Updates to One Law School's Ranking Data

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Both employment numbers are gamed by many schools, especially the 'top' schools, who are the most competitive regarding their rankings. I have heard from insiders at Northwestern for at least a decade that it has gamed these statistics, among many others (eg, by offering second-year admission rather than first-year admission to beginning students with lower statistics (who are told to go someewhere else for their first year) and accepting many additional transfers into the second year, in order to keep its first-year statistics high--why doesn't US News use the admission statistics for the entire student body, rather than only the first-year class?), and an alumnus of Duke told me that his firm and other firms with Duke alumni had received letters from Duke this past year offering to pay the salaries of Duke grads if the firms would hire them. Not surprisingly, Duke reports 100 percent employment.

Jon Meredith of TX 9:59AM May 14, 2010

Mr. Morse,
I trust you received my two notes, the first on April 30th and the second on May 5th. As stated in those emails, I write to provide clarification on this matter, and then put the issue to rest.
Alabama Law completed and submitted the most recent U.S. News survey in October 2009. U.S. News sent back to us a verification questionnaire in December 2009. We updated and verified the data before submitting it back to U.S. News in January 2010. The fax confirmation shows January 14th, to be exact, which is three months before the 2011 rankings were completed and published.
Sure, we were surprised and disappointed that the law school’s 2011 ranking was calculated using an at-graduation employment figure nearly 30 points lower than the actual number. But we understand the error was unintentional and believe there is little value in pursuing this further.
Aaron V. Latham
Director of Communications
The University of Alabama School of Law

Aaron V. Latham of AL 1:26PM May 12, 2010

Mr. Morse/U.S. News -
I implore you to please eliminate this category all together. It is rife with falsehood and deception. Since this catergory is not part of the ABA reporting data, law schools are taking liberties in reporting that are outright false, and harmful to prospective students.
I am currently pursuing several investigative journalists with the hopes of a major expose in this area. The goal will be to interview graduates and compare what they said they reported versus what schools reported to you.
In the mean time, might you consider shifting the weight afforded to this harmful, uncessecary and deceptive category to something that measures output quality like, say, bar pass rate?
Please act, Mr. Morse. This is a major issue, particularly in the current ecomomic environment!!!

billybean of NY 4:13PM April 30, 2010