US News

I purposely waited until official publication to comment on this year's US News World Report's law school ranking.

I am bent towards attending the University of Chicago Law School, so obviously I was a tad bit surprised and upset to see NYU ranked 4th and UPenn ranked 6th (the same as Chicago).

However, consider these facts (as reported by US News):
LSAT (Median)/GPA(Median)
Chicago: 171/3.66
Columbia: 172/3.7
NYU: 170/3.75
Penn: 170/3.7

Acceptance Rate
Chicago: 16%
Columbia: 15%
NYU: 21%
Penn: 16%

% in Academia/% Judicial Clerks/% in non-law Business
Chicago: 2/21/2.5
Columbia: 0/14.2/0.5
NYU: 0/12/0.5
Penn: 1/12.4/1.3

Based on these numbers it would seem that Columbia and Chicago are ahead of NYU and Penn. So I've done some searching and asking to find what bumped NYU ahead of Columbia and Penn up to Chicago's level. It was obvious to me that US News rankings are not determined by what pre-law students on discussion boards perceive to be purely test scores, employment numbers and/or acceptance rates (because based on these alone the current US News results are clearly questionable).

Prof. Theodore P. Seto, a Harvard Law grad teaching at Loyola Law School, has recently researched and written in depth on this topic. His inquiry started much the same way I'm beginning to question US News rankings - namely by taking it personally. His studies adequately answered my questions.

Simply put, the current US News methodology is not a perfect system. Prof. Seto does quite a thorough job at breaking it down.

FYI, I endore Prof. Seto's results, which BTW does not favor Chicago over the schools mentioned above. This is my feeble attempt to remain objective =)