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Apparently U.S. News has decided to pretend that its botched rankings rollout never happened. That transparency is overrated, or at least, that it only applies to law schools, not to U.S. News. And that law schools are to blame for the rankings fiasco this year. Let's recap. On April 11th U.S. News posted a "preview" of the new law school rankings, including a list of the top 14 schools; it said the full list would be available April 18. This was likely an attempt to (1) preempt possible leaks,
After a long, winding, grueling path to get here, we finally have the 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. Here are the new rankings with +/-.
U.S. News' CEO Eric Gertler was part of a panel at Lafayette College on May 2nd. This blog focuses on what Mr. Gertler said about the U.S. News rankings—specifically, their relationship to the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
Just as the most tumultuous rankings season we have ever seen seemed to be settling, and U.S. News had both publicly released their top 14 law schools and the full embargoed rankings to all law schools, the following email was sent to deans.
A few months ago, many law schools announced they would boycott sending U.S. News direct (and non-third party audited) data, essentially forcing U.S. News to change their methodology. The rates of the admissions metrics were significantly reduced. What does this mean?
U.S. News has yet to publicly release the full 2023-2024 law school rankings, but today they released the Top 14 with their new methodology.
A recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out that U.S. News runs different permutations of the rankings before committing to one methodology. So we thought it might be interesting to explore what different results would look like from various methodologies in the upcoming edition, to be released in a few weeks. Because of the boycott U.S. News has announced that it plans to use publicly available data, e.g. information available through the American Bar Association. They will still use the
U.S. News & World Report is not sitting idle while its rankings come under fire. The CEO published an article in the Wall Street Journal offering his views on the rankings boycott. We have some thoughts.
U.S. News & World Report has sent the following letter to law schools regarding methodology changes for the upcoming 2023-2024 rankings. This comes in the wake of 20+ law schools announcing they will no longer submit their data for rankings purposes.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, we have our third and final interview with "John" (not his real name; u/Muvanji on Reddit), who we've followed throughout his law school admissions cycle for 2024-2025. John discusses his final decision on where to attend, his process of requesting scholarship reconsideration, his decision not to pursue waitlists, admitted students days, what he's looking forward to in law school, and his thoughts and reflections on the law school admissions process now that it's over.
Prior episodes with John:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike Spivey and Anna Hicks-Jaco have a conversation with Sarah Zearfoss (also known as "Dean Z"), who has long led the admissions office at the University of Michigan Law School as Senior Assistant Dean and who hosts the admissions podcast A2Z with Dean Z.
The group discusses using generative AI to write your essays vs. to research admissions advice (including asking ChatGPT a few admissions questions and critiquing its answers), the prospect of law schools using AI to evaluate applications, grade inflation (and how admissions officers saw it before open access to generative AI vs. now), application timing (and how early applications correlate to stronger admit rates without necessarily causing them), and more. Plus, Dean Z introduces a new question being added to Michigan Law's application this upcoming 2025-2026 cycle.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike discusses the various factors that are at play for this cycle's waitlist season, his predictions for how it will go, and his advice for waitlisted applicants. For more on waitlist strategy, check out our Waitlist Deep Dive podcast episode!
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode below.
