Muller: Law Schools Should Rethink Admissions In Light Of The U.S. News Rankings Methodology Changes

Derek T. Muller (Notre Dame; Google Scholar), Law Schools Have an Extraordinary Moment to Rethink Law School Admissions in Light of USNWR Methodology Changes:

The USNWR law rankings undoubtedly affect law school admissions decisions. A decade ago, I chronicled how law schools pursue lower-quality students (as measured by predicting first year law school GPA) to achieve higher median LSAT and UGPA scores to benefit their USNWR status.

While there is a lot of churn around the world of graduate school admissions at the moment—”test optional” or alternative testing policies, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, among other things—there’s a tremendous opportunity for law schools in light of the changes in the USNWR methodology changes. Opportunity—but also potential cost.

Let’s revisit how USNWR has changed its methodology. It has dramatically increased weight to outputs (employment and bar passage). It has dramatically decreased weight to inputs (LSAT and UGPA). Peer score also saw a significant decline.

But it’s not just the weight in those categories. It’s also the distribution of scores within each category. ...

Moving from 100 to 50 in employment is larger than the gap between a 153 median LSAT score and a 175 LSAT score (category (7)). It’s larger than an incoming class with a 3.42 median UGPA and a 3.95 UGPA (category (8)). It’s the equivalent of seeing your peer score rise from a 1.8 to a 2.9 (category (4)).

These are fairly significant disparities in the weight of these categories—and a reason why I noted earlier this year that it would result in dramatically more volatility. Employment outcomes dwarf just about everything else. Very modest changes—including modest increases in academic attrition—can change a lot quickly. ...

[F]ocusing on outputs (employment and bar passage) matters far more than inputs. The figures here show that in numerical terms. So that means law schools need to rethink admissions (if they value USNWR rankings) as less about those two categories and more about what the incoming class will do after they graduate.

Law schools could favor a number of things over the traditional chase of LSAT and UGPA medians. Some law schools already do this. But the point of this post is to identify that it now makes sense for schools to do so if they desire to climb the USNWR rankings. Admissions centered on LSAT and UGPA are short-term winners and long-term losers. Long-term winning strategy looks at prospective students with the highest likely positive outcomes.