Law School Diversity

To identify law schools where students are most likely to encounter classmates from different racial or ethnic groups, U.S. News has created a diversity index based on the total proportion of minority students—not including international students—and the mix of racial and ethnic groups on campus. The index is calculated using demographic data reflecting each law school's student body during the 2007-2008 academic year, including both full- and part-time students. The groups that form the basis for our calculations are African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and non-Hispanic whites. Our formula produces a diversity index that ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. The closer a school's number is to 1.0, the more diverse is the student population. Law schools that enroll a large proportion of students from one ethnic group, even if it is a minority group, don't score high in this index.

To be included in the table, a law school must be accredited by the American Bar Association. Because student-body ethnic diversity data are not consistently compiled and reported as yet for other types of graduate schools, U.S. News has prepared a diversity table for law schools only.

Note: The diversity index is based on ethnicity data collected by U.S. News from each law school. The methodology used to compute the index was published in a 1992 article by Philip Meyer and Shawn McIntosh in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. For this index, students classified as ethnicity unknown/unreported were counted as white.