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<p>Could be something more pernicious going on here. Brian Leiter, a legal scholar who follows the USN law school rankings quite closely, claims that over time law school PA scores have moved closer to overall USN rankings. He attributes this to the dominance of the USN rankings in the academy’s own contemporary understanding of its pecking order, so there’s just a self-reinforcing “echo” effect: academics and administrators follow the USN rankings, that shapes their own understanding of which schools are more prestigious, and that in turn shapes their answers to the PA questionnaire, so the USN rankings reinforce themselves over time.</p>
<p>I think this effect may not be quite as pronounced with undergrad institutions, because some schools with very high PA scores like Michigan and Berkeley fall much lower in the overall USN rankings, while some privates with lower PA scores rank higher in the overall rankings due to higher median SATs, greater selectivity, more money, etc. But it would be interesting to compare the movement of USN rankings and PA scores over time to see if there’s been the kind of “echo” convergence that Leiter describes.</p>