University of Chicago 3.9%
8. Duke University 3.9%
8. University of Washington 3.9%

Far and Wide (Number of states where graduates are employed)

1. Harvard University 42
2. Thomas M. Cooley Law School 41
3. University of Virginia 37
4. Vanderbilt University 36
5. Georgetown University 35
6. Washington University in St. Louis 34
6. Vermont Law School 34
8. University of Michigan—Ann Arbor 33
9. Yale University 32
9. University of Notre Dame 32

The White List (Schools that reported zero law school/university funded positions 9 months after graduation)

Appalachian School of Law
Ave Maria School of Law
Barry University
Campbell University
Catholic University of America
Cleveland State University
College of William & Mary
Drake University
Elon University
Faulkner University
Florida A&M University
Georgia State University
Gonzaga University
Hamline University
Howard University
Indiana University—Indianapolis
Louisiana State University—Baton Rouge
Marquette University
North Carolina Central University
Nova Southeastern University
Ohio Northern University
Oklahoma City University
Roger Williams University
Samford University
Southwestern Law School
Syracuse University
Texas Wesleyan University
Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Touro College
University of Akron
University of Alabama
University of Arizona
University of Arkansas—Little Rock
University of Dayton
University of Detroit Mercy
University of Hawaii
University of Idaho
University of Kentucky
University of Maine
University of Montana
University of Nevada—Las Vegas
University of New Mexico
University of Pittsburgh University of Richmond
University of South Dakota
University of St. Thomas
University of Tennessee—Knoxville
University of the District of Columbia
Valparaiso University
Vermont Law School
Washburn University
Western New England University
Western State College of Law
Widener University

Update:

• ABA Journal, Want to Go to a ‘Real Lawyers’ Law School? Consider Louisiana State
• American Lawyer, Top 10 Law Schools for Elitists, Bleeding Hearts, MIAs, and the Despondent

ATL Survey: A Better Law School Rankings System

Above the Law:  What Would a More Relevant Law School Ranking Look Like? You Told Us:

Last week, we asked for your thoughts on what an improved, more relevant approach to law school rankings would look like. This request was of course prompted by U.S. News’s revisions to its rankings methodology, which now applies different weights to different employment outcomes, giving full credit only to full-time jobs where “bar passage is required or a J.D. gives them an advantage.” ... [A]bout 500 of you weighed in with your opinions on which criteria should matter and which should not when it comes to ranking law schools:

The 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Employment Data

Derek Muller (Pepperdine) has mined the employment data in the 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings and created these Top 10 lists:

• Real Lawyers (Required bar passage, full-time, long-term)
• “Advantaged” Non-Lawyers (JD advantage, full-time, long-term)
• The Professionals (Professional, full-time, long-term)
• Career Baristas (Non-professional, full-time, long-term)
• The Temps (any employed position that’s part-time, short-term, or both)
• Giving Up (unemployed, not seeking)
• More Debt, Please (graduates pursuing a graduate degree full-time)
• Return to Sender (employment status unknown)

Real Lawyers (Required bar passage, full-time, long-term):

1. University of Virginia 94.7%
2. Columbia University 94.1%
3. Stanford University 90.6%
4. Harvard University 90.1%
4. New York University 90.1%
6. University of Chicago 88.2%
7. Yale University 87.8%
8. University of Pennsylvania 84.7%
9. Duke University 82.1%
10. George Washington University 81.3%
10. Louisiana State University 81.3%

“Advantaged” Non-Lawyers (JD advantage, full-time, long-term):

1. Catholic University of America 23.0%
2. University of Massachusetts—Dartmouth 21.6%
3. Northern Kentucky University 21.2%
4. University of Louisville 19.7%
5. Hamline University 19.0%
6. George Mason University 18.2%
7. Southwestern Law School 17.8%
8. Phoenix School of Law 17.6%
9. University of Richmond 17.5%
10. Michigan State University 15.9%

The Professionals (Professional, full-time, long-term):

1. University of North Dakota 13.6%
2. University of New Mexico 11.7%
3. William Mitchell College of Law 11.3%
4. Florida A&M University 11.2%
5. Phoenix School of Law 10.7%
6. North Carolina Central University 10.6%
7. Rutgers Newark 10.5%
8. Indiana University—Indianapolis 10.3%
9. Western State College of Law 10.0%
10. Southern University Law Center 9.8%

Career Baristas (Non-professional, full-time, long-term):*

1. University of Akron 7.8%
2. University of North Dakota 6.2%
3. University of Nevada—Las Vegas 4.7%
4. Northern Illinoi University 4.1%
5. University of Massachusetts—Dartmouth 3.9%
5. Willamette University 3.9%
7. Duquesne University 3.4%
7. University of Arkansas—Fayetteville 3.4%
9. Western State College of Law 3.3%
9. Western New England University 3.3%

* Caution is in order for any ordinal ranking, but in a category like this, where the percentages are low, small numbers may appear large. For instance, the University of Akron has just 9 graduates in this category but ranks first; the University of North Dakota, just 5 graduates but ranks second; the University of Nevada—Las Vegas, just 6 graduates, but ranks third.

The Temps (any employed position that’s part-time, short-term, or both):

1. Florida Coastal School of Law 32.8%
2. Golden Gate University 32.3%
3. Pennsylvania State University 31.2%
4. University of New Hampshire 30.7%
5. Brigham Young University 30.6%
6. University of the Pacific 30.4%
6. Northeastern University 30.4%
8. University of California—Davis 29.7%
9. Phoenix School of Law 28.4%
10. University of San Francisco 28.2%

Giving Up (unemployed, not seeking):

1. Santa Clara University 15.9%
2. Willamette University 11.6%
3. University of the District of Columbia 11.5%
4. Chapman University 11.3%
5. Charlotte School of Law 10.3%
6. Southwestern Law School 9.4%
7. University of Hawaii—Manoa 7.9%
8. Western State College of Law 7.8%
9. University of Washington 7.7%
10. Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School 6.8%

More Debt, Please (graduates pursuing a graduate degree full-time):

1. Gonzaga University 7.5%
2. Pennsylvania State University 7.3%
3. University of Mississippi 6.6%
4. Mercer University 6.2%
5. University of Arkansas—Fayetteville 6.0%
6. University of Montana 5.9%
6. Florida A&M University 5.9%
8. Golden Gate University 5.8%
9. American University 5.6%
10. University of South Dakota 5.5%

Return to Sender (employment status unknown):

1. Capital University 28.6%
2. Florida A&M University 27.6%
3. Thomas M. Cooley Law School 26.3%
4. Appalachian School of Law 23.9%
5. University of Memphis 15.5%
6. Texas Wesleyan University 15.2%
7. Southern Illinois University—Carbondale 13.6%
8. University of Mississippi 12.6%
9. Ave Maria School of Law 12.5%
10. Roger Williams University 12.0%

Update:

• ABA Journal, Want to Go to a ‘Real Lawyers’ Law School? Consider Louisiana State
• Above the Law, Which Law Schools Employed the Most Graduates as Real Lawyers Versus Real Baristas?
• American Lawyer, Top 10 Law Schools for Elitists, Bleeding Hearts, MIAs, and the Despondent
• TaxProf Blog, The 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Employment Data (Part II)
• UNLV Law Blog, Rankings Study with Very Small Sample Size Acknowledges Problems

U.S. News Rankings: Law v. Undergrad

Following up on my 2007 posts, Dave Hoffman (Temple) blogs the law schools with the biggest spread in the U.S. News rankings compared to their parent university.

The five law schools that are ranked highest compared to their parent university are:

1. Houston (Law School #48, University #184)
2. New Mexico (#48, #179)
3. Arizona State (#29, #139 )
4. George Mason (#41, #139 )
5. Louisville (#68, #160)

The five law schools that are ranked lowest compared to their parent university are:

1. Drexel (Law School #126, University #83)
2. San Francisco (#144, #106)
3. Syracuse (#96, #58)
4. Pittsburgh (#91, #58 )
5. Miami (#76, #44)

Law Professor Download Rankings

Following up on my monthly SSRN Tax Professor Download Rankings:  Larry Cunningham (George Washington) blogs the Top 50 Law Professors and the Top 25 Corporate Law Professors by all-time SSRN downloads.  Here are the Top 10 of each:

	Top 10 Law Professors
Rank	Professor	Downloads
1	Lucian Bebchuk (Harvard)	190.698
2	Daniel Solove (G. Washington)	173,999
3	Bernard Black (Northwestern)	135,130
4	Cass Sunstein (Harvard)	134,109
5	Mark Lemley (Stanford)	125,150
6	Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA)	92,448
7	William Landes (Chicago)	76,844
8	Brian Leiter (Chicago)	75,362
9	Eric Posner (Chicago)	73,136
10	Orin Kerr (G. Washington)	64,538

 

	Top 10 Corporate Law Professors
Rank	Professor	Downloads
1	Lucian Bebchuk (Harvard)	190.698
2	Bernard Black (Northwestern)	135,130
3	Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA)	92,448
4	John Coffee (Columbia)	62,631
5	Reinier Kraakman (Harvard)	53,194
6	Partnoy, Frank (San Diego)	52,038
7	Ronald Gilson (Columbia/Stanford)	49,677
8	Steven Schwarcz (Duke)	48,356
9	Mitu Gulati (Duke)	45,635
10	Allen Ferrell (Harvard)	41,830

Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan) is the only tax professor on the list of the Top 50 Law Professors -- he is #44.

