Last week, 164 of the nation's 179 law schools made a convincing appeal to U.S. News by pledging to mail flyers to their applicants claiming that law school rankings may be "unreliable" and "bad for (their) health." Two notable exceptions to this antagonizing majority are Harvard University and The University of Chicago, whose law schools are ranked second and fourth, respectively. The University's Law School is a member of the faction opposing the rankings. The 164 law school deans have set a convincing case on the table - the magazine's survey is conducted in a rather narrow-minded fashion.
Under the current ranking system, two of the most important factors are applicants' law school admissions test scores and undergraduate GPAs. These are given more credence in the evaluation than the law schools' academic environments and other qualifications of the applicants. Other factors that the deans cite as problematic include nationwide reputation surveys sent out to judges and lawyers - who are generally far removed from academia - and alumni groups' annual donations to the schools.
For the moment, with just one major survey, applicants could be fooled into taking the U.S. News rankings as the final word. But finding a good graduate school takes much more than simply applying to the best programs in the country. These rankings convince many prospective law students that, for instance, Yale Law School is the place for them, just because it is the "best" in the nation according to the magazine's ranking scheme. When the rankings are used as an exclusive map for one's future, important personal factors could be overlooked.
The ranking system also indirectly hurts many students. In recent years, as the ratings have taken on divine importance, some law school admissions councils have been looking simply at LSAT scores and GPAs with the hope of boosting their school's ranking. Because of this trend, more important qualitative measures of knowledge and skill are not considered - possibly excluding many qualified students from attending law school.
Supporters of the U.S. News rankings claim that law schools willingly turn over their application numbers and facts and that if these deans have a problem, they could boycott the magazine. But if a given school does not give the magazine the information it wants and therefore is not listed in the rankings, it would be a shock to alumni, students and applicants looking for information about this school. Many readers would probably not know of such a boycott, so it would appear as if the school simply received a low ranking. A boycott by high-ranking schools would likely prove ineffective since admissions information from state-funded law schools can be accessed under the auspices of the Freedom of Information Act.
The short term remedy for this problem would be for U.S. News to change its rating system - including more qualitative indicators of student-bodies such as internship work or undergraduate extra-curricular activities and placing less emphasis on quantitative tests and grades. In addition, students should take the magazine's rankings as they are - simply a system designed to take information and put into a formula. A knowledgeable decision about where to attend graduate school should not be based on only one source.