It's the Columbia/NYU rivalry that gets me going. While there are definitely exceptions on both sides of the equation, I've found that folks out of Columbia are much more theory oriented and more ill-prepared to do real legal work than those coming out of NYU. Yes, Columbia kids may go on to more prestigious clerkships and get their foot in door, but they wash out earlier and harder.
I was wondering if any of the law types around here read Malcolm Gladwell's analysis of the nature of the weight of certain factors affecting the rakings that appeard a few weeks ago in the New Yorker and what they thought of that?
He's right, but I don't know how you can measure outputs by colleges. Law schools are easier -- you can see how well they do about placing students in jobs, which reflects reputation and well as teaching itself.
My law school has already sent out a self-congratulatory email on the fact that we've moved up from 19th...to tied for 18th. It makes me feel so much better, believe me /eyeroll
In the first one of these, Chicago finished 2nd. Harvard complained that they were only 3rd, and USNWR jiggered the scores to weight some trivial thing where Harvard did well, and Harvard and Chicago switched places by 1991.
Some time in the late 1990s, USNWR decided it was "unfair" to look at starting salaries, and decided to instead look at bar passage rates. But won't that be unfair to people who take tougher bar exams? Aha! We'll use the average state bar passage rate as the denominator! So Chicago, which was in Illinois with its 90% bar passage rate, dropped from top-three/top-four to behind Columbia and NYU, though Chicago grads did just as well on the NY bar as Columbia/NYU grads. Prospects stopped choosing Chicago over Columbia and NYU, and Chicago's LSAT and GPA dropped, and Chicago got stuck in 6th/7th for a decade.
Remarkable that the latest jiggering has Chicago back up to 5th. But in my experience, even with the decline in admissions standards, it's the Chicago Law grad who is the most likely to know what the forget a paragraph and a topic sentence is.
The Gladwell piece rejiggered the weights in many different ways to show top value, top all sorts of things just by moving around how certain things were weighted, and Chicago basically clobbered all comers in all fields no matter what he was shifting the weightings for.
That was the best part of the article. "You can't believe in rankings! They're totally subjective! You can use them to prove anything! Also, U of C is always #1."
It's the Columbia/NYU rivalry that gets me going. While there are definitely exceptions on both sides of the equation, I've found that folks out of Columbia are much more theory oriented and more ill-prepared to do real legal work than those coming out of NYU. Yes, Columbia kids may go on to more prestigious clerkships and get their foot in door, but they wash out earlier and harder.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if any of the law types around here read Malcolm Gladwell's analysis of the nature of the weight of certain factors affecting the rakings that appeard a few weeks ago in the New Yorker and what they thought of that?
ReplyDeleteHe's right, but I don't know how you can measure outputs by colleges. Law schools are easier -- you can see how well they do about placing students in jobs, which reflects reputation and well as teaching itself.
ReplyDeleteMan, you guys are a bunch of smarty pants.
ReplyDeleteMy law school has already sent out a self-congratulatory email on the fact that we've moved up from 19th...to tied for 18th. It makes me feel so much better, believe me /eyeroll
ReplyDeleteWe're number 50! We're number 50! /s/ SMU Law Grad
ReplyDeleteAlthough I wonder if that's the best metric these days.
ReplyDeleteNah, didn't read the Gladwell piece. Had no affect whatsoever on my world...
ReplyDeleteIn the first one of these, Chicago finished 2nd. Harvard complained that they were only 3rd, and USNWR jiggered the scores to weight some trivial thing where Harvard did well, and Harvard and Chicago switched places by 1991.
ReplyDeleteSome time in the late 1990s, USNWR decided it was "unfair" to look at starting salaries, and decided to instead look at bar passage rates. But won't that be unfair to people who take tougher bar exams? Aha! We'll use the average state bar passage rate as the denominator! So Chicago, which was in Illinois with its 90% bar passage rate, dropped from top-three/top-four to behind Columbia and NYU, though Chicago grads did just as well on the NY bar as Columbia/NYU grads. Prospects stopped choosing Chicago over Columbia and NYU, and Chicago's LSAT and GPA dropped, and Chicago got stuck in 6th/7th for a decade.
Remarkable that the latest jiggering has Chicago back up to 5th. But in my experience, even with the decline in admissions standards, it's the Chicago Law grad who is the most likely to know what the forget a paragraph and a topic sentence is.
The Gladwell piece rejiggered the weights in many different ways to show top value, top all sorts of things just by moving around how certain things were weighted, and Chicago basically clobbered all comers in all fields no matter what he was shifting the weightings for.
ReplyDeleteYou know something is pseudo-scientific when it's trashed by . . . Malcolm Gladwell.
ReplyDeleteThat was the best part of the article. "You can't believe in rankings! They're totally subjective! You can use them to prove anything! Also, U of C is always #1."
ReplyDeleteFordham loses our dean to Georgetown and we move UP 4 spots in the rankings? WHAT WEREN'T YOU TELLING US, TREANOR?
ReplyDelete