Has anybody got a clue?

Thanks & cheers

Somewhere on the US News website it says April 23rd.
This is really peculiar as most students will have chosen their university at this time.

<blockquote>Has anybody got a clue?

Thanks & cheers</blockquote>

23 April

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2009/3/5/the-grad-school-rankings-are-coming-soon.html

<blockquote>Somewhere on the US News website it says April 23rd.
This is really peculiar as most students will have chosen their university at this time.</blockquote>

That is actually part of the reason. In previous years some graduate students (including a number of JD's) have awaited the publication of the rankings and then based their final choice on them and thus resulting in a number of JD's and other grad students changing their decision in the last minute. This, of course, creates a lot of hassle for the graduate schools and they have complained about it for a number of years. It seems that US News has listened this time.

The "official" reason for the new date of the publication of the rankings is that they now factor in the numbers pertaining to the part-time students, which apparently takes som extra time.

Let's all hope our schools retain the same ranking and don't drop out of the top 10 :)

<blockquote>Let's all hope our schools retain the same ranking and don't drop out of the top 10 :)</blockquote>

Which school are you going to?

The only school that is rumoured to take a big hit in the rankings is GULC (due to their high number of part-time students).

UVA. It hasn't left top 10 ever (except one year in 1994), so I hope it doesn't do so now :p

<blockquote>The only school that is rumoured to take a big hit in the rankings is GULC (due to their high number of part-time students).</blockquote>

Last I heard, USNews decided to do a new, separate, ranking for Part-time JD programs.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2009/1/16/finishing-up-the-new-grad-school-rankings.html?s_cid=rss:college-rankings-blog:finishing-up-the-new-grad-school-rankings
Georgetown will probably rank first in it. And the "main" law schools ranking should remain unaffected.

Given the new position of Washington DC in light of the financial crisis and Obama's election, Washington DC has become the new hot place to be in. Many law school applicants have actually been declining offers from higher ranked schools to study in DC. And this trend will probably continue for at least the next two years, unless Obama makes a major mistake and everybody suddenly starts hating "DC and its stupid administration".

This should actually raise Georgetown's ranking. I'd honestly be surprised if it drops.
Applications to the law center have increased by 11% (vs 2% nation-wide, 20% at UVA, 8% at Yale and 4% at Duke, source:
http://www.thehoya.com/node/18480
That's the highest applicants/spots ratio in GULC's history. In all logic this must have led the admission committee to be even more selective than before. And its ranking should at least remain the same if not increase as a result.

And even if part-time students were included, I'm not even certain its ranking would drop: I wouldn't be surprised if GULC changed its admission policy for part-time applicants in anticipation to match their LSAT/GPA standards of its full-time program.

Before, they'd admit students with lower LSAT and GPA emphasizing on other criteria such as maturity, work experience and undergraduate studies in unusual fields to bring more diversity.
In the current US News dictated system, a 21 year old genius with 0 social skills but 180 LSAT is admitted to Yale. I've nothing against this, he deserves it. I'm just saying that it was good to have part-time programs that act as "breathing rooms", taking into account other parameters than simply LSAT/GPA. And don't forget, GULC's part-time program existed before US News ranking.

And please, we should all ease-up the ranking obession. There are Yale graduates who are utter morons, failing the bar three times in a row, being fired by every law firm they join, and still getting interviews/job offers because of this ranking-obsession. I'm not certain that's the healthiest of systems for our profession.

You're totally right we can't be obsessed by rankings, but it's always nicer to tell on job interviews you've been in a top ten school than a top twelve :)

<blockquote>You're totally right we can't be obsessed by rankings, but it's always nicer to tell on job interviews you've been in a top ten school than a top twelve :)</blockquote>

AFAIK, recruiters don't give that much weight to the "Top 10".

In practice, recruiters recognize three "brackets":
1. Harvard Yale Stanford
2. Columbia UChicago NYU
(UoMichigan kind of fluctuates between these two brackets)
3. Every other T14 school.

There are distinctions inside the 3rd bracket, but not to the point where recruiters won't even consider your application.
What happens in practice is that recruiters will "dig deeper" into a school that's closer to rank 7 than one closer from rank 14. And class size modifies the % even further. For instance, if a given firm will consider recruiting any of the top 100 students from UVA and GU. In %, that's 30% of UVA and 20% of GU.

The other distinction that exists in practice, is access to job fairs. And in that regard, UoM and UVA have access to one job fair that's mostly attended by HYS graduates. It's not particularly at their advantage, but if they're persuasive enough and at the top of their class, some lucky graduates regularly get recruited over HYS graduates.

Many thanks for all your answers and opinions which are very useful indeed.