<p>
[quote]
Did you really read the rest of the website, Xanatos?</p>
<p>Check their disclaimer:</p>
<p>Yeah, it is a joke. But it is a sad joke carries much weight.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's why I asked you...it sounded like you took the site seriously.</p>
<p>RYC is a perfect example of how a lie can reveal the truth. How pretending explains reality.</p>
<p>I think what would be more helpful, constructive, and instructive for people trying to figure out which school is right for them is to give solid information based on facts/data pertaining to the subject discussed. If you have the time to throw about rankings, you should put the time into researching how a school is supposedly better than or worse than _____ school. (I know Carolyn puts in the time.) Throwing out school names recited from a ranking (which is often based on inconsequential data) doesn't spell out the types of majors/minors a school has, strengths and weaknesses, areas of concentration, special programs, and interdisciplinary studies within/across majors, types of classes and instructors, and commitment to teaching vs. research.</p>
<p>Globalist, many people find it easier to find and argue rankings rather than do substantive investigation you suggest; it takes more work, more actual thinking.</p>
<p>Reliable L-school rankings</p>
<p><a href="http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/b...onal.html#_ftn1%5B/url%5D">http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/b...onal.html#_ftn1</a>
This study aims to assess which of the top schools have the most national placement, as measured by hiring by elite law firms around the country. This study proceeds on the assumption that national law schools (1) place large numbers of graduates at the best firms, and (2) place graduates at the best firms throughout the nation.</p>
<p>We studied the usual suspects for the top law schoolsYale, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Michigan, Virginia, Texas, Penn, Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern, Duke--plus two schools on the cusp of this elite group, Vanderbilt and UCLA. [1] As a check on the reliability of the results, we added five very reputable, but presumably less national schools: Emory University, Washington & Lee University, University of Notre Dame, University of Minnesota, and George Washington University.</p>
<p>To identify elite law firms, we used the Vault Guide to the Top 100 Law Firms, including the 23 best of the rest identified by Vault, top firms that didnt make the top 100 (see <a href="http://www.vault.com/nr/lawrankings...id=242&top100=1%5B/url%5D">http://www.vault.com/nr/lawrankings...id=242&top100=1</a>). In order to assess national placement power, we had to have a genuinely national sample. Therefore, we studied only the top 3 firms in each city/region-- where there were at least three on the Vault list. (The primary failing of the well-known American Lawyer study of hiring by the AMLAW 100 firms was that the sample was not national, with nearly one-third of the firms in New York City and more than two-thirds of the firms on the list in the Northeast corridor. AMLAW 100 is informative as to job placement in New York and the Northeast, but says nothing about national placement power.)</p>
<p>Rank Based on Per Capita Score for Elite Firm Placement</p>
<p>Rank School Per Capita Value
1
University of Chicago
2.28</p>
<p>2
Harvard University
2.11</p>
<p>3
Yale University
1.90</p>
<p>4
University of Virginia
1.50</p>
<p>5
Stanford University
1.41</p>
<p>6
University of Michigan
1.25</p>
<p>University of Pennsylvania
1.24</p>
<p>8
Columbia University
1.10</p>
<p>9
Duke University
1.02</p>
<p>10
University of Texas, Austin
0.92</p>
<p>11
Northwestern University
0.84</p>
<p>Univ. of California, Berkeley
0.85</p>
<p>13
Univ. of California, Los Angeles
0.78</p>
<p>14
Cornell University
0.73</p>
<p>New York University
0.73</p>
<p>Vanderbilt University
0.73</p>
<p>and this is about West Coast</p>
<p>The Most National Law School Based on Job Placement in Elite Law Firms
(West Coast CA+WA+ORE)</p>
<p>1 Harvard 320</p>
<p>2 Boalt 216 </p>
<p>3 UCLA 213 </p>
<p>4 Stanford 188 </p>
<p>5 GTown 187 </p>
<p>6 Columbia 150 </p>
<p>7 Michi 149 </p>
<p>8 NYU 148 </p>
<p>9 Yale 124</p>
<p>10 Chicago 115</p>
<p>Although the NBER revealed preference ranking seems to strike a lot of people on this board as exotic and therefore questionable, it's a fairly elementary application of applied economics that a first year grad student would not question. What seems to make so many people uncomfortable is the extraordinary proposition that the schools that individuals actually choose (the basis of the NBER ranking) turn out to be the ones that everyone thought were the best until USNews came up with their bogus, easily gamed system some years ago. To those of you living under the illusion that Duke is the number 6 school in the US and Wash U is 11, my advice is to get over it.</p>
<p>Hmmm, let's see. Harvard, Yale, UC Riverside... What a great ranking system.</p>
<p>Regarding application of applied economics: </p>
<p>Three people--an engineer, a physicist, and an economist--were trapped on a desert island with nothing to eat but a crate of canned pineapple.</p>
<p>The engineer bangs a can against the rock.</p>
<p>The physicist sharpens a stick on a piece of coral and attempts to puncture the can.</p>
<p>The economist assumes that the can is open.</p>
<p>So endeth the first lesson.</p>