Brooklyn's Incorrect US News Rankings

[Viking Quest]

Take a look at the new Brooklyn Law School rankings.  For every other school, they have combined full time and part time LSAT scores in the main rankings.  Not for Brooklyn.  They use just the full time scores.  And for the part-time rankings?  Brooklyn is not even listed.  So what's the story?  Did Brooklyn not tell US News about its part-time folks, or did US News screw up?  A correction seems to be in order here -- Brooklyn should probably have gone down in the rankings with the new formula rather than up.

[Pop Up Video]

Why does it matter?

[vap]

Fall 2008 LSAT spread full + part (US News): 162-165
Fall 2008 GPA spread full + part (US News):  3.22-3.66

Fall 2007 LSAT spread full + part (LSAC):  159-164
Fall 2007 GPA spread full + part (LSAC):  3.15-3.61

Fall 2007 LSAT spread full (LSAC):  162-165
Fall 2007 GPA spread full (LSAC):  3.17-3.63

[Viking Quest]

Law School headlines has picked up on this, confirmed the discrepancy, contacted the school for comment:

http://lawschoolheadlines.com/?cat=5

[Miss P]

I don't understand why you care about this (and I don't much care myself), but it's perfectly possible that Brooklyn's 25-75 spread, including part-time numbers, improved to 162-165 this year.  The numbers cited in the blog post are from 2007.  My guess is that, seeing the coming changes in the U.S. News methodology, Brooklyn took steps to improve its overall numbers.  (This seems much more likely than your scenario -- that Brooklyn straight-out lied to US News and got away with it -- doesn't it?)  It could have, for instance, increased the admissions criteria for or decreased the size of its part-time program. 

Moreover, the part-time numbers may not have a huge impact on the overall median and 25-75 spread.  Already in 2007, the part-time program made up only about 1/3 of the class.  The bottom 75% of the part-time program may fill in the bottom 25% of the overall class, for all we know.  For what it's worth (again, not much), in 2007, Brooklyn's PT+FT median LSAT was higher than the median LSAT of any school ranked below it.  I haven't seen the full 2008 data, but there's no reason to believe this has changed.

[Matthies]

I don't understand why you care about this (and I don't much care myself), but it's perfectly possible that Brooklyn's 25-75 spread, including part-time numbers, improved to 162-165 this year.  The numbers cited in the blog post are from 2007.  My guess is that, seeing the coming changes in the U.S. News methodology, Brooklyn took steps to improve its overall numbers.  (This seems much more likely than your scenario -- that Brooklyn straight-out lied to US News and got away with it -- doesn't it?)  It could have, for instance, increased its admissions criteria for the part-time program or decreased the size of its part-time program. 

Way to kill the conspiracy theories there with facts, logical speculation and stuff, next you’re going to tell me we actually landed on the moon.   

[Miss P]

Way to kill the conspiracy theories there with facts, logical speculation and stuff, next you’re going to tell me we actually landed on the moon.   

I do my best to ruin every bit of fun anyone might have in my midst.

[Matthies]

Way to kill the conspiracy theories there with facts, logical speculation and stuff, next you’re going to tell me we actually landed on the moon.   

I do my best to ruin every bit of fun anyone might have in my midst.

I still thinks its more likely that a group of Watergate type burglars broke into USNEWS offices and used white out to change the numbers.   

[Susan B. Anthony]

Way to kill the conspiracy theories there with facts, logical speculation and stuff, next you’re going to tell me we actually landed on the moon.   

I do my best to ruin every bit of fun anyone might have in my midst.

I still thinks its more likely that a group of Watergate type burglars broke into USNEWS offices and used white out to change the numbers.   

I heard it was correction tape.

[Matthies]

Way to kill the conspiracy theories there with facts, logical speculation and stuff, next you’re going to tell me we actually landed on the moon.   

I do my best to ruin every bit of fun anyone might have in my midst.

I still thinks its more likely that a group of Watergate type burglars broke into USNEWS offices and used white out to change the numbers.   

I heard it was correction tape.

technology!