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Hylton Rankings: yea or nay?
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Date: April 12th, 2006 10:14 AM Author: ebony adventurous box office The profs are getting excited about "Hylton Rankings," which are USNWR rankings stripped of everything except LSATs and professor "peer assessment." Yea or nay?
I can see why professors don't care what judges and lawyers think, but as a student I do care. I don't care very much what the professors think of each other. They can have their own popularity polls, but it's the firms and judges who make the hiring decisions for which I'm going into debt. So I vote "nay."
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/property/2006/04/the_hylton_rank.html
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2006/04/us_news_ranking.html
http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/files/the_us_news_and_world_report_rankings_without_the_clutter__2_.pdf |
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Date: April 12th, 2006 11:28 AM Author: talented green hunting ground keepsake machete Due to the correlation between lsat midpoint and the faculty assessment rankings (.91) I think I can overlook the fact that usnews peer assessment scores only survey the five most recently tenured faculty...jeez those usnews rankings suck. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567617) |
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Date: April 12th, 2006 11:45 AM Author: ultramarine spot "I can see why professors don't care what judges and lawyers think, but as a student I do care. I don't care very much what the professors think of each other. They can have their own popularity polls, but it's the firms and judges who make the hiring decisions for which I'm going into debt. So I vote "nay.""
But I can see why you'd strip them out. Lawyers and judges base their opinions on the school's ranking. The rankings are based on the lawyers and judges opinion. Hence why the T14 is so static. It's a chicken and egg situation. If new rankings were adopted and popularized tomorrow because the USNEWS magazine went bust and stopped publishing, lawyers and judges would pretty soon change their hiring opinions to match whatever the new rankings told them. It's kind of a lame measurement.
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Date: April 12th, 2006 12:22 PM Author: ebony adventurous box office I can't disagree with all your points, and for the top schools it makes no difference at all.
But take a school like San Diego. Its Hylton is way above its USNWR. But the faculty aren't doing the hiring that matters. So shouldn't most students pick a school with better lawyer evals? True, is SD keeps going this way, eventually the lawyers will view it as higher ranked, but why go into debt on the assumption that your JD will appreciate over the next decade? Or on the assumption that the occasional professor you meet with think better of you? |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 1:07 PM Author: jade knife wrinkle Not Credited.
There was a top 10 long before there was a USNews ranking (or any ranking) Law school reputation goes back long before USNews, and firms rely far more on long-term reputation than USNews when hiring. |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 1:08 PM Author: concupiscible becky yeah, michigan used to be a t3 school depending on who you talk to and how old they are (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5579754) |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 1:11 PM Author: jade knife wrinkle Yup, it was almost universally a top 3 school for decades, and was ranked that high in the first USNews rank (1987).
And its reputation ratings usually remain in the top 5 or 6, regardless of overall rank. |
Date: April 12th, 2006 10:48 AM Author: Pea-brained native gay wizard Interesting that the T14 is still the t14 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567357) |
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Date: April 12th, 2006 10:50 AM Author: ebony adventurous box office Yes. But one of those sites shows that a few schools, like San Diego, benefit enormously from Hylton Rankings, and some are hurt. Like you say, though, the top is still the top. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567373) |
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Date: April 12th, 2006 11:40 AM Author: ultramarine spot I like it. The reputation elements are far too weighted in the USNEWS for a balanced, accurate model. Th eresult of which is that apart from the top 25 schools, every other shcool chunks into massive 25-way ties. At least with these rankings, the ties are reduced to 1 or 2 schools at most.
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Date: April 12th, 2006 11:55 AM Author: comical wild public bath athletic conference this is still bullshit.
any ranking that takes into account usnews' unreliable reputation rankings is utter bullshit. "reputation" would be better measured by clerkship placement and elite firm placement. |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 1:08 PM Author: jade knife wrinkle In other words, your school has a relatively weak overall reputation. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5579750) |
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Date: April 12th, 2006 12:01 PM Author: Metal hominid It's no Ciolli Rankings, that's for sure. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567882) |
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Date: April 12th, 2006 12:02 PM Author: 180 Step-uncle's House Mad-dog Skullcap Seems to correlate much better with this board's perception of prestige than USN.
The delineations at the T6 and T14 marks seem to justify their existance - 2 and 3 point drop-offs, respectively. There's fairly tight clusterings within those tiers (T6 within a 6 point spread, T7-14 within a 6.5 point spread). Also a significant HY v. rest-of-T14 gap (3 points).
Lastly, the biggest gains among the T14 were H (3 -> 1) and G (14 -> 11), demonstrative of the bias against larger schools in USN methodology. |
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Date: April 12th, 2006 12:06 PM Author: comical wild public bath athletic conference of course this board's perceptions of prestige are worth shit, but that's another story. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567920) |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 1:09 PM Author: jade knife wrinkle In other words, your school has a relatively low level of prestige vs. comparable schools. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5579760) |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 1:12 PM Author: comical wild public bath athletic conference no, it's more like a group of 0Ls don't know shit. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5579789) |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 6:26 PM Author: jade knife wrinkle Surprisingly, their view tends to pattern the view of the nation's lawyers, judges and academics as well.
However, you are correct that there is little difference between all top schools. |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 12:58 PM Author: concupiscible becky can someone explain this to me: "I have recalculated the US News and World Report Ratings using the “2007” data (actually compiled in 2005) for my two categories." |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 1:12 PM Author: jade knife wrinkle I like this, except that the lawyer/judge ratings should be included, as noted.
They key problem with the current USNews system is that peer ratings are weighted much more heavily than practitioner ratings, when the reverse should be the case. |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 10:17 PM Author: Dashing bearded windowlicker j (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5582750) |
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Date: April 14th, 2006 10:48 PM Author: ebony adventurous box office "True, but if employers opinions are so closely reflective of the rankings, which most agree they are, then why bother incorporating them at all?"
If true, that argument works equally well to eliminate prof rankings and just use lawyer rankings. But, in fact, while lawyers agree with profs at the top, they disagree elsewhere and sometimes dramatically so. For me, I'd rather know what the lawyers think.
"Also, employer opinions are arguably outdated, as their interaction with graduates could be with those who graduates a decade or more ago... and most would agree that it's where a school is now, not ten years ago, that matters."
They are not "outdated" if that's what lawyers are using today to make the interviewing and hiring decisions that matter to me.
OTOH, if I were shooting for academia, I'd want to know the prof rankings.
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Date: April 14th, 2006 11:26 PM Author: Dashing bearded windowlicker Excellent points. *retreats into the darkness* (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5583149) |