I agree with this concept in theory, but in practice ... having Michigan/UVA/Berkeley and UF in the same category .... c'mon. I think the categories should be:Anonymous User wrote: ↑Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:17 amI think the rankings are bad, but what would be useful for students are groupings of schools by certain characteristics just to help them make an informed choice. The idea of meaningfully distinguishing like #11 from #12 is ludicrous, but there are actually real differences between certain types of schools. This would sort of, but not perfectly, correspond to rankings.
Offhand, I think the groups would look something like:
National, private law schools that send high %s to biglaw and federal clerkships/bigfed,
Flagship public law schools that send high %s to biglaw and federal clerkships/bigfed,
National, private law schools with smaller class sizes and higher %s in academic, clerkships, and elite PI,
Regional public schools,
Predatory/for-profit/very low employment numbers schools.
The first two categories are functionally the same from the students' perspective but might have differences in debt load, etc. Doing this would also sort of cut down on the "lay prestige" factor. So like:
Harvard/Columbia/NYU/Penn/Duke/Vanderbilt/Cornell/GULC,
Michigan/UVA/UT-Austin/Berkeley/UCLA/WUSTL/UF,
Yale/Stanford/Chicago,
Every other perfectly good regional public school in the country,
Actively shitty schools that no one should attend.
The goal would basically be to give people helpful information about how the schools are different, but cut down on the "I'm #4 and you're #5, get fucked" factor
National schools - high big law % and high clerkship % (basically the current T-14)
Strong-Regional Schools - medium/high percentage of big law/clerkship and most students end up in the same region, but possible to hit elsewhere (UCLA, USC, WUSTL, UT Austin, arguably George Washington (because of NYC rates),
Regional Flagship - state flagship schools with low/medium rates of big law/clerkship, students will likely be stuck in their region, but that school runs the region (UF, UW, ASU, etc.)
Hyper-Regional Schools - very low rates of big law/clerkship, but they have decent employment rates in their respective areas with little to no chance of leaving the region, usually playing second-fiddle to the above category (basically T-50-100ish aka too many to list).
Predatory schools - no big law/clerkships except for partner's child, they have horrible employment rates compared to debt, you'd be lucky to get a job in that region (Cooley, GGU, you all know the rest).
I agree that arguing about individual rankings/comparing those is often of very little use to applicants, but I don't necessarily think the public vs. private distinction is actually that valuable.