You are missing the nuance of my point. Its basically a self fulfilling prophecy. In order for all those 180s, employers, and teachers to go to Cooley; they would have to believe that Cooley was "worth" it. At the point where they all act on that belief, a belief that is based on perception, then their actions make that belief a reality. Then, Cooley does become realistically awesome, but only because people first perceived it to be that way and acted on that perception. Its like God or the Stock Market, Stock doesn't have value until people believe in it, then they give it value. "Oh I think this technology will be awesome, so I put money into it, and then lo and behold because i believed in it it actually did become awesome" Etc.

Being bright (e.g. accumulated intelligence, intellectual curiosity, thoughtful reasoning skills, great reading capabilities, intense work ethic and ability to discipline yourself to study/excel on the most learnable standardized test in America ) makes you get a 180.

I think it's safe to say those attributes are what make good law students, if not lawyers--not whether you can put together a conditional reasoning chain and find the contrapositive on question #22 before time runs out.

I'll be honest, I read this three times yet I have no idea what you're trying to say.

Hes saying the rankings only echo what people already believe, thus if what people believe matters then the rankings also matter

You're all talking in circles

It's just a matter of difference of what I think (as a non-law student so I understand the general ridicule this will get) will be important to a law school student. I weigh the personality skills way more important than the academic skills.

If you can't present an oral argument or even sell yourself to peers and job prospects, the likelihood that you'll influence a jury and have sound written skills becomes far and far less. You can teach anyone to write, at least anyone that wishes to learn. You can't teach people how to network effectively. A person may be able to be taught how to network in certain situations, but it is less likely to become a learned quality in the "rare" opportunities that could potentially matter.

Let me see if I understand this rationality. Less than 1% of all viewers make up the Nielsen survey, and that’s adequate. But only 12% of U.S. lawyers respond to USNWR, and that is not acceptable. You know what, I am not even going to try to respond to that logic . . . it is way too far off the silly screen.

Fiar enough. I think if people are debating whether the rankings tell us which schools are "better" than others, then we would have to define "better." That's a very subjective term obviously. Even if we could come up with an objective way to rank them (which is what USNWR is trying to do if you look at their methodology), schools might be "better" for any given applicant depending on their goals/preferences, ya know?

So...in all honesty, as a general rule, I don't think you can use the rankings to say that you will receive a "better" legal education at Harvard than you will at George Washington for example.

But if we're talking about whether the rankings matter in so far as practical considerations go (e.g. employment prospects, what type of opportunities the alumni network will give you, whether OTHERS think you received a "better" legal education, etc.), then I think the rankings DO matter--if for no other reason than the fact that employers/the legal profession think they matter.

ETA: This is fun.

Thread Title v. Actual Thread

You again are totally misunderstanding how the Nielsen survey works. 1% of the television viewing population randomly selected. Lawyers responding to the USNWR have to choose to respond to the survey, which inherently creates a large amount of bias (they have interests that they are either consciously or subconsciously representing). While you have to choose to participate in the Nielsen survey once picked, what interests are you representing?

I'm most certainly missing the "nuance" of your point. Are you making the (fairly benign) claim that beliefs (which I'll suppose encompasses things like literal propositional beliefs as well as dispositions, desires, values, etc) drive persons to action (so that action is not an entirely random and arbitrary result of the will or whatever), or are you making the much stronger and in my opinion entirely dubious claim that beliefs (defined however strongly or weakly you want) are somehow, mysteriously, transforming "reality"? You used the example of God; if such a being exists, I'd wager, he exists independently of our perceptions of him. I think maybe you're claiming that "perception and beliefs" influence our value judgments (e.g., is Cooley great or trash?), but that's not a very impressive observation, in terms of having consequences which influence this conversation.

I'm trying to use your language here, which is admittedly difficult, because you seem to think you have an undeniable point but I can't say I know what it is to begin with. I mean, of course people would be choosing to go to Cooley (students/faculty/firms) based on some sort of mixture of perception and belief (in a very general sense of that term). I'm not sure what you think you're refuting here.

