Paul L. Caron
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Thursday, March 6, 2014

Median GPAs for the 2015 U.S. News Law School Rankings

US NewsIn advance of Tuesday's release of the new 2015 U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings: here is a spreadsheet of the 202 ABA-accredited law schools by median undergraduate GPAs for the law school class entering in Fall 2013 (which counts 10% in the forthcoming rankings). (Yesterday, I blogged the rankings by median LSAT scores.)

Here are the Top 52 law schools by median GPAs:

Rank

Law School

Median GPA

1

Chicago

3.90

1

Yale

3.90

3

Pennsylvania

3.89

4

Harvard

3.88

5

Stanford

3.87

5

Virginia

3.87

7

Alabama

3.86

8

Indiana

3.80

9

UCLA

3.79

9

Minnesota

3.79

11

UC-Berkeley

3.78

12

Duke

3.77

12

BYU

3.77

14

Northwestern

3.75

14

Emory

3.75

16

Georgetown

3.74

16

Vanderbilt

3.74

18

William & Mary

3.73

19

NYU

3.72

20

Michigan

3.71

20

G. Washington

3.71

22

Columbia

3.70

22

USC

3.70

24

Washington U.

3.69

24

Georgia

3.69

26

Texas

3.68

27

Boston U.

3.67

28

Cornell

3.66

29

Ohio State

3.65

30

U. Washington

3.64

31

SMU

3.63

32

Boston College

3.61

32

Nebraska

3.61

34

Notre Dame

3.60

35

Iowa

3.59

35

Florida Int’l

3.59

35

Pepperdine

3.59

38

Colorado

3.58

38

Wisconsin

3.58

38

Penn State

3.58

41

Arizona

3.57

41

Wake Forest

3.57

43

Illinois

3.56

43

Villanova

3.56

45

Florida

3.55

45

George Mason

3.55

45

UC-Davis

3.55

48

Arizona State

3.54

48

Tennessee

3.54

50

Baylor

3.53

50

Maryland

3.53

50

Northeastern

3.53

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/03/median-gpas-.html

Law School Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink

Comments

Hey BigIT,

I ran some numbers through Excel this weekend, and as it turns out, no other school has such a disparity between their US News student selectivity rankings (i.e. inputs) and Faculty Lounge employment numbers (i.e. outputs). Some 115 places between its student selectivity (#46 among ABA accredited schools) and job outcomes (#161). On the flip side, I believe it was South Texas Law School whose job outcomes rank was 130 places above its student selectivity rank, so it can cut both ways.

Northeastern (the University) was an affordable commuter college for working and middle classes just a dozen years ago, but they've been on a huge empire-building campaign, and throw massive student recruitment and US News gamesmanship, they've gone from being an unranked regional university to a Top 50 National University in US News in, I dunna, just six or eight years. The tuition has also gone from $17k in 2002 to $40k and change today, and the all-in price is within a few hundred dollars per year of Harvard, but with much less financial aid.

Posted by: Unemployed Northeastern | Mar 11, 2014 7:06:11 AM

@Unemployed Northeastern

I have seen you posting on various blogs but, not being an east-coaster, never knew much about Northeastern and just assumed it was some horrible TTT. But those medians are actually solid numbers -- most of the kids going there probably had some good options right out of college. Truly depressing.

Posted by: bigJT | Mar 11, 2014 5:45:25 AM

That'd actually be an interesting study.

Posted by: No, breh. | Mar 6, 2014 3:34:38 PM

So, Northeastern has a student body with the 39th highest median LSAT, with a 161, and the 50th highest median GPA, with a 3.53, and yet the school only has the 160th best employment outcomes, according to the Faculty Lounge, with 43.3% of the Class of 2012 getting those FT, LT, bar-required jobs at any salary within nine months of graduation (and the nondiscounted cost of the school is like $250,000). Way to turn those good inputs into horrible outputs, guys. I wonder if there is any school with a wider disparity between GPA/LSAT and job outcomes?

Posted by: Unemployed Northeastern | Mar 6, 2014 10:55:21 AM