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Students Say Rankings Aren't Most Important Factor in College Decision
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2011 Comment (4)Once again, social science research is refuting the often-cited myth that U.S. News's Best Colleges rankings are the main reason that the average student chooses one school over another. That conclusion comes from UCLA's just-released "The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010," a highly respected national survey based on the responses of 201,818 students at 279 U.S. colleges and universities.
The UCLA survey asks students to rate which factors were "very important" in influencing their decision to attend a particular college. Incoming fall 2010 freshmen could choose as many of the 22 reasons listed as they wanted. The college rankings finished in 11th place, up from 12th place in last year's survey. So, at least based on this nationwide sample of freshmen from all types of colleges, students are using the rankings responsibly—as just one factor in the college search process.
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LSAT Will Still Be Weighted Heavily in Law School Rankings
Tweet Share on Facebook January 20, 2011 Comment (6)There are serious discussions underway in the legal education community about whether the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), which is now a mandatory requirement for admission to law school, will become a voluntary requirement. An American Bar Association (ABA) committee is considering proposing changes to the ABA's current law school accreditation standards that would allow law schools to make the LSAT optional.
This potential change is a long way from happening, since the committee has to make its final report, and then the full Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar would have to make any final decision on an accreditation rule change. The earliest time such a decision could be made by the ABA would be in 2012 or even later. So, it could be a few years away before law schools potentially change their admissions policies for incoming students.
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U.S. News Challenges ABA on Law School Employment Data Standards
Tweet Share on Facebook January 13, 2011 Comment (9)A recent story in The New York Times, "Is Law School a Losing Game?" is creating a great deal of buzz in the legal community, at law schools, and among current and prospective law school students—particularly about the implications of poor job prospects for newly minted law school grads.
There have been ongoing questions of the validity of employment statistics that some law schools annually report to the American Bar Association (ABA) for accreditation purposes, the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), and then to U.S. News, which uses these same employment statistics in the Best Law Schools rankings. In the Times article, I am quoted as saying "it would be preferable if the ABA took a leadership role" in demanding better data from law schools.
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Last Call for College Photos
Tweet Share on Facebook January 10, 2011 CommentSchool officials: This is your last chance to submit photos of your college or university for inclusion in the new and improved Education section of usnews.com. More than 500 schools have already submitted photos of campus buildings, student life, and more. The photos will be added to each school's Web page on usnews.com in the coming weeks—and there are still two more days to ensure your school's page has photos, too. The deadline to submit photos is Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011.
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Undergrad Business Rankings Have Positive Effect on B-Schools
Tweet Share on Facebook January 6, 2011 Comment (1)The U.S. News undergraduate business school rankings are having a number of "very positive outcomes that can favorably affect the nature of undergraduate business programs." That is one key conclusion from "Behind the Curtain of the Beauty Pageant: An Investigation of U.S. News Undergraduate Business Program Rankings," a 2010 dissertation by Pam Perry, Associate Dean and Director, Undergraduate Programs at the University of Arizona Eller College of Management.
Perry's paper analyzed the U.S. News undergraduate business school rankings to determine what impact they were having on business education. It joins a rapidly expanding body of literature on college and business school rankings that analyzes the impact the rankings have on colleges, universities, prospective students, and their parents.
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