Publication Study of Faculty at Non-Top 50 Law Schools

Roger Williams University School of Law has updated its per capita publication study of the faculties at "'non-elite' law schools" -- those schools ranked outside the 2013 U.S. News Top 50. The study covers the 1993-2012 period and uses methodology developed by Brian Leiter, with one change: although Brian focused exclusively on the Top 20 journals, this study examines the Top 50 journals, defined as the general law reviews published by the 54 schools receiving the highest U.S. News peer assessment scores (2.8 or higher) in the 2008 U.S. News rankings, plus an additional 13 journals that appeared in the Top 50 of the Washington & Lee Law Journal Combined Rankings in 2007. (See here for an alphabetical listing of those journals.)

Roger Williams ranks the Top 40 Non-Top 50 law schools. Here are the Top 25:

1	Cardozo	13.18
2	Florida State	12.69
3	U. St. Thomas (MN)	11.65
4	Case Western	11.39
5	San Diego	11.30
6	Richmond	11.23
7	Brooklyn	10.16
8	Missouri-Columbia	9.44
9	Chicago-Kent	8.70
10	Cincinnati	8.57
11	Hofstra	7.88
12	Seattle	7.87
13	Houston	7.70
14	DePaul	7.64
15	Temple	7.20
16	Roger Williams	6.96
17	Tulane	6.72
18	Seton Hall	6.69
18	Tennessee	6.69
18	UNLV	6.69
21	Pittsburgh	6.61
22	Rutgers-Camden	6.51
23	Loyola-Chicago	6.46
24	Loyola-L.A.	5.99
25	Miami	5.98

The Roger Williams study does not individually rank the 86 non-U.S. News Top 50 law schools that did not place in the Top 40 of the productivity study. They instead are listed in two bands:

• 41-80
• 81-126

(Hat Tip: Francine Lipman.)  Prior years' faculty productivity studies:

• 2012 Rankings
• 2011 Rankings
• 2010 Rankings
• 2008 Rankings
• 2007 Rankings

Sign of the Times: Schools Hire $100,000/Year Rankings Managers

Inside Higher Ed:  Universities Hire Rankings Pros:

Some Australian universities are paying about $100,000 a year each to employ full-time managers dedicated to working with ranking agencies and developing strategies aimed at climbing league tables.

The University of New South Wales recently advertised for a manager of strategic reputation, while La Trobe University was seeking a manager of institutional rankings. For $100,000, responsibilities included maintaining relationships with ranking agencies to "maximize" or "optimize" their positions in rankings.

U.S. News: The 10 Most Popular Law Schools

U.S. News & World Report:  10 Most Popular Law Schools:

Below are the 10 ranked law schools with the highest yield rates.

Rank	School	Acceptances	Enrollment	Yield	US News Rank
1	Yale	245	203	82.9%	1
2	BYU	218	140	64.2%	44
3	Harvard	865	555	64.2%	2
4	UNLV	260	139	53.5%	68
5	New Mexico	233	114	48.9%	64
6	North Carolina Central	514	248	48.2%	RNP
7	Southern	564	268	47.5%	RNP
8	Stanford	384	180	46.9%	2
9	Liberty	183	83	45.4%	RNP
10	Hawaii	225	102	45.3%	80

Law School Rankings by Salary of Recent Graduates

Forbes:  The Law Schools Whose Grads Earn The Biggest Paychecks:

Forbes turned to Payscale.com to find the law schools whose graduates make the most in the early stages of their career. ... Payscale combed through the profiles of its 35 million unique users who supply compensation information on its website to find which law school grads make the most. They looked at starting salaries of graduates from 98 popular law schools and found roughly 31,000 of them in their database who had reported salary information, including 9,100 working in the private sector with less than five years of experience. ...

The salaries below from Payscale are current median salaries (as of the first quarter of 2013) for recent law school graduates who in almost all cases finished law school within the last five years. The median work experience for this group is two years, and their median age is 29.

Forbes Rank	US News Rank	Law School	Recent Grads' Salary
1	4	Columbia	$165,000
2	2	Stanford	$147,000
3	4	Chicago	$132,000
4	2	Harvard	$130,000
5	7	Virginia	$109,000
6	11	Duke	$104,000
7	6	NYU	$104,000
8	14	Georgetown	$103,000
9	1	Yale	$102,000
10	9	Michigan	$101,000
11	12	Northwestern	$98,600
12	9	UC-Berkeley	$97,900
13	7	Pennsylvania	$90,900
14	13	Cornell	$90,000
15	18	USC	$89,800
16	17	UCLA	$89,200
17	15	Texas	$88,100
18	38	Fordham	$84,500
19	41	Utah	$84,100
20	48	UC-Hastings	$83,700
21	144	San Francisco	$81,600
22	80	Catholic	$81,500
23	96	Santa Clara	$80,700
24	68	San Diego	$79,800
25	48	Houston	$79,400

(Hat Tip:  Above the Law.)

Jones: The U.S. News Law School Academic Reputation Scores, 1998-2012

Robert L. Jones (Northern Illinois), A Longitudinal Analysis of the U.S. News Law School Academic Reputation Scores between 1998 and 2012, 40 Fla. St. L. Rev. ___ (2013):

This article summarizes the results of a longitudinal study of the U.S. News academic reputation scores between 1998 to 2012. Among other things, the study reveals that there has been a downward trend in the academic reputation scores of law schools since 1998. While the academic reputation scores tended to be relatively stable throughout the fifteen year period, a full half of the law schools in the data set finished the fifteen year period with an academic reputation score that was lower than the one with which they began in 1998. In contrast, less than one quarter of the law schools in the data set managed to finish the period with an academic reputation score that was higher (even by .1) than the one with which they began in 1998. One of the most interesting findings of the study, furthermore, is the fact that the declines in academic reputation scores were inversely correlated to the strength of the schools’ academic reputation scores and U.S. News ranks. The schools that started the period with the highest ranks and academic reputation scores posted the largest declines as a group while the law schools with the lowest ranks and academic reputation scores experienced the most success in improving their scores. The study also revealed a disparity between public and private law schools in terms of their abilities to positively impact their academic reputation scores during the period.

As part of the study, furthermore, the law school academic reputation scores were analyzed to determine whether there has been an "echo effect" between the law schools’ academic reputation scores and their overall U.S. News ranks. The empirical analysis suggests that a law school’s U.S. News rank does tend to influence its academic reputation score, particularly in instances where a law school is consistently "under" or "over" ranked relative to its academic reputation score. The article concludes with an identification of those law schools whose academic reputation scores have improved or declined the most during the fifteen year period, along with a brief discussion of some potential causes for those changes.

Undoubtedly there are a number of other ways in which a school’s administration can, at least under certain circumstances, significantly influence their school’s academic reputation scores. It is quite possible, for example, that Pepperdine’s substantial gains over the period (a rise of .4) could in some ways be related to the notoriety of their dean (Ken Starr). Chart M plots Pepperdine’s academic reputation scores with the timing of Starr’s arrival and departure at the school.

• 2014 U.S. News Peer Reputation Rankings (v. Overall Rankings)

(Hat Tip: Brian Leiter, Derek Muller.)

New 2014 U.S. News Tax Rankings

Here are the new 2014 U.S. News Tax Rankings, along with last year's rankings:

2014 Rank	Tax Program	2013 Rank
1	NYU	1
2	Georgetown	3
3	Florida	2
4	Northwestern	4
5	Miami	9
5	USC	12
7	Boston University	6
7	Loyola-L.A.	10
7	Virginia	6
10	UCLA	6
10	U. Washington	n/r
12	Harvard	5
13	Columbia	12
14	Michigan	11
14	San Diego	14
16	Boston College	14
17	UC-Hastings	n/r
18	Houston	n/r
n/r	Texas	14
n/r	Pennsylvania	17
n/r	Stanford	17
n/r	Villanova	17
n/r	Chicago	20
n/r	Denver	21
n/r	Indiana	21
n/r	Duke	23
n/r	Florida State	23

The biggest movers are:

• +7:  USC (#5)
• +4   Miami (#5)
• +3:  Loyola-L.A. (#7)
• -7:   Harvard (#17)
• -4:   UCLA (#10)  
• -3:   Michigan (#14)

Washington (#10), UC-Hastings (#17), and Houston (#18) were unraked last year and are ranked this year. Texas (#14), Pennsylvania (#17), Stanford (#17), Villanova (#17), Chicago (#20), Denver #21), Indiana (#21), Duke (#23), and Florida State (#23) were ranked last year and are unranked this year.

