I think rather top students who want to go into government work, academia or other public service tend to gravitate to YLS. Also, as you point out, the YLS class is small, so while a roughly equal number of students might get prestigious clerkships from YLS as HLS, the percentage and perception comes off differently. All three HYS law school grads were on the same apex “tier” when we recruited and hired starting associates.
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Of course, the ranking of your law school is mostly related to your achievements as a college undergraduate and your ability and willingness to pay and/or borrow. Kind of like the ranking of your college is mostly related to your achievements as a high school student and your parents’ ability and willingness to pay and/or borrow.
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If I follow your post, YLS graduates don’t only make more money, but they are also better human beings too because a few of their classmates clerk for a federal judge before going to DC or New York to make millions.
Either the rankings matter or they don’t. Yale fanboys can’t have it both ways.
The implication of Gerken’s letter is clear. If a law school cooperates with US News and World Report, that law school is not only deceiving its students but also is against equity and is possibly even discriminating against people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The arrogance of this man is astounding.
If Yale sincerely felt that participating in the rankings was not appropriate for them, they could simply stop participating. Instead, Gerken’s pens a self-righteous screed that insults every other law school, and by extension their students and graduates, in the most pretentious and privileged way possible.
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Where did I say they make more money? That is in fact not my experience. Not all of us measure outcomes in financial terms.
I hope more schools will follow. The USNR ranking had its value (there was a demand), but many years later, at the current state, I think the impact is negative to the society.
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I am curious, since the term was first utilized in 1985, do you think the concept of a “Public Ivy” is also negative to society?
Elie Mystal wrote an article about this
In that article, he linked to an alternate ranking of law schools that he had previously helped develop. I am not involved in law at all, but found that ranking interesting.
When I was the executive editor of Above the Law , I helped create an alternative law school ranking, which focused on publicly available student outputs. The most recent version of that project doesn’t rank Yale or Harvard in the top 10.)
The “Ivy League” is an athletic conference in the northeast, which includes 8 private colleges in the northeast that have some shared characteristics. I assume you are referring to a book that was published in 1985 which listed 8 public college groups that the author claims shared some characteristics with Ivy League private colleges, including colleges like U Vermont and Miami. I expect including the term “public Ivy” in the book title was primarily a gimmick, with hopes it would increase book sales. Whether U Vermont or Miami are similar to Brown and Dartmouth depends on what criteria you are using to evaluate. In short it’s a matter of opinion.
I wouldn’t say the term “Public Ivy” inherently negative to society. It’s more that the term is meaningless. The term could have negative consequences, if someone chose to attend a college because it appeared on an arbitrarily selected list of “public Ivies”, “little Ivies”, “hidden Ivies”, “Black Ivies”, “Jesuit Ivies”, "southern Ivies, etc. However, such lists are unlikely to have the same influence as USNWR. USNWR lists may be equally arbitrary. However, colleges as a whole care about their USNWR ranking, and some colleges change policies to improve USNWR ranking, even if doing so is bad for students and the quality of the college.
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Georgetown has also dropped USN support, and Columbia Law “is carefully considering” the situation:
Problem solved.
I wonder if medical schools will also eliminate the MCAT requirement. Increases their elbow room to operate in a post SCOTUS decision world.
The ABA previously required that all applicants to ABA approved law schools must take an admission test. The ABA also sets various other admission requirements at ABA approved law schools , some of which are listed at https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/misc/legal_education/Standards/2013_2014_standards_chapter5.authcheckdam.pdf . Med schools do not have such a requirement, with an external organization mandating admission tests. A good number of med schools already offer paths to admission without taking MCAT.
Seems like this is saying the quiet thing out loud:
“In the grand scheme of things, folks of color perform less well on the LSAT than not, and for that reason, I think we are headed in the right direction,” Leo Martinez, an ABA council member and dean emeritus at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, said at the meeting. “I am sympathetic that it gives people like me a chance.”
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Getting rid of the MCAT requirement by medical schools would essentially be a tacit admission that the prerequisite pre-med courses are essentially meaningless.
Considering that, in many other countries, medical school does not have a prerequisite of a bachelor’s degree, would it be fair to say that the requirement for such in the US for medical school is mostly for the purpose of being an additional barrier to entry and weed out process? Would the same be the case for law school in the US?
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This is a controversial topic in the US.
It depends on which side of the divide you support.
The pre-med core foundation courses such as biology, chemistry, physics, and math are requirements in all other countries that I am familiar with; but they are often taken at a different time or level than in the US. For example, countries that admit from HS may emphasize grades/scores in HS biology, chemistry, physics, and math. Some countries have such courses as part of their first year medical school curriculum.
Rather than the differences in pre-med courses, I think the more noteworthy difference occurs in the numerous other non pre-med courses that are taken as part of a bachelor’s degree in US . Most countries I am familiar with don’t require taking several years of non pre-med college courses to become a doctor, and many would argue that such courses are not particularly relevant to become a doctor. Not requiring these non pre-med courses shortens the time to a medical degree. In many countries, it is common to complete a medical degree in 5 or 6 years after HS. 8+ years in the US is unusually long, compared to other countries.
Some countries that admit out of HS have a much higher failure rate than in the US, applying the “weeding” at a later stage. For example, it’s my understanding France has 85+% failure rate on PCEM, which determines who advances to 2nd year. In contrast, hardly anyone fails out of US med schools,
This tangent about deemphasizing scores in a post-COVID world is very different from deemphasizing USNWR rankings. USNWR rankings are based on a arbitrarily selected formula to determine “best” college with no verification or validation about whether the list is correct. USNWR can essentially choose whatever formula they want, to make whatever colleges they want appear towards the top. I expect such decisions about weighting have more to do with selling subscriptions and profitability than genuinely trying to determine what colleges are “best.”
In contrast, any meaningful admission test must have validation to determine if the test measures what it is supposed to measure. LSAT, MCAT, and all other major standardized tests do this type of validation. I’d expect colleges using such exams also have their own internal validation, which influences decisions about whether to use the tests and how much weight to apply them in admissions.
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