What is considered T1?

[M112]

Exactly what ranking is considered T1 as opposed to T2?

Is T1 top 50 or top 25?  Likewise, if someone could accurately label the ranking necessary to be included in the T2 it would be appreciated.  Thanks.

['blueskies]

1-50 --> T1, 100-51 --> T2

[interrex]

Why worry about it? It's all baloney anyways. Barpass rate is hardly even a factor in it. Its "how other schools view you" My neighbors wife is hot and most others would agree, but that dosn't change the fact that she's a psycho female dog and if you stick in her you will get an itch that even penacilin can't cure, same bullshitt with these ratings.

[bigs5068]

Bar percentage counts for 2% of a school's ranking. 20% is based on employment, but flipping burgers qualifies as employment for U.S. News. 60% is based on judges from around the country checking a box of Excellent, Very Good, Good, or marginal. Genearlly the people marking these boxes have never heard of the school they are marking. I imagine few San Francisco judges take trips to Nebraska. I also imagine few Nebraska judges make trips to New York or San Francisco, but they do check the box. It is a horrendously bad formula, but it is what it is. In regards to the actual question top 50 schools in U.S. News are tier 1. 50-100 are tier 2. Then there are tier 3 & tier 4. There is numerical category for this just a blanket statement based on god knows what. It is pretty funny to look at how drastically schools drop and rise over a period of 2 years. Nothing changes at the school, but based on this judges checking good or very good regarding a school they never heard of the rank changes drastically.

[BikePilot]

Given all those problems, the rankings still give a general ballpark notion of how schools are viewed relative to eachother.  Barpass probably shouldn't be part of ranking at all imho as the point of law school isn't to be a 3-yr barbri course - if anything there's an inverse relationship between bar material covered at a school and bar pass rate - top schools have very high bar pass rates because they attract top students who then study for the bar.  Those students would have passed just as easily if they'd skipped law school and gone straight to the bar I think. 

In general, its sort of self-perpetuating - the more desirable a school is, the better student's it attracts and the better students it attracts, the better lawyers it produces.  Better lawyers make for a better overall reputation and increases the desirability of the school.  From my perspective one of the biggest things you purchase when you go to a more competitive school is an, on average, higher quality student body.  This makes a big difference wrt networking, learning experience and alumi base.  If you are lucky you might also get better professors and a brand name that will make starting your career a lot less work.

Now if anyone can figure out why USNWR cares about number of library books then we'll really make some progress   (my theory is that it creates a barrier to entry for new schools).

Within T1 folks often talk about the T14 which is georgetown and up.  These move around a bit, but more or less the T14 are always the same T`14.  Whether there's a huge gap between georgetown and whatever school is 15th or not I'm not sure - probably not.  Within the T14 the T3 are in their own little group and pretty equivalent wrt opportunities and student body, but very different in culture and feel.  The next few - Columbia, NYU and Chicago are also more or less all on the same plane. So while you can't really say with any great confidence that one school is definitely deserving of its exact rank, you can usually say that a group of a few schools are pretty similar and better than another clump.

[bigs5068]

I have no problem ranking the top 25 or so schools. Honestly, what is the difference between Texas Wesleyan & Creighton or Stetson v. Gonzaga. There are elite schools there is no question about that and judges across the nation might have an actual opinion about Georgetown or Yale. I would have no problem with them saying Georgetown is 12th and Yale is second. That is fine because judges/lawyers across the country most likely have actual opinions about the school.  I highly doubt many judges/lawyers outside of San Francisco have dealt with GGU. I also doubt many people outside of Florida have dealt with Stetson. There are elite schools, but distinguishing the 82nd and 114th best school makes absolutely no sense.

The NCAA does not go past the top 25, because it does not matter outside of that. University of Idaho could beat San Jose State on any given day and San Jose State could beat University of Idaho on any given day. Even if San Jose State was ranked 53 and Idaho was ranked 82 nobody would be shocked if the 82nd team beat the 53rd.The NCAA realizes how stupid it is to rank past the top 25 so they just don't do it. I like that model because you are either elite or not your not. It would be nice if U.S. News adopted the same model.

It is really sad because idiots like myself nearly move across the country to go to a tier 2 school instead of a tier 4 in the location they want to live in. Thankfully, I had real lawyers talk some sense into me. I do not know if others are so lucky. Employers I imagine have no idea what is tier 2,3,4. It is unlikely anyone in New York has ever heard of GGU. It is unlikely anyone in Miami has heard of Southwestern. So and so on yet people will give up all kinds of things to go to a tier 3 school instead of a tier 4. Since the rating is so bad by the time they are one year in the school might be demoted to tier 4. The tier 4's they turned down could have become tier 3's. It is just so f**ing stupid to rank them past the top 25 maybe 50 schools. Outside of that the schools just go from tier 2 to tier 4 in one year. Michigan, Yale, Harvard, etc stay in the top 25 because those are damn good schools that the people making the rankings are familiar with. They may change a few spots, but they do go not through ups and downs like University of San Francisco. USF in a 3 year span went from 78 to tier 3 to 96th. Nothing changed at the school yet it moved that drastically and that is because I imagine most of the lawyers/judges marking the scan-tron have never dealt with USF and they simply check the good box one year or the very good box the next with absolutely nothing to back up their opinion. Based on some guys checking a box based on nothing people will give up all kinds of scholarship money or move across the country and it is just sad.

[interrex]

Its just proof how stupid people fall for marketing. Makes you wonder how people judged lawschools BEFORE a private corporation told them what to think a few years back.......my GOD, an American NOT before told what to do by a commercial? MADNESS!!!!!!!!

[fortook]

Hmmmm.  Makes me wonder- When did the ranking system start?

[bigs5068]

It started 25 years ago. It was not encouraged by anyone it simply appeared and the formula has no backing. I imagine the legal industry has become worse since that time, because people take this rating so seriously and schools now focus more on trying to please a for-profit unregulated magazine than provide a quality education. Students also think they are entitled to something for going to the 62nd best school instead of the 83rd. It is just a terrible system that does nothing good for anyone accept get U.S. News a healthy profit.

[interrex]

So if rankings are based in large part based on the votes of judges, and cooley is spitting out record numbers of lawyers each year flooding the market with them as an increasing percentage of the licensed attorneys and increasing so the standing judges as well, won't the system eventually end up with cooley as #1 simply do to the fact that very soon the vast majority will be cooley grads? The people who cry about wanting to make $160,000 day one tend to be allergic to civil service, cooley grads tend not to have really any other choice according to posters here, so since cooley was created about the same times as the rankings it seems to be all a cooley based conspiracy for global dominance due to a brainwashed society that will buy and/pr kill eachother for whatever $200 shoe a rapping b-ball player wears.