Here are the rankings of the graduate tax programs, along with last year's rankings.

2014 Rank	Grad Tax Program	2013 Rank
1	NYU	1
2	Georgetown	3
3	Florida	2
4	Northwestern	4
5	Miami	6
6	Boston University	5
7	Loyola-L.A.	7
8	U. Washington	n/r
9	San Diego	8
10	Houston	n/r
n/r	Villanova	9
n/r	Denver	10

Washington (#8) and Houston (#10) were unranked last year and are ranked this year. Villanova (#9) and Denver (#10) were ranked last year and are unranked this year.

For the 2008-2011 U.S. News tax rankings, see here.

The U.S. News tax survey instrument states that it is intended "to identify the law schools having the top programs in tax law." The survey is sent "to a sample of law school faculty listed in the AALS Directory of Law Teachers 2009-2010 as currently teaching a course or seminar in tax law." Recipients are asked "to [i]dentify up to fifteen (15) schools that have the highest-quality tax law courses or programs. In making your choices consider all elements that contribute to a program's excellence, for example, the depth and breadth of the program, faculty research and publication record, etc."

As Donald Tobin (Ohio State) has noted, it is more than strange that NYU has finished ahead of Florida and Georgetown each year that U.S. News has conducted the survey.  Because the survey ranks the schools by how often they appear on the respondents' "Top 15" lists, this means that some folks list NYU, but not Florida and Georgetown, among the Top 15 tax programs.

For more on tax rankings, see our article, Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Where?, which compiles information about 13 highly ranked tax LLM programs: (1) NYU; (2) Florida; (3) Georgetown; (4) Northwestern; (5) Miami; (6) Boston University; (7) San Diego; (8) Loyola-L.A./LMU; (9) SMU; (10) Denver; (11) University of Washington; (12) Villanova; and (13) Chapman. The topics on which information is reported in the Article include: (1) tuition; (2) scholarships; (3) the full-time tax professors who teach in each program and the tax courses they teach; (4) the number of full-time and part-time students enrolled in each program; (5) general information about adjunct professors teaching in each program; (6) required courses; (7) elective courses, specialty certificates, and concentrations; (8) opportunities to develop tax practice skills by taking experiential learning courses and simulated practice courses; (9) extracurricular tax activities; (10) opportunities to graduate with honors or receive academic prizes; and (11) career planning and placement services offered to students in each program. The article also ranks the tax faculty at these thirteen law schools by citations (the Top 5 are NYU (1), Florida (2), Georgetown (3), Miami (4), and Northwestern (5)) and SSRN downloads (the Top 5 are Loyola-L.A. (1), NYU (2), Chapman (3), Florida (4), and San Diego (5)).

Other resources available on TaxProf Blog include:

• Links to All 32 Graduate Tax Programs
• Tax Faculty Rankings
• Graduate Tax Faculty Rankings
• Tax Professor Rankings
• Tax Faculty Metropolitan Area Rankings
• Links to Tax Colloquia Workshop Series (left column of the blog)

2014 U.S. News Peer Reputation Rankings (v. Overall Rankings)

Continuing a TaxProf Blog tradition (see links below for 2009-2013), here is the full list of the 194 law schools ranked by academic peer reputation, as well as their overall rank, in the new 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings (methodology here):

Peer Rank	Peer Score	School	Overall Rank
1	4.8	Yale	1
1	4.8	Harvard	2
1	4.8	Stanford	2
4	4.6	Columbia	4
4	4.6	Chicago	4
6	4.4	NYU	6
6	4.4	Virginia	7
6	4.4	UC-Berkeley	9
6	4.4	Michigan	9
10	4.3	Penn	7
11	4.2	Duke	11
11	4.2	Cornell	13
13	4.1	Northwestern	12
13	4.1	Georgetown	14
13	4.1	Texas	15
16	3.9	UCLA	17
17	3.8	Vanderbilt	15
18	3.6	USC	18
18	3.6	Washington University	19
20	3.5	Minnesota	19
20	3.5	Emory	23
20	3.5	North Carolina	31
23	3.4	George Washington	21
23	3.4	Notre Dame	23
23	3.4	Boston University	29
23	3.4	Wisconsin	33
23	3.4	UC-Davis	38
28	3.3	Indiana-Bloomington	25
28	3.3	Iowa	26
28	3.3	Washington & Lee	26
28	3.3	Boston College	31
32	3.2	William & Mary	33
32	3.2	Ohio State	36
32	3.2	Fordham	38
32	3.2	UC-Hastings	48
36	3.1	University of  Washington	28
36	3.1	Georgia	33
36	3.1	Wake Forest	36
36	3.1	Colorado	44
36	3.1	Florida	46
36	3.1	Illinois	47
42	3.0	Alabama	21
42	3.0	Arizona State	29
42	3.0	Arizona	38
42	3.0	Maryland	41
42	3.0	Tulane	48
42	3.0	American	56
48	2.9	Utah	41
48	2.9	BYU	44
48	2.9	Florida State	48
51	2.8	Connecticut	58
51	2.8	Cardozo	58
51	2.8	Miami	76
51	2.8	Oregon	94
55	2.7	George Mason	41
55	2.7	Temple	56
55	2.7	Denver	64
55	2.7	Case Western	68
55	2.7	Loyola-L.A.	68
55	2.7	San Diego	68
55	2.7	Pittsburgh	91
62	2.6	Houston	48
62	2.6	Pepperdine	61
62	2.6	Tennessee	61
62	2.6	Brooklyn	80
62	2.6	Cincinnati	80
62	2.6	Kansas	86
62	2.6	Santa Clara	96
69	2.5	SMU	48
69	2.5	Georgia State	54
69	2.5	Kentucky	58
69	2.5	New Mexico	64
69	2.5	Chicago-Kent	68
69	2.5	Loyola-Chicago	76
69	2.5	Missouri-Columbia	76
69	2.5	Hawaii	80
69	2.5	Lewis & Clark	80
69	2.5	Rutgers-Newark	86
69	2.5	Indiana-Indianapolis	98
80	2.4	Nebraska	61
80	2.4	Seton Hall	64
80	2.4	Oklahoma	68
80	2.4	UNLV	68
80	2.4	Catholic	80
80	2.4	Northeastern	86
80	2.4	SUNY-Buffalo	86
80	2.4	Rutgers-Camden	91
80	2.4	Marquette	94
80	2.4	Seattle	102
90	2.3	Richmond	53
90	2.3	Baylor	54
90	2.3	Penn State	64
90	2.3	Arkansas-Fayetteville	68
90	2.3	LSU	76
90	2.3	Michigan State	80
90	2.3	Syracuse	96
90	2.3	South Carolina	98
90	2.3	Villanova	98
90	2.3	DePaul	109
90	2.3	Hofstra	113
101	2.2	Louisville	68
101	2.2	St. John's	98
101	2.2	University of Mississippi	102
101	2.2	Missouri-Kansas City	109
101	2.2	Gonzaga	113
101	2.2	Arkansas-Little Rock	113
101	2.2	Howard	126
101	2.2	Maine	134
109	2.1	West Virginia	91
109	2.1	Mercer	105
109	2.1	Wayne State	105
109	2.1	Stetson	109
109	2.1	Wyoming	113
109	2.1	Loyola-New Orleans	126
109	2.1	CUNY	132
109	2.1	Idaho	134
109	2.1	San Francisco	144
118	2.0	Tulsa	86
118	2.0	St. Louis	102
118	2.0	Montana	113
118	2.0	Creighton	119
118	2.0	McGeorge	124
118	2.0	Drexel	126
118	2.0	Albany	132
118	2.0	Quinnipiac	134
118	2.0	Baltimore	134
118	2.0	Suffolk	144
118	2.0	Southwestern
118	2.0	Willamette
130	1.9	Texas Tech	105
130	1.9	Drake	109
130	1.9	Cleveland State	119
130	1.9	Akron	119
130	1.9	New Hampshire	119
130	1.9	Vermont	119
130	1.9	University of St. Thomas	124
130	1.9	Hamline	126
130	1.9	Pace	134
130	1.9	North Dakota	140
130	1.9	Washburn	140
130	1.9	New York Law School
130	1.9	Toledo
143	1.8	Chapman	126
143	1.8	William Mitchell	134
143	1.8	Southern Illinois	140
143	1.8	Duquesne	144
143	1.8	Memphis	144
143	1.8	Dayton
143	1.8	South Dakota
143	1.8	Valparaiso
143	1.8	Widener
152	1.7	Samford	113
152	1.7	Elon
152	1.7	Golden Gate
152	1.7	John Marshall (Chicago)
152	1.7	Northern Illinois
152	1.7	Roger Williams
152	1.7	Texas Wesleyan
159	1.6	Florida International	105
159	1.6	St. Mary's	140
159	1.6	South Texas	144
159	1.6	California-Western
159	1.6	Capital
159	1.6	Mississippi College
159	1.6	New England
159	1.6	Northern Kentucky
159	1.6	Nova
159	1.6	Ohio Northern
159	1.6	Oklahoma City
159	1.6	Touro
171	1.5	North Carolina Central
171	1.5	Texas Southern
171	1.5	W. New England
174	1.4	Campbell	126
174	1.4	John Marshall (Atlanta)
174	1.4	Charleston
174	1.4	Southern
174	1.4	St. Thomas University
174	1.4	Thomas Jefferson
174	1.4	Detroit Mercy
174	1.4	District of Columbia
182	1.3	Appalachian
182	1.3	Faulkner
182	1.3	Florida A&M
182	1.3	Florida Coastal
182	1.3	Whittier
187	1.2	Barry
187	1.2	Charlotte
187	1.2	Liberty
187	1.2	Regent
187	1.2	Thomas Cooley
187	1.2	Western State
193	1.1	Ave Maria
193	1.1	Phoenix

