2019 U.S. News Tax Rankings

Update: 2021 U.S. News Tax Rankings
Here are the new 2019 U.S. News Tax Rankings, along with last year's ranking:

2019 Rank	Tax Program	2018 Rank
1	NYU	1
2	Georgetown	2
3	Florida	3
4	Northwestern	4
5	Virginia	5
6	Harvard	8
7	Boston University	8
8	Loyola-L.A.	6
9	UCLA	7
10	Michigan	14
11	Texas	12
12	Columbia	10
13	Boston College	20
14	USC	15
15	Yale	18
16	San Diego	11
17	Indiana (Maurer)	23
17	Univ. of Washington	20
19	Duke	16
19	Stanford	23
19	Chicago	19
19	Penn	16
23	Miami	12
24	Villanova	20
25	Alabama	n/r
25	UC-Berkeley	n/r
25	Denver	25

Here are the biggest upward moves:

• +7:  Boston College (#13)
• +6:  Indiana (#17)
• +4:  Michigan (#10), Stanford (#19)
• +3:  Yale (#15), U. Washington (#17)
• +2:  Harvard
• Alabama (#25) and UC-Berkeley (#25) were unranked last year

Here are the biggest downward moves:

• -11:  Miami (#14)
• -5:  San Diego (#16)
• -4:  Villanova (#24)
• -3:  Penn (#19), Duke (#19)
• -2:  Loyola-L.A. (#8), UCLA (#9), Columbia (#12)
• Washington University (#26 last year) is unranked this year

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

2019 Rank	Graduate Tax Program	2018 Rank
1	NYU	1
2	Georgetown	2
3	Florida	3
4	Northwestern	4
5	Boston University	6
6	Loyola-L.A.	5
7	San Diego	7
8	Univ. of Washington	9
9	Miami	8
10	Villanova	10
11	Alabama	n/r
12	Denver	11

The U.S. News tax ballot states that it is intended "to identify the law schools having the top programs in tax law." The survey is sent "to a selection of faculty members involved in and knowledgeable about the area of tax law. Law schools supplied names of these faculty members to U.S. News in summer 2015." 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 (Dean, Maryland) 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 (on the resources page of the blog)