Irrelevant USNews Data

This year, US News has accomplished a first. Every single piece of data on the face page is irrelevant.!

Here, let me show you:

The only thing the score tells you is how useless the ranking concept is. Yale is ranked #1, with a score of 100. By the time you get down to Cornell and Georgetown, both clearly national schools, the ranking is only 75% of Yale's:

Now really, people, how can we say that Georgetown is only 3/4 as good as Yale? And what does that say about the 170 schools ranked lower than Georgetown? For that matter, what does it say about a ranking system when you allocate 25% of your points for 13% of your schools? "Senseless" is the word that comes to my mind.

The next thing we see is tuition -- for LAST year. Not next year, when you're applying, or even this year. Two-year-old data doesn't help very much, does itl?

Then we get the full time enrollment -- J.D.only, or LL.M. candidates as well? We don't know. And how does this number relate to crowding of classrooms, library, cafeteria? We don't know. Even if we knew the size of the facilities, we wouldn't know whether there were part-time day students sharing them with us -- or part-time evening students hanging out during the day. All we know is our statistical likelihood of getting a date. :)

25th and 75th percentile numbers tell us nothing, as the same two schools demonstrate. Cornell has a broader GPA range and a narrower LSAT range; but Georgetown has a part-time program included. So how do we compare the two? Rather like comparing apples and Belgium, as Eddie Izzard would say.

Then there's a column called "assessment by lawyers and judges." This is based primarily on Rose Bowl and NCAA results; after all look who's doing the comparing. Think I'm kidding? Note that Penn, Northwestern, and Cornell are the three lowest of the nationals (a/k/a/ "top 14"), and the three without nationally ranked sports teams. Or someone will say, "I know a lot more Harvasrd grads than Chicago grads." Well, you live on the east coast and HLS's class is three times the size of Chicago's, so, duh....

And finally, you are given -- for free -- per cent employed nine months after graduation. I have stated years ago that percent employed out of desperation, when the student loan payments are due, is worth way less than per cent employed at graduation, at jobs they at least arguably wanted. USNews has that data -- in the paid section.

Even in the Paid Section,

there's a lot of irrelevant trivia.