It’s doesn’t have the glamour of the Oscars and there’s no Anne Hathaway hate involved, but on March 14 when U.S. News & World Report announces their annual law school rankings (in addition to its 2014 rankings of graduate schools, business schools and medical schools), there sure will be a lot of eager pre-law students (and anxious law school deans!) ready to digest every word and data point to help them make an important decision (Plus, they now have a new rankings source from National Jurist to synthesize, as we profiled in our last post). But how important are they to pre-law students and more critically, how important should they be? BTW, you’ll notice that U.S. News made a change in how it compiles its job placement stats – a key issue for pre-law students and law students that has been in the news as of late, as I am sure you’ve noticed.
A 2012 Kaplan Test Prep survey* shows that for pre-law students, rankings can be a dealmaker or deal breaker. When asked “What is most important to you when picking a law school to apply to?”, 32% cited a law school’s ranking; followed by geographic location at 22%; academic programming at 20%; and affordability/tuition at 13%. At nearly the back of the pack? A law school’s job placement statistics, which came in at 8%. In a related question asking, “How important a factor is a law school’s ranking in determining where you will apply?” 86% said ranking is “very important” or “somewhat important” in deciding where to apply to – the same exact percentage as in October 2010. When Kaplan first asked the same question in October 2010, these factors ranked in the same exact order – though a school’s ranking actually increased in importance in this most recent survey. But while pre-law students place a lot of trust in the rankings, law schools themselves say they don’t – according to a separate 2010 Kaplan survey of law school admissions officers, 80% said the rankings process is unfair, regardless of where their school stands. Some found it so unfair, yet so important, that a few law schools even tried to game the system by submitting false data to the folks at U.S. News.
Apparently, though, three years of law school may cause aspiring lawyers to reprioritize. Among new law school graduates, only 17% of respondents to a recent Kaplan Bar Review survey** selected law school rankings as their top answer to “Which of the following factors would you tell prospective law students should be the most important when picking where to apply?” Instead, nearly half recommend prioritizing either a law school’s job placement rate or its affordability/tuition (each factor garnered 24%). Other factors, including geographic location and academic programming, trailed further back.
In stark contrast, only 13% of pre-law students cited affordability/tuition as their most important evaluation factor in deciding where to apply to law school, and even fewer, just 8%, considered schools’ job placement rates to be their top priority.
Our take: Going to law school is a significant investment of both time and money, and those who have gone through the process are affirming a rational conclusion that at the end of three years of hard work, it’s important to leave law school with a job and as little debt as possible. We continue to tell our students that while the rankings can play a useful role in helping them decide where to apply, they should look closely at other statistics, including how many of a school’s graduates have found a job in the legal field and how much debt their graduates accumulate.
And keep in mind that U.S. News is just one of many law school ranking systems out there. Other publications, such as National Jurist, publish their own, though U.S. News is considered to be the gold standard by most.
What are your students telling you that they are looking for in a law school? Is rankings paramount or is that becoming less significant to other factors such as job placement rate and debt upon graduation? This is an issues we remain highly interested of and one we’ll continue to track.
*The survey was administered by email in June 2012 and includes responses from 645 Kaplan LSAT students.
**The survey was administered by email in July and August 2012 and includes responses from 705 Kaplan Bar Review students.