Prior years' rankings:

• 2013 U.S. News Peer Reputation Rankings (v. Overall Rankings)
• 2012 U.S. News Peer Reputation Rankings (v. Overall Rankings)
• 2011 U.S. News Peer Reputation Rankings (v. Overall Rankings)
• 2010 U.S. News Peer Reputation Rankings (v. Overall Rankings)
• 2009 U.S. News Peer Reputation Rankings (v. Overall Rankings)

Bloomberg Law:  New Data "Unmasks" Schools, Says US News Law School Rankings Czar:

Law schools ranked by US News & World Report magazine in the 50 to 150 range were the ones most affected by the availability this year, for the first time, of more detailed graduate employment data from the ABA, according to US News rankings czar Bob Morse.

The new data "unmasked" that some of those schools had a relatively small number of their students taking full-time long-term jobs that require a JD, Morse tells Bloomberg Law's Lee Pacchia.

Many schools on the east and west coasts also saw drops in their rankings as a result of the new data, Morse said. University of San Francisco School of Law had this year's biggest drop, declining 38 places on the rankings, coming in dead last at 144 on the list.

At the top of the list, Yale continued to claim the #1 spot, with Harvard inching up one slot to tie with Stanford at #2.

Turning to last month's controversial National Jurist magazine ranking of schools, which was meant to provide an alternative to US News' list, Morse says "welcome to the world of law school rankings, and the world of being criticized for your methodology."

As for the power of US News' rankings, which some deans blame for legal education's woes, Morse says, "US News isn't the ABA . . . We're not responsible for the cost law school, the state of legal employment, the impact that the recession has had on hiring, or the fact that there are 10 or 20 new law schools that have opened over the past couple of decades. And we're not responsible for the imbalance of jobs to graduates."

 

Update #1:

• ABA Journal, US News Rankings Change With Better Jobs Data; Which Law Schools Are Now Unranked?
• Above the Law, The 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings
• Above the Law, Brain Drain From Top-50 Law Schools
• Business Insider, Why the New US News Law School Rankings Are Still Deeply Flawed
• Constitutional Daily, The Great Law School Brain Drain
• Mett Leichter, The ‘Law School Rankings’ Are NOT Influential
• Deborah Jones Merritt (Ohio State), US News and Employment Outcomes
• National Law Journal, Major Shakeups in the Middle Ranks of 'U.S. News' Law School List

Update #2:  Chirstopher Zorn (Penn State) compiles the data in scatterplot form.

Update #3:  David Bernstein (George Mason), Comparing U.S. News Faculty Reputation Rank with “Scholarly Impact”:

Below I’ve created a table listing the top fifty-five law schools according to their “peer” ranking on U.S. News, with the last column showing each school’s ranking according to the latest “scholarly impact” study conducted by folks at St. Thomas Law School. Two schools stand out as being wildly underranked by their peers compared to their scholarly impact: George Mason, ranked 55 by peers but 21 by scholarly impact, and Cardozo, ranked 51 by peers and 25 by scholarly impact.  In fact, no other schools ranked as well as Cardozo and George Mason in scholarly impact ranked lower than 23rd in the U.S. News peer rankings.

The most overranked school by these measures is Wisconsin, which is ranked 23 by peers but is not in the top 55 by scholarly impact.  (St. Thomas, by the way, is well out of the top 55 by peer ranking, but is number 31 in scholarly impact.)

U.S. News College Rankings: Peer v. Overall

Robert Morse (Director of Data Research, U.S. News), Which Universities Are Ranked Highest by College Officials?:

School	Overall Rank	Academic Peer Score	Academic Peer Rank
Harvard	1	4.9	1
MIT	6	4.9	1
Stanford	6	4.9	1
Princeton	1	4.8	4
Yale	3	4.8	4
UC-Berkeley	21	4.7	6
Columbia	4	4.6	7
Chicago	4	4.6	7
Caltech	10	4.6	7
Johns Hopkins	13	4.6	7
Cornell	15	4.6	7
Duke	8	4.5	12
Pennsylvania	8	4.4	13
Dartmouth	10	4.4	13
Northwestern	12	4.4	13
Brown	15	4.4	13
Michigan	29	4.4	13
Virginia	24	4.3	18
Carnegie Mellon	23	4.2	19
UCLA	24	4.2	19
North Carolina	30	4.2	19
Washington U.	14	4.1	22
Vanderbilt	17	4.1	22
Georgetown	21	4.1	22
Georgia Tech	36	4.1	22
Wisconsin	41	4.1	22
Texas	46	4.1	22

For the 2013 U.S. News law school academic peer reputation rankings and overall rankings, see here.

NLJ Releases School-by-School Data Behind its Rankings by BigLaw Jobs

The National Law Journal has released the data behind its Go-To Law Schools Rankings based on the percentage of graduates in BigLaw jobs:

For the first time ever, we are making all of the hiring data from our annual Go-To Law Schools special report available online. Search by law school (listed alphabetically by state) to find out which NLJ 250 firms hired their 2012 graduates. Search by firm to see where new associate hires were educated. And don’t miss the cost benefit analysis below.

See the complete Go-To Law Schools package for the ranking of our top 50 go-to schools, as well as schools ranked by firm favorites, tuition and associates promoted to partner, and a comparison to the U.S. News rankings.

Our rankings are based on survey responses from 190 of the largest 250 firms in the country by headcount, as well as additional data gathered from law firm websites. The full methodology is available here. Data was updated on Feb. 27.

Head-to-Head College Rankings: Harvard #1, Caltech #2, Yale #3

Christopher N. Avery (Harvard University, Kennedy School), Mark E. Glickman (Boston University, School of Public Health), Caroline M. Hoxby (Stanford University, Department of Economics) & Andrew Metrick (Yale University, School of Management), A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities:

We present a method of ranking U.S. undergraduate programs based on students’ revealed preferences. When a student chooses a college among those that have admitted him, that college “wins” his “tournament.” Our method efficiently integrates the information from thousands of such tournaments. We implement the method using data from a national sample of high-achieving students. We demonstrate that this ranking method has strong theoretical properties, eliminating incentives for colleges to adopt strategic, inefficient admissions policies to improve their rankings. We also show empirically that our ranking is (1) not vulnerable to strategic manipulation; (2) similar regardless of whether we control for variables, such as net cost, that vary among a college’s admits; (3) similar regardless of whether we account for students selecting where to apply, including Early Decision. We exemplify multiple rankings for different types of students who have preferences that vary systematically.

	Revealed Preference Rank
Harvard	1
Caltech	2
Yale	3
MIT	4
Stanford	5
Princeton	6
Brown	7
Columbia	8
Amherst	9
Dartmouth	10
Wellesley	11
Penn	12
Notre Dame	13
Swarthmore	14
Cornell	15
Georgetown	16
Rice	17
Williams	18
Duke	19
Virginia	20

(Hat Tip: Freakonomics.)

NLJ: Law School Rankings by Graduates in BigLaw Jobs

National Law Journal:  The Go-To Law Schools: A Special Report:

This annual special report focuses on what, for many law students, is the bottom line: ­whether they stand any chance in hell of landing a coveted ­associateship at a major law firm. We found that the picture was marginally brighter — but that isn’t saying much. 

