http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/archives/002095.html

The less they know, the more they're suckered by US News

A law student e-mailed me the text of a posting from some prelaw discussion board authored by someone with the charming moniker "dogfucker." The student who sent this assures me that this reflects how some students actually think about things, and that it is not a joke. The title of the posting was

"The Top 14 Will Always Be the Same,"

apparently a reference to the fact that for about the last 8 or 9 years, the same 14 law schools have been in the top 14 of the US News rankings (which may be true, I'm not certain). (The same 16 law schools have been in the top 16 since US News made the last major change in its methodology in 1999, but for unknown reasons this escapes notice. The top 15 have also been in the top 15 in reputation since US News started ranking schools in 1987, but this is also unnoticed, it appears.) Here is the posting:

"There is simply too much of an already-existing establishment for the non-elite to ever catch up to the elite schools in terms of endowment, student-spending, research, grants, excellent faculty, and everything else that makes up an elite academic institution. Non-elites have the only hope of attracting bright students with money or other rewards in hopes that they'll matriculate, but those students will always be deviant from the norm, and by far, the best students will almost always attend an elite school. It's a cycle-- the students of the current elite schools will go on to be more successful than the average graduate of a non-elite. There is simply no way to break the cycle. The Top 14 will stay the same forever, barring a radical methodology change in US News or similar act of God."

The really weird thing here is that it is largely true that "there is simply too much of an already-existing establishment for the non-elite to ever catch up to the elite schools in terms of endowment, student-spending, research, grants, excellent faculty, and everything else that makes up an elite academic institution," but this doesn't correlate with the current (or even recent) top 14 in US News, though it correlates slightly better with the top 17 or 18. For example, USC has a better faculty than Duke (even with Chemerinsky's move, and allowing for Van Alstyne's departure from Duke), and, last time I saw the data, a much better endowment (2 or 3 years ago). Indeed, most of the US News top 17 or so have much bigger endowments than other schools, though places like Duke and Penn and Cornell trail a bit, while schools like Washington University and Mercer have much larger per capita endowments than several of the top 17. In terms of research (e.g., impact and productivity), there is not much difference between Texas and UCLA, on the one hand, and Georgetown, Duke, Penn, and Northwestern on the other--and where there is a difference, it is primarily that Texas and sometimes UCLA are stronger. There is no statistically meaningful difference in student credentials between Cornell, Berkeley, UCLA, Texas, and USC. And so on.

So the odd thing here is that the author's supposition (that the first 14 in US News defines the category) is rather obviously non-factual, at least to anyone who knows anything. So how did this student arrive at this rather fantastic view? The author makes the answer clear: US News. Sad.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=89919&forum_id=2#1433615)

XOXO

HTH

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=89919&forum_id=2#1434813)

http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=86433&mc=51&forum_id=2

Stop trying to take credit for other people's accomplishments.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=89919&forum_id=2#1434863)

El Greco's was the 21st, and dogfucker's was the 24th. so, it's more likely dogfucker copied elgreco.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=89919&forum_id=2#1434922)