I guess you're just saying that Cooley only becomes "objectively awesome" if people first perceive it to be that way.

But that's an entirely questionable claim. It could be, for example, that some Harvard faculty member moves to Detroit due to familial circumstances; seeing something humorous in the situation, they decide to accept a position at Cooley. After a change in administration, Cooley reevaluates its business model, and cuts its class size by 90%. After a game-changing publication by previously mentioned faculty member, a slew of new hires eager to join this new wave, fresh out of Yale, Stanford, and RIGOROUS Chicago, join the ranks of Cooley. Seeing that they've somehow managed, incidentally, to gain an all-star faculty, Cooley's administration changes their LSAT/GPA requirements. Thanks to a generous store of cash from its TTT days, Cooley is able to offer 100% free tuition to a new wave of students with decent numerical statistics in its small class size; the value of these students reaches the ears of local and further away employers, and Cooley has a decent 2020 OCI.

I could go on. This example is ridiculous, but not impossible in any strong sense. And Cooley's value is only being perceived to rise as it actually does rise. So again, not sure what your point here is.

You're comparing apples to platypuses. You're comparing response rate for the USNRW survey with a population rate for the Nielson. For this to be analogous, you'd need to say either (A) the number of lawyers in that responded to the USNWR survey are 1% of all the lawyers in the country, or (B) 12% of people asked to take the Nielson survey respond. Do you understand why these aren't the same things?

EDIT: There are other reasons this analogy is stupid, of course. But "12 is bigger than 1 herp derp" is among the worst parts.

Well stated. The reasons you so smartly noted are exactly why USNWR is essential. [Most] every law school fights to claw their way up the rankings, or fight to hold their position.

What I mainly question about USNWR is the timing of when they release their rankings. IMHO, because UGs are deciding on “what law school” I would think Oct/Nov would be best, but there might be some blowback on that, not sure.

True. Most people, however, would say that better = better job prospects. It's a professional schools, after all, and pretty much everyone agrees you don't really learn the practice of law in law school, whether you go to Yale, Cooley, or anywhere in between.

The fact is, there's no support for the bolded. If you have some, I'd love to see it. Let's go back to the original point: is ASU gonna have better jobs prospects now and WashU worse? I don't see it.

I thought the ASU thing was just a joke begging for snark to respond. No?

I don't know where they specifically land on the rankings (I'm presuming they're close). But...no--I think the "general perception" I was talking about does not change dramatically from year to year, nor does it change by individual ranks. Schools tend to be placed in broad clusters. Tier 1 vs. Tier 2; within Tier 1: Top 50 vs. Top 100; within top 50: Top 20-30 vs. Top 50; within the Top 20-30: T14 vs. Top 20-30; within the T14: T6/HYS vs. T14.

I don't think there is a "general perception" that Stanford is better than Harvard, or that Chicago is better than NYU--nor does anyone seriously argue such things (even on TLS, people tend to understand how futile that is).

So...minor changes in rankings from year to year do nothing. At best they might indicate a "trend," but even then...I don't think anyone REALLY thinks Michigan is going south, do they?

The evidence for the bolded is 1) where would you go to law school if you could pick ANY one of them at the same price? 2) biglaw/clerkship chances/placement data, 3) what sounds cooler: I went to Columbia or I went to Northwestern?

I think that's pretty fair brah.

I just can't wait to hang out with lawl students next year.

Not applying til Fall of 2013?

The derp in this thread is just overwhelming.

Renee won me over with:

God that pic of the 2 girls scares me so much.

It shouldn't. I took a LSAT prep class with a girl that wasn't too far off from those gals in the looks department. She's actually a good friend of mine now. She took the June LSAT and started this past Fall. She should've waited to apply as she would've been more competitive but she was anxious about starting anywhere as she's pretty set on where she's going to be working after school.

I should say that my friend knows more about fashion than these two but if you went by looks alone, she's on par. But obviously with less roots issues. More Barbie and labels though. Maybe she's not anything like these two - haha.

Awesome!

Someone goes to WUSTL...

LOL, the rankings are everything, LOL