Law Students

Michigan Law Dispenses With All Pretense

By Pete

The U.S. News law school rankings are a pretty big deal. Everyone (in the law school world) cares about them. Why? Because prospective students care about them far, far more than they should. In fact, there are no shortage of students who base their choices solely on those rankings.

Having worked with the admissions office at IU for the three years I was in law school, I can tell you that schools try really hard to keep their LSAT and UGPA medians up. Typically they do it by offering scholarships or other benefits. Behind the scenes, the schools are playing a careful balancing act, trying to keep their median numbers up by being very careful about who they offer on the margins.

It has really always been a bit of a game, but nobody has ever (at least as far as I know) tried quite so hard to gimmick their way into the top 5. Enter Michigan Law’s new admissions policy:

UM undergraduates who have at least completed their junior year … with at least six full-time semesters of attendance on the UM-Ann Arbor campus and a UM cumulative grade point average of ? 3.80 are eligible to apply.

And they have to agree not to take the LSAT.

There’s really just not a reasonable explanation for this aside from: “We’d really like to move up in the US News rankings, and this is an easy way to do it.”

My former Corporations professor has this to say about it:

More seriously, there are terrible externalities from this alleged merit-based program. It is impossible to deny that the Wolverine Scholars program will encourage students to (a) take easier classes and majors to avoid the need to take the LSAT to get into an elite law school, (b) discourage extracurriculars that will threaten the 3.8, and (c) make a lot of Michigan undergraduate professors miserable with complaints from students that their B+ or A- grade is going to blow their Wolverine Scholar application.

From a rankings perspective, what happens when you get 20, 30, or 40 candidates with 3.8+ UPGA and no LSAT score? From day 1 of admissions season, Michigan has much greater latitude to lock in higher median LSAT and UPGA numbers–because zero Wolverine Scholars are dragging down the LSAT and all are helping the UPGA numbers. Further, because of the idiosyncrasies of the USNWR rankings formula . . . at the upper ranges, small changes in UGPA have a much greater sway on rankings that a single LSAT point. For example, in the simulation model that Andy Morriss and I created, a move from 3.64 to 3.66 has a greater effect than a move from 169 to 170. If Michigan can get to a 3.80 UGPA, they could tie with NYU at #5.

Crazy, crazy stuff. This is a really terrible idea. You have to wonder if something like this would end up hurting them in the long-run. They get a ratings bump for the next few years, but eventually they end up with a reputation for letting in any fool who can pick easy enough classes to get a 3.8.

Full post as published by PeteHoliday.com on September 25, 2008 (boomark / email).