2011 Princeton Review Law School Rankings: Best (and Worst) Career Preparation

I previously blogged the lists of the Top 10 law schools in eleven categories posted on Princeton Review's web site in connection with its publication of the 2011 edition of Best 172 Law Schools (with the University of Cincinnati College of Law again on the cover).  The rankings are the result of Princeton Review's survey of 18,000 students at the 172 law schools, along with school statistics provided by administrators.

I have extracted from the individual profiles of the 172 law schools all of the available data to rank the schools in six categories. I will report each day on one of the ranking categories.

Career Rating: How well the law school prepares its students for a successful career in law, on a scale of 60 to 99. The rating incorporates school-reported data and the average responses of law students at the school to a few questions on our law student survey. We ask law schools for the average starting salaries of graduating students, the percentage of graduating students who find employment after graduation, and the percentage of students who pass the bar exam the first time they take it. We ask students about how much the law program encourages practical experience; the opportunities for externships, internships, and clerkships; and how prepared to practice law they feel after graduating.

Here are the law schools with the highest and lowest career ratings (an asterisk indicates that the school's administrators did not supply the Princeton Review with the requested statistical information):

	School	Score		School	Score
1	Northwestern	99	148	Campbell	70
	NYU	99	149	Oklahoma City	69
	Pennsylvania	99		Oregon	69
4	Chicago	98	151	Akron	68
	Harvard	98		Hamline	68
	Vanderbilt	98		Southern Illinois	68
7	Boston College	97		UCLA	68
	Michigan	97	155	South Carolina	67
	Virginia	97		St. Thomas (Miami)	67
10	Boston University	96		Valparaiso	67
	Notre Dame	96		West Virginia	67
	Texas	96	159	Arkansas-Fay.	66
13	Geo. Washington	95		Touro	66
	Stanford	95		Washburn	66
	Wake Forest	95	162	Missouri-Columbia	65
16	Georgetown	94	163	Ohio Northern	64
	USC	94		Rutgers-Newark	64
	UC-Davis	94	165	Arkansas-Little Rock	63
19	Columbia	93		South Dakota	63
	Fordham	93	167	Idaho	62
	UC-Berkeley	93	168	Appalachian	61
22	Alabama	92		Thomas Cooley	61
	Yale	92	170	Phoenix*	60
24	Cornell	91		Southern*	60
	Duke	91		Washington U.*	60
	UC-Hastings	91

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 years' rankings, see:

• 2010 Princeton Review Career Preparation Rankings
• 2009 Princeton Review Career Preparation Rankings
• 2008 Princeton Review Career Preparation Rankings
• 2007 Princeton Review Career Preparation Rankings