US News and a Change in the Formula for Law School Rankings: Part Time v. Full Time Students (Part 3)

We occasionally examine issues associated with law school rankings (for a paper on the impact of law blogging and rankings can be found here). We are examining the impact of a proposal put out by US News to alter the formula for determining the median LSAT and GPA (which provide 22.5% of a law school's ranking). The magazine proposes that medians be calculated based not on full time students but all students, including part time.

What will be the impact if US News changes the formula by requiring law schools to use the GPA and LSAT median for all students rather than just full time students?  First, the category is one of the largest, involving 22.5% of the rankings.  Second, to the extent law schools have medians for the full and part time programs that are roughly identical, there will be little risk of a drop in rankings (and perhaps an increase as other schools fall).  Third, to the extent that there is a material difference (with the part time statistics lower), the law school's rankings may well fall.  The risk of a fall and its extent depend at least in part on the size of the part time class relative to the full time class.

Having said all of that, we will examine the possible impact of the proposal on the law schools in the top 100.  As we noted in the  last post, based on data from last year, there are two part time programs in the top 25, seven in the next 25 and 29 in the next 50.   So, 38 law schools in the top 100 have part time programs.  

The first question that requires an answer is whether the melding together of the part time and full time programs will necessarily result in a lower ranking.  Looking only at LSAT scores (not GPA, there wasn't time), the ABA publishes the 75th and 25th percentile LSAT score for both the full time and the part time divisions of all accredited law schools.  In order to compute the median, we averaged the two together.  This is by definition an imperfect measurement since a law school may well have a median that is not an average of these numbers (it's true, for example, at the University of Denver).  Nonetheless, we use it as a proxy for the median for lack of a viable alternative.  

What did these "medians" show?  First, there is no law school in the top 100 that had an LSAT median for the part time division that was equal to or higher than the full time median.  In other words, all part time programs had lower medians.  Seattle (158/157.5) and Indiana (154.5/154) were the closest, with the part time median LSAT only 0.5% lower than the full time median.  A median from these schools of the entire entering class is not likely to deviate much from the median for the full time matriculating class.  On the other hand, the average of the 38 schools was a median LSAT 3.8 points lower for the part time than the full time class. 

Some of the most significant difference?  Alabama, 9.5 percentage point (162.5/153), Dickinson, 8 percentage points (158.5/150.5), Maryland, 7 percentage points (163/156), Loyola-Chicago, 6.5 percentage points (161/154.5), and St. Johns, 6 percentage points (159.5/153.5),  We also note that for the highest ranked schools with a part time division, all of them have a significant differential in the "median" LSAT score.  Thus, they are as follows:  Georgetown, 5.5 percentage points (169/163.5), GW, 5 percentage points (167.5/162.5) and Fordham, 4.5 percentage points (165/162.5).  The high differential means that, assuming the schools accept a comparable class for 2008-2009, the combining of the full and part time divisions will put considerable downward pressure on the median LSAT.  In short, all other things being equal, they (along with most of the other 38 law schools) will see a drop in the median LSAT score used by US News in its rankings. 

There is, however, one other variable, the size of the part time division.  A large differential in median LSAT and a large part time division will result in maximum downward pressure on the median LSAT.  We'll look at that in the next post.

For the law schools in the top 100, we have the data on the differences in the median LSAT scores for full and part time programs and the number of students as a percentage of the day division that each part time program accepts.  If you want a the data, it will be sent gratis to anyone who writes a comment on this series and asks for the data.  

Comments

[Nancy Rapoport]

I've been following your series on the change in USNWR methodology with interest, and I'd love to see the data. I continue to worry about the effect of the change in methodology on the admissions process (and the evening programs) at these schools.

[John Rondini]

I would be very interested in seeing how the rankings differ with the inclusion of the part time program.