The National Law Journal ranked the Top 50 law schools by the percentage of their 2012 graduates that found positions at NLJ Top 250 law firms.  Here are the Top 25:

1. Pennsylvania (60.4%)
2. Chicago (55.1%)
3. Columbia (53.1%)
4. NYU (52.9%)
5. Northwestern (51.4%)
6. Harvard (50.3%)
7. Duke (48.4%)
8. Stanford (47.3%)
9. UC-Berkeley (45.3%)
10. Cornell (44.3%)
11. Virginia (42.3%)
12. Michigan (38.4%)
13. Georgetown (31.3%)
14. Yale (30.6%)
15. UCLA (29.1%)
16. USC (28.6%)
17. Vanderbilt (26.3%)
18. Texas (25.8%)
19. Fordham (23.4%)
20. UC-Irvine (23.2%)
21. George Washington (22.5%)
22. Boston University (21.3%)
23. Boston College (21.1%)
24. Illinois (18.8%)
25. Washington University (16.3%)

The National Law Journal also lists the 17 law schools that most outperformed their U.S. News ranking. Here are the Top 10:

1. Howard (+88)
2. Villanova (+59)
3. Rutgers-Camden (+51)
4. Santa Clara (+50)
5. Seton Hall (+32)
6. Houston (+28)
7. Kentucky (+24)
8. SMU (+24)
9. Tennessee (+19)
10. Loyola-Chicago (+18)

The National Law Journal also lists the 54 law schools that saw the most graduates promoted to partner in the NLJ Top 250 in 2012. Here are the Top 10:

1. Harvard (66)
2. Georgetown (39)
3. Virginia (36)
4. NYU (33)
5. Michigan (31)
6. George Washington (29)
7. Chicago (27)
8. Columbia (27)
9. Northwestern (21)
10. Boston College (20) & Texas (20)

Prior National Law Journal Rankings by Graduates in BigLaw Jobs:

• 2012
• 2011

National Jurist Acknowledges 67% Error Rate, But Sticks With Revised Law School Rankings

The National Jurist has revised its new law school rankings system after admitting it made errors in 67% of the law school data it originally reported from RateMyProfessors.com (which counts 20% in their rankings). Jonathan Adler (Case Western) and Brian Leiter (Chicago) rightly argue that the National Jurist should scuttle their rankings:

Adler:  "Even if one were to believe that it was reasonable to use RMP scores in the first place — and it was not (as discussed here and here) — this degree of sloppiness  is appalling.  It was utterly  irresponsible for NJ to go to press with rankings based on such slipshod work, and a disservice to the prospective students NJ was purporting to serve.  Brian Leiter is correct – NJ should simply confess error, deep six these rankings, and start over from scratch."

Leiter:  "The editors have appended a list of articles on "Rate My Professors," but as I noted before, the literature (if you actually read it) does not support the use to which National Jurist put it.  They still should withdraw the entire ranking, and hire some educational and statistical consultants to come up with a worthwhile metric."

Update: Above the Law,  National Jurist Needs To Delete Their Law School Rankings And Apologize To Us All For Wasting Our Time

National Jurist Backtracks on Use of RateMyProfessors.com in Law School Rankings

After initially defending its new law school rankings system despite assigning a 20% weighting to the execrable ratemyprofessors.com, the National Jurist  is now backpedaling:

When we were deciding which data to use to represent student satisfaction, we carefully compared the Princeton Review and RateMyProfessor scores. In the aggregate, we found a strong correlation between the two studies.

However, some have now reported that the website includes non-law school faculty and former faculty. We did an initial search of the website and found that this was true for at least a few schools.

We are now in the process of reviewing the data for every school, searching by individual professor currently on staff. We hope to have this review done by Feb. 19, at which time we will make any necessary corrections to ensure a fair and accurate study. If we find that the RateMyProfessor inaccuracies are significant and prevalent, we will consider removing it as a data source from the study.

Jonathan Adler (Case Western) and Brian Leiter (Chicago) are not impressed. Leiter concludes:

As I indicated in an earllier post, I spoke with Mr. Crittenden just a few weeks ago about what would be required to do a sensible alternative to U.S. News.  He never let on that he and his staff had already concocted this nonsense ranking, and that he was going to use my quotes in an article accompanying this ranking, whose existence he had not disclosed to me.  Mr. Crittenden is clearly not an honest man or journalist.  He can only redeem his reputation by repudiating this whole fiasco.

NJ was always a bit of a joke, a magazine so unneeded that it is given away free in piles at every law school in the country (most copies end up in the trash).  But now they've done something perniciously stupid, which doesn't help students, and groundlessly defames dozens of law faculties.  I hope it marks the end of a pointless magazine.

Update: The Faculty Lounge, More on the National Jurist Rankings

2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings

Robert Morse, Director of Data Research for U.S. News & World Report, announced yesterday that the 2014 law school rankings will be published online on March 12, 2013. The 2013 edition of Best Graduate Schools will be available for sale on newstands on April 9, 2013. There will be one change in the law school rankings methodology:

In the 2014 edition, we made a change in the law school rankings methodology used to compute placement rates for 2011 J.D. graduates employed at graduation and nine months after graduation.

U.S. News Law School Rankings for previous years:

• 2013 rankings
• 2012 rankings
• 2011 rankings
• 2010 rankings
• 2009 rankings

National Jurist Defends its Law School Rankings (and Use of RateMyProfessors.com)

Following up on Tuesday's post, National Jurist Law School Rankings:  National Jurist Editor-in-Chief Jack Crittenden defends his magazine's new law school rankings, including the decision to give 20% weight to the execrable ratemyprofessors.com, in an interview with Bloomberg Law's Lee Pacchia:

Update:

• ABA Journal, National Jurist Rankings Conflict With US News’ Top choices; Law Prof Blasts Methodology
• Above the Law, National Jurist EIC Defends His Indefensible Rankings

National Jurist Law School Rankings

The February 2013 issue of The National Jurist contains a law school ranking alternative to U.S. News & World Report using the following methodology:

Post-Graduate Success:  50%
Employment Rate:  22.5%
Super Lawyers:  12.5%
Partners in NLJ 200:  10%
Bar Passage:  5%

Student Satisfaction:  35%
RateMyProfessors.com:  20%
Princeton Review:  15%

Affordability and Diversity:  15%
Debt:  10%
Diversity:  5%

Here are the Top 50 law schools under this methodology: 

1. Stanford
2. Virginia
3. UC-Berkeley
4. Vanderbilt
5. Alabama
6. Harvard
7. Columbia
8. Pennsylvania
9. Texas Tech
10. North Carolina
11. LSU
12. Duke
13. Yale
14. George Washington
15. Oklahoma
16. Wisconsin
17. Michigan
18. Baylor
19. Boston University
20. BYU
21. Cornell
22. Arizona
23. Richmond
24. Emory
25. Northwestern
26. Georgia
27. UC-Davis
28. U. Washington
29. Utah
30. Louisville
31. Washington U.
32. Illinois
33. NYU
34. Florida State
35. Indiana-Bloomington
36. Arizona State
37. Texas
38. Ohio State
39. UMKC
40. Colorado
41. SMU
42. Samford
43. William & Mary
44. Georgetown
45. Houston
46. St. Mary's
47. Mississippi
48. Boston College
49. Washington & Lee
50. Hawaii

Brian Leiter (Chicago), National Jurist in Competition to Displace Thomas Cooley Rankings as Biggest Joke in Legal Academia:

Years ago, when Texas had the misfortune to be #1 in the Cooley rankings, the law school was asked by the public affairs department whether we wanted to produce a press release; the immediate answer was, "No, don't mention it, it's an embarrassment to be #1 in the Cooley rankings."  National Jurist has now replicated the Cooley feat, with a somewhat more baroque methodology that can only make Bob Morse and the U.S. News editors smile, since it makes their approach look like rocket science.  Like U.S. News, the National Jurist has a multitude of different factors, all inexplicably weighted (5% for bar pas rate and diversity, but 12.5% for the number of Super Lawyer alumni!), but some of which are independently interesting, but aggregated make no sense.

But the coup de grace is that 20% of the overall score is based on Rate My Professors, the notorious on-line rating site used mainly by undergraduates, and hardly at all by law students.  (In a remarkable display of editorial good judgment, Jack Crittenden, the editor, decided not to incorporate the "hotness" score, however.) ...

I hope Mr. Crittenden will have the good sense to issue a retraction and apology for putting this misinformation into circulation.  It's the second time in recent months that they have put out misleading rankings.  Maybe this signals desperation, I don't know.

If readers catch any law schools publicizing their National Jurist ranking, please let me know.

• ABA Journal, National Jurist rankings say Stanford, Virginia, Berkeley are 1, 2, 3
• Above the Law, Pure Ridiculousness: National Jurist’s Law School Rankings 
• Business Insider, A New Law School Ranking Says University of Alabama Is Better Than Yale or Harvard

Bucknell Joins Rankings Hall of Shame

Inside Higher Ed:  How Much Admission Misreporting?:

Bucknell University [has come] forward to admit that it had misreported SAT averages from 2006 through 2012, and ACT averages during some of those years. ... [T]he inaccurate data resulted from the college leaving some students' scores out of test averages. In a few cases, the omitted students had scores higher than those reported. But most of the excluded students had lower scores, so the result of leaving them out was to inflate Bucknell's averages. "[D]uring each of those seven years, the scores of 13 to 47 students were omitted from the SAT calculation, with the result being that our mean scores were reported to be 7 to 25 points higher than they actually were on the 1600-point scale," said a letter sent to the campus from John C. Bravman, the president. "During those seven years of misreported data, on average 32 students per year were omitted from the reports and our mean SAT scores were on average reported to be 16 points higher than they actually were." ...

