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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 podcast episode, Mike interviews the long-time Associate Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid at University of Chicago Law School, Ann Perry. Mike and Ann discuss admissions across multiple dimensions, including how admissions has changed over the past 20 years, typos in applications, when you should submit your applications (and what counts as "late"), how admissions offices set target medians, character and fitness, admissions pet peeves, and more.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Mike has a conversation with Dean Sarah Zearfoss (also known as "Dean Z") about a number of admissions topics, including the prevalence of bad admissions advice and how to identify and avoid it.
You can find Dean Z and much more admissions advice on her podcast, A2Z.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Mike speaks with long-time legal education reporter Karen Sloan about her experiences and stories and the future of the legal field.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Spivey Consulting's Derek Meeker — a former Penn Law Associate Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid — interviews Renee Post, Penn Law's current and long-standing Associate Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid. Derek and Dean Post walk through the components of the law school application, including the personal statement, resume, addenda, and Penn's "Core Strengths, Goals, and Values" essay, and they also discuss topics including joint degrees, the merits of going to law school straight from undergrad vs. getting full-time work experience, handling the stress of the admissions process, their craziest admissions stories, their favorite things about Philadelphia, and what gives some law school applicants that "it" factor.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, world-renowned author, speaker, teacher, and therapist Terry Real — who has been featured on Oprah, The Today Show, Good Morning America, and many more — discusses the emotional health hazards of grad school and law school and how to stay human during these stressful and highly evaluative periods of life. Law school can feel a lot like high school at times, and this is so often expressed by both students and faculty in terms of grandiosity — "I am superior to others because." Real speaks on how the field of psychology has focused so much on bringing people up that it has ignored the equal need to help bring people down from that superior position based on covert insecurity. In Real's words, "We are all born equal, no better or worse to the person to our left or right." For anyone who has had self-doubt in the law school admissions process, in law school, or in practicing law, this podcast offers an amazingly insightful message with advice toward reclaiming self-esteem from one of the world's very best.
Terry's first book, I Don't Want to Talk About It — in which he writes about treating and destigmatizing depression in a patriarchal society — has been a best-seller for over 20 years since it was first published in 1997. He has written two other books and has a new book coming out in March of next year, Us: How Moving Relationships Beyond You and Me Creates More Love, Passion, and Understanding.
For more from Terry, you can receive free access to his very popular interview with Carol Gillian, an internationally recognized ethicist and psychologist, by texting OPT IN to (415) 813-1025.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Mike has a conversation with our consultant Derek Meeker (former Dean of Admissions at Penn Law) and Sydney Montgomery (founder of S. Montgomery Admissions Consulting) about the role of diversity and adversity in law school admissions.
Derek's YouTube video on how to choose a personal statement topic was mentioned in this podcast; you can watch that video here.
You can listen to Sydney's podcast, "Break Into Law School," here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
