In the March 20, 2009, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education two separate references captured the same broad sentiment. First, in an article about Professor John C. Yoo’s “torture memos” (internal memos used by the Bush administration to support interrogation techniques that many experts classify as torture under international law), Berkeley’s law dean, Christopher Edley, said: �
Later, in an article about cheating and online “essay mills,” Professor Stephen I. Vladeck of American University’s law school, upon learning that one of his students had ordered a paper for his class, made the point that a law school “has a particular obligation not to tolerate this kind of stuff.” Thomas Bartlett, “Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply,” at p. A-1. �
Holding law schools to high standards makes sense, and few of us in legal education would argue otherwise. The real question, though, is the connection between this goal and the criteria used in the most influential rankings. �
In particular, I want to focus on the cluster of data used in the U.S. News ranking scheme to evaluate student selectivity. I question whether rankings supporters, particularly practicing lawyers, understand how these criteria operate in the real world of law school admissions. �
By taking account of selectivity criteria, U.S. News influences admissions behavior at law schools. This, in turn, affects who gets in to law school and, by �definition, who becomes the legal profession of the future. The question is how this influence plays out, and the implications it has for the legal profession. �
From the standpoint of student selectivity, the U.S. News ranking criteria are very simple:�
• What percentage of applicants was admitted? (Lower is better.)�
• What is the entering class median LSAT score? �
• What is the entering class median undergraduate GPA? �
Together, these factors make up 25 percent of a school’s overall ranking. In contrast to the vague reputational factors also used in the ranking, there is a certain pristine quality to these criteria: They’re numbers, they’re verifiable, and within limits, they’re relevant. But, do they adequately measure the criteria that the practicing bar values? And what sort of incentives do they create for law school admissions behavior? �
These are important questions, and they warrant some special attention to how these ranking criteria affect the “gate-keeping” function of American law schools. �
Looking at these criteria from the standpoint of student selectivity, the rankings reward a school for four things: maximizing application volume, minimizing offers of admission, maximizing the median entering class LSAT score, and maximizing the median entering class undergraduate grade point average. �The LSAT and GPA measures count the most. �
The rankings take no account of other admission factors. There is nothing about where degrees were earned; nothing about grading standards of schools or programs; nothing about whether applicants ever spent time outside the �library as a student. �There is also nothing about graduate work or community service or work experience; nothing about communication skills; nothing about leadership, resilience or passion. �
So, if you’re a law school in an academic ecosystem that has completely assimilated the rankings, how might �you structure your admissions process and decisions to take advantage �of the system? �
To increase your application volume, you might spend more on recruitment and outreach efforts. You might increase your travel budget or encourage reluctant applicants to apply by waiving your application fees. �
To lower the number of offers you make (remember, fewer offers mean higher selectivity), you might try to pre-screen applicants based on an assessment of how likely they are to accept your offer. If they are likely to get into higher-ranked schools, you could make them jump over an extra hurdle or even put them on a waiting list to test �their commitment before you’ll make them an offer. �
Of course, there are direct and possibly substantial costs to these kinds of �decisions, but since they’re �aimed specifically at the proportion-of-applicants-accepted ranking criterion, and since they will have little if any effect on the quality of an entering �class, they’re worth it from�a rankings perspective.�
Now what about the selection criteria themselves? Since the LSAT and GPA medians are the major criteria involved in assessing student selectivity, your focus will trend toward them. You will certainly deemphasize factors like work experience, graduate school, grade trends and letters of recommendation. Soft factors, like leadership or people skills, are very likely to go since they are the hardest and most time-intensive to tease out of an application anyway. �
To raise medians you might decide to trade off high LSATs with low GPAs and vice versa. You might also decide to look at undergraduate GPAs in a vacuum, (i.e., ignore contextual factors like where it was earned, relevance or difficulty of the major, etc.). You might reduce the size of your entering class, but make up for it with part-time, transfer, or graduate students who are not counted for rankings purposes. �
There are no direct costs to these approaches. In fact, if a school were to focus only on numerical credentials in assessing academic potential, it would actually reduce the costs associated with judging “soft,” more subjective criteria. These costs savings, in turn, could help pay for the relatively expensive steps that have been taken to increase application volume and decrease offers. But, in the fully rankings-assimilated school, you would not stop there.�
Ranking-focused strategic behavior would also affect decisions about allocating financial aid, because this will affect how many offers you have to make and the numerical profile of your entering class. �
In a rankings driven process, need-based financial aid would definitely �take a back seat, because it involves a high cost for very little direct, rankings-related return. Merit-�based aid, particularly with �merit defined as high test scores and GPAs, would�become the preferred allocation method. Carefully targeted merit aid can both lower the number of offers a school would have to make and raise the academic credentials of those who decide to accept an offer of admission.�
Does all of this sound like pure conjecture? Think again. The things I have been talking about are “rational” behavior in response to a powerful set of incentives, and they are happening in law schools across the country today. �
This is not to say that every school engages in all �these behaviors, but the �trends are real, and because the rankings culture is �now so ingrained, schools sometimes no longer have the institutional memory to recall that it hasn’t always been this way. �
Is this good for the profession? The anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. �
Over the years, I can’t tell you how many very successful members of the bar have regaled me with stories of “their” dean of admissions, who took a chance on them even though they had a miserable LSAT score or had to work full-time as a student (thus limiting their GPA). I have received countless calls from lawyers who want to point out that this or that current applicant has the “right stuff,” contrary to what his or her grades and test scores might indicate. �
Even empirical evidence is showing that numerical credentials and professional success are not strongly correlated. Yet the U.S. News ranking scheme creates incentives that point law schools in precisely the other direction.�
So, what to do? The rankings are clearly here to stay, and appeals from law school administrators like me to change the criteria are routinely dismissed as self-serving. But at least do me this favor. Next time you’re ready to applaud the U.S. News rankings, put your hands back in your pockets.�
While law schools and �legal education rightly are held to high standards, the U.S. News ranking criteria push schools toward strategies that, over time, tend to deemphasize the subtle but important non-numerical attributes of merit that often define success in the legal profession. �
Instead, they favor the diversion of scarce selection resources toward manipulation of the application process and toward devices aimed purely at raising the raw numerical credentials of an entering class. This ends up devaluing motivation, resilience, leadership, judgment and the many other soft factors that often define the difference between the good and the great members of our profession.
Richard D. Geiger, associate dean, enrollment and communications, at Cornell Law School, is a former chair of the Law School Admission Council.