In 2012, Claremont McKenna College, Emory University and George Washington University all submitted false data to U.S. News about undergraduate admissions, as did Tulane University's business school with regard to M.B.A. admissions [as well as Illinois and Villanova law schools].

Bucknell is ranked #32 in the current U.S. News National Liberal Arts Colleges Rankings.

2013 Undergraduate Accounting Program Rankings by Tax Hiring Authorities

JobsInTax.com, part of the TaxTalent network, yesterday announced a ranking of undergraduate accounting programs, based on the responses of 106 heads of corporate tax departments:

• Tax LL.M. Program Rankings by Tax Hiring Authorities (Sept. 4, 2012)

AALS Places Villanova on Two Years Probation for Submitting False LSAT and GPA Data

Following up on my prior posts (links below):  the AALS has placed Villanova on two years probation for submitting false LSAT and GPA data for its entering classes for at least eight years to goose its U.S. News ranking.

• AALS Executive Committee Decision
• JD Journal
• Phildelphia Inquirer

(Hat Tip: Dan Filler.)  Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• Villanova Goosed its U.S. News Ranking by 'Knowingly' Submitting Inflated LSAT and GPA Data to ABA (Feb. 7, 2011)
• More on the Villanova Rankings Scandal (Feb. 9, 2011)
• U.S. News: Villanova to Fall in 2012 Rankings After Reporting Accurate (and Lower) LSAT & GPA Medians (Feb. 11, 2011)
• Villanova's 'Unseemly Silence' Over Law School Rankings Scandal (June 13, 2011)
• ABA Publicly Censures Villanova for Submitting False LSAT & GPA Data (Aug. 16, 2011)
• Dean: Villanova Is Back on Track After Admissions Scandal (Sept. 6, 2012)

New York Law School Rankings by July 2012 Bar Exam Results

New York Law Journal:  Eight Law Schools Post Lower Bar Pass Rates:

In a reversal from last year, eight of New York state's 15 law schools have reported lower pass rates for first-time candidates who took the July bar exam. In 2011, eight schools reported improved pass rates over the prior year. ... With its 70% pass rate for the July exam, New York Law School experienced the most precipitous plunge this year, down 10 percentage points from 2011.

U.S. News Ranking: Most Efficient National Universities

Robert Morse (Director of Data Research, U.S. News), Which Highly Ranked Universities Operate Most Efficiently?:

The new list is based on operating efficiency, defined as a school's 2011 fiscal year financial resources per student divided by its overall score (the basis U.S. News uses to determine its overall numerical rank) in the 2013 Best Colleges rankings. This calculation reveals how much each school is spending to achieve one point in the overall score and its position in the rankings. The less a school is spending relative to its ranking, the more efficient it is in producing a quality education among its peers.

National University	Rank	Resources Per Student
Florida State University	97	$17,731
Brigham Young University	68	$20,441
Miami University	89	$19,091
University of Alabama	77	$20,288
College of William & Mary	33	$27,572
Colorado School of Mines	77	$21,417
University of Missouri	97	$21,226
SUNY-Binghamton	89	$22,181
Indiana University	83	$22,806
Ohio University	131	$18,983
Rutgers-Newark	115	$20,801
University of Georgia	63	$27,028
Clemson University	68	$26,293
U. of South Carolina	115	$21,389
Virginia Tech	72	$26,261
Clark University	83	$25,073
Duquesne University	120	$21,216
University of Oregon	115	$21,749
Texas Christian University	92	$24,486
Missouri U. Science & Tech.	125	$21,044

U.S. News: The Most Overperforming and Underperforming Schools

Robert Morse (Director of Data Research, U.S. News), Which Ranked Universities Are Doing Better Than Their Academic Reputations?:

U.S. News is publishing a first-ever analysis of colleges in our National Universities ranking category that are overperforming or underperforming their undergraduate academic reputations in terms of their overall Best Colleges 2013 rankings. This concept measures the degree to which a university's overall position in the rankings exceeds or falls short of its undergraduate academic reputation rank. ...

The table below shows the top 15 overperforming schools in the National Universities ranking category, where a school's overall numerical rank in the 2013 Best Colleges rankings was better than the school's academic peer assessment rank by the largest number of ranking places.

School	Overall Rank	Peer Rank	Overperformance
Adelphi University	155	213	+58
Ashland University	189	247	+58
University of St. Thomas	113	171	+58
Stevens Institute of Technology	75	134	+59
St. Mary's University of Minnesota	174	238	+64
Azusa Pacific University	179	247	+68
Edgewood College	179	247	+68
University of Tulsa	83	151	+68
Yeshiva University	46	118	+72
Biola University	174	247	+73
Andrews University	189	264	+75
St. John Fisher College	151	226	+75
South Carolina State University	147	226	+79
University of La Verne	165	247	+82
Maryville University (St. Louis)	160	247	+87

This table shows the top 15 underperforming schools in the National Universities ranking category, where a school's overall numerical rank in the 2013 Best Colleges rankings was less than the school's academic peer assessment rank by the largest number of ranking places.

School	Overall Rank	Peer rank	Underperformance
Arizona State University	139	70	-69
University of Arizona	120	59	-61
University of Illinois—Chicago	147	94	-53
Virginia Commonwealth University	170	118	-52
University of Montana	199	151	-48
University of North Carolina—Charlotte	199	151	-48
University of Colorado—Boulder	97	51	-46
George Mason University	139	94	-45
University of New Mexico	179	134	-45
University of Oregon	115	70	-45
University of Utah	125	82	-43
University of Maryland (Baltimore)	160	118	-42
Indiana University—Bloomington	83	44	-39
University of Kansas	106	67	-39
University of Colorado (Denver)	189	151	-38

SSRN Tax Professor Download Rankings

SSRN has updated its monthly rankings of 750 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN database.  Here is the new list (through November 1, 2012) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):

 

		All-Time Downloads		Recent Downloads
1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Mich.)	27,520	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Mich.)	5382
2	Paul Caron (Cincinnati)	20,865	Richard Kaplan (Illinois)	4132
3	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	19,700	Adam Chodorow (Ariz. St.)	3997
4	Vic Fleischer (Colorado)	17,405	Paul Caron (Cincinnati)	3231
5	James Hines (Michigan)	16,863	Katie Pratt (Loyola-L.A.)	2673
6	Ted Seto (Loyola-L.A.)	15,985	Carter Bishop (Suffolk)	2572
7	Richard Kaplan (Illinois)	15,654	Jen Kowal (Loyola-L.A.)	2492
8	Dennis Ventry (UC-Davis)	13,932	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	2451
9	David Walker (Boston U.)	12,275	Herwig Schlunck (Vand.)	2319
10	Carter Bishop (Suffolk)	12,253	David Gamage (UCBerkeley)	2230
11	David Weisbach (Chicago)	12,147	Ted Seto (Loyola-L.A.)	2189
12	Chris Sanchirico (Penn)	11,945	Ed Kleinbard (USC)	2184
13	Katie Pratt (Loyola-L.A.)	11,806	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	2150
14	Francine Lipman (UNLV)	11,625	James Hines (Michigan)	1953
15	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	11,476	Wendy Gerzog (Baltimore)	1939
16	Jen Kowal (Loyola-L.A.)	10,727	Erik Jensen (Case Western)	1848
17	Herwig Schlunck (Vand.)	10,673	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	1530
18	Ed McCaffery (USC)	10,589	David Weisbach (Chicago)	1521
18	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	10,517	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	1501
20	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	10,369	Heather Field (UC-Hastings)	1444
21	Wendy Gerzog (Baltimore)	9976	Vic Fleischer (Colorado)	1441
22	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	9456	Francine Lipman (UNLV)	1417
23	Steve Bank (UCLA)	9390	David Walker (Boston U.)	1349
24	Erik Jensen (Case Western)	8513	Allison Christians (McGill)	1333
25	Michael Knoll (Penn)	8392	Christopher Hoyt (UMKC)	1332

Note that this ranking includes full-time tax professors with at least one tax paper on SSRN, and all papers (including non-tax papers) by these tax professors are included in the SSRN data.

The other SSRN ranking categories are: 

• All-Time Papers
• New Papers
• All-Time Downloads Per Paper
• New Downloads Per Paper

These rankings, of course, are imperfect measures of faculty scholarly performance -- as are the existing ranking methodologies of reputation surveys, productivity counts, and citation counts. Our modest claim in our article, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006) (Symposium on The Next Generation of Law School Rankings), is that the SSRN data can play a role in faculty rankings along with these other measures.  Bill Henderson (Indiana) thinks we are too modest, and that SSRN may provide a better measure of faculty performance than these other methodologies.

