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U.S. News & World Report 2020 Undergraduate Rankings (released 2019).
As many of you know, we have spent the past several months developing a tool for prospective law school applicants to create their own customized law school rankings.
These scores should be thought of as not leading the rankings but being led by the rankings.
Learn how to make your own custom law school rankings.
The U.S. News & World Report law school rankings have changed quite a bit over the years. In 1987, the methodology included just one metric—the percentage of law school deans who ranked the school, in their subjective estimation, as a "top 10 law school." See below the resulting top 20. As a bonus, you can also see what tuition rates looked like in 1987—the highest figure of which is under $14,000 (Columbia), and the lowest of which is just $4,500 (UT Austin—which is out-of-state) (note that all
Introduction We were asked to write about choosing between a T14 school at sticker (full tuition) versus a T20 to T30 school with merit aid. The below constitutes our best stab at that, but please keep in mind that, as always, these are arbitrary cutoff points based on one flawed rankings system and not designed for you as an individual. Point being that a school ranked 18 may be much more valuable to you for any number of reasons that a school ranked 13, etc. If you want to read or watch more
This is an applicant question, and a timely one due to the recent USNWR rankings release and upcoming seat deposit deadlines. The applicant asking the question, I believe, uses “desperate” to mean, will a school that just dropped in the rankings suffer applicant pool consequences and thus need to go deeper into their own pool to admit? I will get to that a bit later in this post (and there is available data that anyone could look up by looking at schools that have dropped in the rankings in past
Please note, at the request of USNWR we have decided to take down this year's rankings. As a firm, we will always seek to give applicants critical information to help them with important and time-sensitive decisions. Going forward, we will be even more active on this blog in giving advice and value-added information. We will continue to break various rankings, admissions cycle numbers, future admissions cycle predictions, and employment numbers via our Twitter account [https://twitter.com/Spi
Five failures of the rankings, by Law School Transparency founder Kyle McEntee.
In this episode of the Status Check with Spivey, Mike has the opportunity to have a conversation with Lauryn Williams, four-time Olympic athlete and financial advisor with a specialty in student loans. In addition to discussing Lauryn's life and experiences as an Olympian, they also talk about the differences between taking out student loans for undergrad vs. for law school, income-driven repayment plans, public service loan forgiveness (PSLF), how to save for retirement while paying off your student loans (and the perhaps surprising tax benefits of doing so), and more.
As an Olympic sprinter and later bobsledder, Lauryn earned the accolade of being the only American woman to have won medals in both the summer and the winter Olympics. Today, she is a financial advisor, student loan expert, author, and podcaster specializing in improving financial literacy in young people and athletes. Lauryn's book, The Oval Office, is out now, and also be sure to check out the Student Loan Planner podcast and the podcast Lauryn hosts, Worth Listening.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
Mike also references the legal field's bimodal starting salary distribution in this podcast. See below (via NALP):
In this podcast, Mike Spivey is joined by PowerScore founder and CEO Dave Killoran and Spivey Consulting Business Intelligence Director Justin Kane — a wonky law school admissions/LSAT crew if there has ever been one! — to discuss takeaways from this previous 2020-2021 admissions cycle and to make predictions for the upcoming 2021-2022 cycle.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this podcast, Spivey Consulting COO Anna Hicks asks Mike some admissions questions from Reddit, covering large-scale changes to law school admissions due to the pandemic, reapplication strategies, how law schools look at "KJDs," whether or not you should explain why you want to go to law school in your personal statement, how to write Why X statements when you can't visit a law school and don't know anyone who attended, and more.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
We mentioned a number of other blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos in this podcast — they are linked below:
In this podcast, Spivey Consulting COO Anna Hicks goes over the basics of law school admissions for those who are at the beginning of their application process and don't know much about how it works yet.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
This episode is meant to provide context and a basis on which you can expand your research — here are some further resources you may want to check out next, many of which were mentioned in the podcast!
Basic Law School Information & Rankings
Personal Statements
Diversity Statements
Other Application Components
After You Submit Your Applications
Other Concepts Discussed in this Podcast
In this podcast, Mike interviews Clint Schumacher — author, podcaster, and former biglaw hiring partner — on resilience in the legal profession, imposter syndrome in law school, what hiring partners look for in applicants, and more.
Clint spent the first part of his legal career at Locke Lord, where he went on to be a hiring partner, then transitioned to Dawson & Sodd, a boutique firm with a focus on eminent domain. In addition to his legal practice, Clint hosts a podcast, The Eminent Domain Podcast, and recently published a book about resilience and overcoming adversity, Second Wind.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this podcast, Mike provides a brief recap of the historic last cycle (2020–2021) as well as the short version of our best predictions for what's to come this cycle (2021–2022). If you'd like a longer and more in-depth discussion of these topics, please listen to our full podcast on these topics, "Recapping the 2020-2021 Law School Admissions Cycle & Predicting the Upcoming Cycle" (featuring Spivey Consulting's data wonk Justin Kane and PowerScore CEO Dave Killoran).
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
