Law Schools Hatch Rebellion
Against U.S. News Rankings

Group of Law Schools Weighs Plan
To Deny LSAT Scores to Magazine

By DANIEL GOLDEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

For years, college and university administrators have griped about the influential U.S. News & World Report rankings of their institutions. Among their complaints: The magazine's standings stoke the competitive frenzy over college admissions and inflate the importance of applicants' test scores.

Now, one realm of higher education is hatching a rebellion that would deprive the magazine of key data used in its rankings. Under a concept being developed by the Law School Admission Council, a nonprofit organization of 185 U.S. law schools and 15 in Canada that administers the Law School Admission Test, member schools would no longer be told the actual LSAT scores of their applicants -- and so couldn't provide schoolwide scores to the magazine.

Under the proposed change, when a law school asks the council for an applicant's LSAT score, the council would disclose only how that student's score ranks among all the school's applicants. For example, it might say that the student's score was in the 63rd percentile of applicants, or in the 55th percentile of students whom the school admitted the previous year. But the council wouldn't divulge the applicant's individual score.

The change "would take some pressure off the use of this test in the admissions process, which we believe is desirable," says admission council President Philip Shelton. As a result, he contends, LSAT scores would fade in importance for admissions compared with other credentials, such as grades and leadership ability.

TOP TIER

The top-ranked law schools by U.S. News & World Report and their 25th and 75th percentile LSAT scores:*

School 25th 75th
Yale 168 174
Stanford 165 170
Harvard 167 172
Columbia 166 172
NYU 167 172
*Out of school's entering class; top score is 180

 

Some law schools in the past decided not to give the magazine their scores, but the practice wasn't widespread and so didn't prevent the magazine from using the LSATs in its rankings, Mr. Shelton says. It's "not realistic" for all 185 U.S. schools, which are competitors, to agree not to supply the magazine their scores, so the council decided it was the best vehicle for such action, he says.

Robert Morse, U.S. News director of data research, describes the proposal as "beyond revolutionary" and says it could hurt schools and applicants by denying them information they need to compare themselves with competitors.

Nearly every law school requires applicants to take the LSAT, which measures reading comprehension as well as reasoning ability and is scored on a 120-180 scale. In 2001-2002, the council administered 134,251 LSAT tests to more than 100,000 students; about 20% of students take it twice. Once a school receives an application, it contacts the council for the applicant's score.

Currently, law schools supply U.S. News with the median LSAT scores of their entering class, along with the 25th percentile and 75th percentile scores of these students. U.S. News says the median scores -- which it doesn't publish -- count for half of a school's "student selectivity" rating in the magazine's list and 12.5% of its overall grade. Other factors include academic reputation, undergraduate grade-point average, job placement rate, student/teacher ratio and per-student spending.

But a 1998 study commissioned by the Association of American Law Schools concluded that LSAT scores and academic reputation together account for "virtually all of the differences" in the magazine's ranking of schools and that 90% of the standings could be "explained solely by the median LSAT score."

Mr. Shelton says that many law schools, feeling "real pressure to get themselves ranked as highly as possible by U.S. News," have given "undue emphasis" in admissions to LSAT scores, which he says help predict first-year grades in law school but not much else. Law schools around the country have employed a variety of strategems that appear designed to boost LSAT scores for U.S. News purposes, such as admitting fewer applicants, or shifting students with low LSAT scores into night-school programs that aren't counted in the rankings.

The LSAT's dominance in admissions decisions became part of popular culture with the 2001 comedy "Legally Blonde," in which Harvard Law School graybeards accept a fashion-merchandising major because of her bathing-suit video and her impressive LSAT score of 179.

"The prestige U.S. News has in the minds of applicants, alumni and even some law school faculty and administrators is unfortunate, because it is just a magazine, and a magazine predominantly focused on a single number, the LSAT," says Genita C. Robinson, former dean of admissions at the University of Chicago law school.

More than 170 of the country's 185 law school deans have endorsed a statement, posted on the admissions council's Web site, that denounces the U.S. News rankings as "arbitrary" and urges applicants to "minimize the influence of rankings on your own judgment."

David Van Zandt, dean of Northwestern University law school, is one of the few dissenters. He contends that the magazine's list is valuable to anyone trying to make an informed choice about law school. (His school is ranked 11th by U.S. News.) "The answer is not to shut off the information," Mr. Van Zandt says. "The answer is for all of us to do a better job of marketing to students why they should come to our schools."

The magazine's Mr. Morse says admissions deans and applicants need national data, not just school-specific information. "How are students supposed to know they even have a chance of getting into Harvard or Stanford or if they're wasting their time?" he asked.

Joseph Hoffman, an Indiana University law professor who has studied the U.S. News methodology, says he's worried that, without the median LSAT scores, the magazine rankings would become "even less logical" than they are today. "If this doesn't kill the rankings, it might make them worse," he says.

A year ago, the council appointed a group headed by Richard Geiger, dean of admissions at Cornell University's law school, to brainstorm ways of reducing the reliance on the LSATs. Mr. Geiger describes the plan that resulted, which includes the new way of handling LSAT scores, as "a solution that seems to have wheels."

Mr. Shelton says the plan is still "embryonic," and would require approval from the council's 18-member board. Among unresolved questions are whether the applicant would be told his or her numerical score, and whether participation in the plan would be compulsory for all law schools. At the very least, he says, "some solid number" of the nation's top 25 law schools would have to buy into the idea for it to succeed. If all goes well, he says, the council, based in Newtown, Pa., would test the plan on a sample of students entering law school in 2004, and then implement it for 2005.

Since whites significantly outscore minorities on the LSAT, Mr. Shelton adds, law schools that de-emphasize the test would also have the "flexibility" to admit more minorities -- pending the outcome of a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on the legality of race preferences at the University of Michigan law school.