For my other articles on what SSRN downloads can tell us about the current state and future of legal scholarship, and about the relationship between scholarship and blogging, see:

• The Long Tail of Legal Scholarship, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 38 (2006)
• Are Scholars Better Bloggers? -- Bloggership: How Blogs are Transforming Legal Scholarship, 84 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1025 (2006)

For Ted Seto's faculty-wide (and metropolitan area-wide) analysis of these SSRN tax rankings, see:

• The Top 25 Tax Faculties
• The Top 15 Graduate Tax Faculties
• The Top 10 Tax Faculty Metro Areas

Rankings Scandal at George Washington

George Washington University, ranked #51 in the latest U.S. News college rankings, admitted on Thursday that it has been inflating the percentage of its incoming freshman class ranked in the top 10% of their high school graduating class for at least a decade.  Class rank accounts for 6% in the U.S. News rankings methodology. (In 2012, George Washington reported that 78% of its incoming freshmen ranked in the Top 10%; the correct figure was 58%.)  Emory and Claremont McKenna announced earlier this year that they supplied incorrect data to U.S. News for many years.

• Bloomberg
• Chronicle of Higher Education
• Inside Higher Ed
• Washington Post

2012 World Law School Rankings

Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World Law School Rankings (methodology: academic reputation, employer reputation, and citations), along with the latest SSRN World Law School Faculty Rankings:

1. Harvard (#1 in SSRN)
2. Yale (#6)
3. Oxford (#21)
4. Cambridge (#42)
5. Columbia (#4)
6. Stanford (#5)
7. NYU (#7)
8. Melbourne (#26)
9. London School of Economics (#101)
10. National University of Singapore (#109)
11. Sydney (#30)
12. UC-Berkeley (#13)
13. Chicago (#3)
14. Australian National (#103)
15. Monash (#129)
16. Hong Kong (#138)
17. UCLA (#12)
18. Kings College London (#134)
19. Toronto (#25)
20. McGill (#97)
21. University College London (#57)
22. British Columbia (#599)
23. Victoria University (#153)
24. Michigan (#17)
25. Cornell (#28)

Other law faculties in SSRN's Top 25 are George Washington (#2), Tilburg (#8), Georgetown (#9), Pennsylvania (#10), Northwestern (#11), Vanderbilt (#14), Illinois (#15), Duke (#16), Minnesota (#18), George Mason (#19), USC (#20), Virginia (#22), San Diego (#23), and Fordham (#24). (Hat Tip: National Jurist.)

• 2011 World Law School Rankings

2013 Law Firms of the Year

U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers today released America's Best Law Firms 2013, ranking more than 10,300 law firms in 80 practice areas, taking into account a firm's expertise, responsiveness, cost, and civility. Among the winners are:

• McDermott Will & Emery -- Tax
• Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman -- Trusts & Estates
• Skadden -- Non-Profit/Charities
• Sutherland Asbill & Brennan -- Tax Litigation

Law School Diversity Rankings

The November 2012 issue of the National Jurist ranks the Top 50 law schools by the diversity of their faculty (30%) and students (70%).  Here are the Top 25:

1. District of Columbia 
2. CUNY
3. Florida International
4. Texas Southern
5. San Francisco
6. Florida A&M
7. Hawaii
8. St. Thomas U.
9. Northwestern
10. New Mexico
11. Phoenix
12. Stanford
13. John Marshall (Atlanta)
14. Rutgers-Newark
15. Southwestern
16. Western State
17. Seattle
18. North Carolina Central
19. La Verne
20. Charlotte
21. Hofstra
22. Southern
23. Nova
24. Cornell
25. American

Law School Rankings for Black Students

On Being A Black Lawyer today released The Black Student's Guide To Law Schools (2013 ed.), which  includes rankings of the best law schools for black students in several categories:

The 25 Best National Law Schools for Black Students, based on this methodology:

• 25%:  Cost
• 25%:  Placement
• 10%:  Distinguished Black Alumni
• 10%:  Selectivity (75% Percentile GPA and LSAT)
• 10%:  Black Student Population
• 10%:  Local Legal Job Access
•   5%:  Local Cost of Living
•   5%:  Local Black Population

The Top 10 are:

1. Harvard
2. Howard
3. Georgetown
4. Columbia
4. Virginia
6. Chicago
7. Alabama
7. Pennsylvania
9. Northwestern
10. Stanford

The 5 Best Regional Law Schools (in 6 Regions) for Black Students, based on the above methodology, plus:

• Black law student population % > 33% of state's black population %
• Tuition < $20,000 (3 regions) or $27,000 (3 regions)

The 10 Best Bargain Law Schools for Black Students, based on heavier weighting of tuition and percentage of black law students

The 10 LL.M. Programs We Recommend for Black Foreign Attorneys, based on heavier weighting of diversity of faculty, students, and city

Update: Above the Law, The Best Law School For Black People Is… Not Yale

The 50 Best Law Schools in America

Business Insider:  The 50 Best Law Schools in America:

We held a survey to determine what real professionals consider the best law schools. ... More than 650 of our readers responded, of which 60% had J.D.s. and 69% had hiring experience. Thirty-six percent of the respondents work in legal fields, 23% work in finance, 10% work in technology, 6% are current law students, and 6% work in consulting.

1. Harvard (#3 in U.S. News)
2. Yale (#1)
3. Stanford (#2)
4. Columbia (#4)
5. Chicago (#5)
6. Penn (#7)
7. NYU (#5)
8. Duke  (#11)
9. UC-Berkeley (#7)
10. Georgetown (#13)
11. Northwestern (#12)
12. Virginia (#7)
13. Cornell (#14)
14. Michigan (#10)
15. UCLA (#15)
16. Texas (#16)
17. Notre Dame (#22)
18. USC (#18)
19. George Washington (#20)
20. Vanderbilt (#16)
21. Emory (#24)
22. North Carolina (#38)
23. Boston College (#29)
24. Boston University (#26)
25. Washington U. (#23)
26. William & Mary (#35)
27. Fordham (#29)
28. UC-Hastings (#44)
29. UC-Davis (#29)
30. Wisconsin (#35)
31. Washington & Lee (#24)
32. Tulane (#51)
33. Wake Forest (#44)
34. BYU (#39)
35. Indiana (#26)
36. U. Washington (#20)
37. Ohio State (#39)
38. Minnesota (#19)
39. George Mason (#39)
40. Pepperdine (#49)
41. Illinois (#35)
42. American (#49)
43. Colorado (#44)
44. Iowa (#29)
45. Florida (#48)
46. Maryland (#39)
47. Georgia (#34)
48. Baylor (#51)
49. SMU (#51)
50. Loyola-L.A. (#51)

An Inside Look at America's Best Law Schools:

• The 10 Best Paying Career Alternatives for Law Grads
• The 10 Best Value Law Schools in America
• The 10 Most Expensive Law Schools In America
• The 11 Law Schools With the Worst Employment Rates
• 12 Faces Behind the Incredible Law School Underemployment Crisis
• This Is What Recruiters Really Think About Law School

(Hat Tip: Law Librarian Blog.)

Princeton Review's Best 168 Law Schools (2013 Edition)

The Princeton Review has published the 2013 edition of The Best 168 Law Schools:

We surveyed more than 18,000 students at 168 law schools, in addition to collecting data from school administrators, to create 11 ranking lists:

Best Professors:  Based on student answers to survey questions concerning how good their professors are as teachers and how accessible they are outside the classroom.

1. Duke
2. Pepperdine
3. Boston University
4. Virginia
5. Stanford

Best Quality of Life:  Based on student assessment of:  whether there is a strong sense of community at the school, how aesthetically pleasing the law school is, the location of the law school, the quality of the social life, classroom facilities, and the library staff.

1. Virginia
2. Vanderbilt
3. Duke
4. Pepperdine
5. Northwestern

Best Classroom Experience:  Based on student answers to survey questions concerning their professors' teaching abilities, the balance of theory and practical skills in the curricula, the level of tolerance for differing opinions in class discussion, and their assessments of classroom facilities.

1. Stanford
2. Chicago
3. Virginia
4. Northwestern
5. Michigan

Best Career Prospects:  Based on school reported data and student surveys. School data include: the average starting salaries of graduating students, the percent of students immediately employed upon graduation and the percent of these students who pass the bar exam the first time they take it. Student answers to survey questions on: how much the law program encourages practical experience; the opportunities for externships, internships and clerkships, and how prepared the students feel they will be to practice the law after graduating.

1. Columbia
2. Chicago
3. UC-Berkeley
4. Northwestern
5. NYU

Most Diverse Faculty:  Based on the percentage of the law school faculty that is from a minority group and student assessment of whether the faculty makes up a broadly diverse group of individuals.

1. Southern
2. District of Columbia
3. Florida International
4. Hawaii
5. New Mexico

Most Competitive Students:  Based on student answers to survey questions on: the number of hours they study outside of class each day, the number of hours they think their fellow students study outside of class each day, the degree of competitiveness among students at their school, and the average number of hours they sleep each night.

