And we're back: Today's Random Musing involves my bewilderment at the steep plunge in my school's ranking. When I signed up for this gig, Ol' LUC was sitting at 70. There was some talk at admitted students day that we were primed for climbing, if not nationally, then at least regionally. Two years later, and we're down 21 spots. Three letters, two commas and one question mark sum up my dismay: W, T, F?BBLers, I look to you for advice-- what's a 2L who's on the verge of attending a TTT to do? What advice should I/We give my administration? What can be done?
[Ed. Note: I realize that some of the snobbier people in the world consider anything outside the T14 or T25 as "TTT." Notwithstanding that ATL commenters-esque definition, my concern is more with falling off the second page...]
Fred,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear that you are troubled by this. However, I really mean what I said in the original thread concerning these rankings. Namely, that they don't matter. Employers consider Loyola a top notch school and will continue to recruit there. These changes in the rankings are solely to sell magazines. How are other students at Loyola reacting?
Come on, Craig! Don't pretend like employers don't care about these rankings. They do! And, in this economy, non T-14'ers will be scrubbing the floors at McDonalds pretty soon. Even Penn isn't safe!! They're dropping too!
ReplyDeleteBS...GW was never safe....T14 is the only portion of the rankings anyone cares about anyway
ReplyDeleteWhat doeds this have to do with GW?
ReplyDeleteAdvice: make TUITION FREE or LOWER TUITION
ReplyDeleteAnn Levine has the right idea: http://www.lawschoolexpert.com/blog/2009/04/15/money-and-law-school-lower-tuition/
Free applications to lower admission %
ReplyDelete@ 3:16--
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the link; very interesting stuff. Do you really think that would work? I'd be curious to hear more on the idea.
A Sua Sponte commenter proposes..."gamesmanship":
ReplyDelete"First, create two law school — GW Law & National Law Center at the GWU (this can sep. admissions requirements and thus we can have one top 20 law school and one that falls elsewhere) with mutuality of resources — though we would claim adjuncts work for the lower scores school and full time faculty work for the limited # of those enrolled in the day program. The lesser school would simply “lease building space” from the hire ranked school. Of course, five years after graduation, graduates of the lower ranked school could request the records office to move the records into the higher ranked school thereby giving the school access to more potential endowment money.
Next, create the “Office of US News Ranking Boost Research” which will regularly hire people without jobs 8.5 months after graduation. Additionally, CDO hires a “Shingle Streamlining” aiding students in “putting out a shingle” aka becoming solo practitioners which in turn would increase the # employed at graduation.
Finally, stop telling US News the number of volumes in our library and start reporting it as “infinite” in recognition of the ever growing Westlaw and Lexis databases.
Maybe I’ll have more ideas soon. Maybe not. All I know is the value of my degree just dropped 40%."
To clarify, it's clear the commenter I posted the thoughts of is being tongue-in-cheek, but this is still the type of things (albeit, not to this extreme) schools do (and will continue to do) to game the rankings. Which begs the question, I guess, as to why we care what the rankings say anyway--if we do...
ReplyDeleteRankings certainly do matter. Anything outside of the T-14 is not worth attending.
ReplyDelete@ 11:48--
ReplyDeleteI respectfully disagree.