1. Baylor
2. Whittier
3. BYU
4. Mercer
5. Regent

Most Liberal Students:  Based on student assessment of the political bent of the student body at large.

1. Northeastern
2. Vermont
3. American
4. Oregon
5. Lewis & Clark

Most Conservative Students:  Based on student assessment of the political bent of the student body at large.

1. Ave Maria
2. Regent
3. BYU
4. George Mason
5. Samford

Best Environment for Minority Students:  Based on the percentage of the student body that is from underrepresented minorities and student assessment of whether all students receive equal treatment by fellow students and the faculty, regardless of ethnicity.

1. Hawaii
2. Florida International
3. Southern
4. District of Columbia
5. St. Thomas

Most Chosen by Older Students:  Based on the average age of entry of law school students and student reports of how many years they spent out of college before enrolling in law school.

1. District of Columbia
2. Southern
3. Maine
4. New Mexico
5. Northwestern

Toughest to Get Into:  Based on school reported data. Factors include: average LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs of entering 1L students, the percent of applicants accepted, and the percent of accepted applicants who enroll.

1. Yale
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Virginia
5. Columbia

Unfortunately, the Princeton Review did not release the response rate per school, so it is impossible to determine how the rankings are affected by each school's representation among the respondents.

For prior Princeton Review Law School Rankings, see:

• 2012
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009
• 2008

NY Times Debate: Are the U.S. News Rankings 'Helpful or a Distraction'?

New York Times, Room for Debate: Colleges, by the Numbers:

The 2013 edition of the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges hit newsstands this month. Are these rankings given too much weight in the college application and selection process? Are they helpful or a distraction? 

• Michael Bastedo (Director, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, University of Michigan), Insiders Care the Most About These Lists
• Sean Decatur (Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Oberlin College), Rankings Can Be Useful, but Also Dangerous
• Beth Gilfillan (College Counselor, Deerfield High School), I Cringe When I Hear the Word ‘Rankings’
• Martha O'Connell (Executive Director, Colleges That Change Lives), The College Search Requires Greater Thought
• Lloyd Thacker (Executive Director, Education Conservancy), College Presidents Should Just Say ‘No’ to U.S. News
• Richard Vedder (Director, Center for College Affordability and Productivity, Ohio University), Filling a Void, Providing a Service

Update: New York Times op-ed: The College Rankings Racket, by Joe Nocera. (Hat Tip: Mike Talbert.)

John Yoo Tortures Moneyball Analogy in Defending His Citation Count Study

Following up on my prior posts (links below):  Richochet: Moneyball Comes to the Ivory Tower, by John Yoo (UC-Berkeley):

University professors have had the luxury of thinking they are influential without having any way to prove or disprove it — which means that everyone could be a big fish in their small pond. But suppose you were a university president, dean, or simply a rich donor. Could you deploy resources to attract undervalued professors and build a faculty that would punch above its salary? In other words, if Harvard is the Yankees, could you build a faculty like the Oakland A's?

In our recent paper, a Ph.D student at Berkeley and I propose a way to measure faculty quality by counting up how many times professors are cited by other professors. This has been a controversial way to measure quality, but it is more objective than impressionistic opinions about who is smart and productive. In just a weekend, it has been downloaded at a faster rate than almost any other paper I've written -- which may also tell you a lot about professors.

For my take, see What Law Schools Can Learn from Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, 82 Texas L. Rev. 1483 (2004).  I would argue that the Yoo citation study is the antithesis of Moneyball -- because he focuses exclusively on faculty at the Top 16 law schools, Yoo's study cannot help "a university president [or] dean ... deploy resources to attract undervalued professors and build a faculty that would punch above its salary." Billy Beane did not use statistical measures to find undervalued players on the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees. He similarly would not hunt for undervaled faculty talent at Harvard or Yale -- Beane instead would use analytical tools to cherry pick faculty from among the 184 law schools ranked below the Top 16. Yoo's study would not help.

For more, see Above the Law: The 50 Most Relevant Law Professors, by David Lat.

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• Phillips & Yoo:  A Better Faculty Citation Rankings System (Sept. 7, 2012)
• More on the Phillips & Yoo 'Better Faculty Citation Rankings System' (Sept 8, 2012)
• Sisk: The Phillips & Yoo Citations Rankings:  Different, Not Better (Sept. 14, 2012)
• Leiter:  Phillips & Yoo Citation Study Has Some Serious Problems (Sept. 14, 2012)

Update: Sports Law Blog, Foul Ball? New "Moneyball" Rankings of Most Relevant Law Professors

Sisk: The Phillips & Yoo Citations Rankings: Different, Not Better

Following up on last week's posts (links below): Gregory Sisk (St. Thomas (Minnesota)):

Believing as I do both that U.S. News rankings are flawed (and thus should be supplemented by multiple other ranking approaches) and that scholarly impact or quality is multi-dimensional (and thus also benefits from a diversity of approaches), I too welcome any thoughtful new attempt to evaluate the meaning of citations to legal scholarship.  James Phillips and John Yoo have certainly added a thoughtful contribution to scholarly rankings.  At the same time, I think Brian Leiter’s conclusion is right – the Phillips-Yoo approach is not better than the Leiter Scholarly Impact Score method, but rather is different.

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• Phillips & Yoo: A Better Faculty Citation Rankings System (Sept. 7, 2012)
• More on the Phillips & Yoo 'Better Faculty Citation Rankings System' (Sept 8, 2012)

Update:  Brian Leiter (Chicago), Phillips & Yoo Citation Study Has Some Serious Problems:

We had noted earlier the risk that Web of Science cites would not necessarily pick up citations that reflect impact on legal scholarship. ... If they really didn't correct for false positives, that is also a rather serious error.  Hopefully they will correct for these and other mistakes before long.  I still think there are virtues to this approach, but it does not need to be carried out correctly!

2013 U.S. News Best Undergraduate Teaching Rankings

Following up on yesterday's post, 2013 U.S. News College Rankings:  here are the Top 10 National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges for Best Undergraduate Teaching (along with their overall U.S. News ranking): 

	National University		Liberal Arts College
1	Dartmouth (10)	1	Davidson (12)
1	Princeton (1)	2	Carleton (8)
3	Miami (Ohio) (89)	3	Grinnell (22)
4	Brown (15)	3	Oberlin (26)
4	Yale (3)	5	Centre (52)
6	Michigan (29)	6	Beloit (63)
6	William & Mary (33)	6	Earlham (82)
8	UC-Berkeley (21)	6	St. Olaf (55)
8	Chicago (4)	9	Bryn Mawr (26)
8	Duke (8)	10	Swarthmore (3)
8	Maryland (Balt.) (160)	10	Williams (1)
8	Notre Dame (17)

2013 U.S. News College Rankings

U.S. News & World Report today released its 2013 College Rankings. Here are the Top 25 National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges (along with their 2010-2012 rankings): 

2013 Rank	National Universities	2012 Rank	2011 Rank	2010 Rank
1	Harvard	1	1	1
1	Princeton	1	2	1
3	Yale	3	3	3
4	Chicago	5	9	8
4	Columbia	4	4	8
6	MIT	5	7	4
6	Stanford	5	5	4
8	Duke	10	9	10
8	Penn	5	5	4
10	Cal-Tech	5	7	4
10	Dartmouth	11	9	11
12	Northwestern	12	12	12
13	Johns Hopkins	13	13	14
14	Washington (St. Louis)	14	13	12
15	Cornell	15	15	15
15	Brown	15	15	16
17	Rice	17	17	17
17	Vanderbilt	17	17	17
17	Notre Dame	19	19	20
20	Emory	20	20	17
21	UC-Berkeley	21	22	21
21	Georgetown	22	21	23
23	Carnegie-Mellon	23	23	22
24	USC	23	23	26
24	UCLA	25	25	24
24	Virginia	25	25	24
27	Wake Forest	25	25	28

 

2013 Rank	Liberal Arts Colleges	2012 Rank	2011 Rank	2010 Rank
1	Williams	1	1	1
2	Amherst	2	2	2
3	Swarthmore	3	3	3
4	Pomona	4	6	6
4	Middlebury	5	4	4
6	Bowdoin	6	6	6
6	Wellesley	6	4	4
8	Carleton	6	8	8
9	Haverford	10	9	10
10	Clermont-McKenna	9	11	11
10	Vassar	14	12	11
12	Davidson	11	8	8
12	Harvey Mudd	18	18	14
14	Washington & Lee	12	14	14
14	U.S. Naval Academy	14	16	19
16	Hamilton	17	18	21
17	Wesleyan	12	12	13
18	Colby	21	23	22
18	Colgate	21	21	19
18	Smith	19	14	18
18	U.S. Military Academy	14	16	14
22	Bates	21	25	25
22	Grinnell	19	18	14
24	Macalester
24	Scripps