May 3 -- A Topsy-Turvy Month

You don't know that phrase? It is a bit dated; would you prefer ass-backward?

Whatever you call it, USNews has set the admissions world on its head once again. They made a ton of noise about a ranking of part time programs and delivered a report not worth a passing reference. The real news was kept entirely secret, even in the final printing.

The medians used to rank law schools are not the medians of the full-time programs, but the medians of the full-and part-time programs combined. Since all they publish is a range of GPA and LSAT scores, there's no way for you to know that.

What's the Difference?

The result is that every law school with a part-time program pays a penalty. (The possible exceptions are schools like NC Central, where the part-time program has higher medians than the full-time.)

How We Responded

In addition to trashing the report, we responded by showing you where to find and how to use a number of other sources of data:

• ABA-LSAC data, the best there is;
• NALP Directory data on recruiters;
• Martindale-Hubbell data on employers and recent hires;
• LSAC Action Reports, which show you all the actiuon at your school.
• We also tried to shed some light on the very murky concept of tiers.

Any one of these sources can give you more valuable information than a USNews ranking. Combined, they can give you an incredibly full picture of what's happening at a school.

What's in a Recommendation?

A lot less than I thought! Sarah Zearfoss, Dean of Admissions at U. of Michigan, says that even at the top, recs aren't always paeans, and the few that are can make a real difference. Here's what she has to offer.

Other News

Rumor has it that Columbia is far from finished, and when a school that high up the food chain is mid-process, no one else is quite done. There's a ton of full-time part-time juggling going on; schools that held off on admitting part-time people until they saw what USNews did are now looking for high LSAT part-timers so they can get their rankings in better position. And schools that know they have large overlaps with any of the above have been sitting tight and waiting for the dust to settle. Look for a lot of action in early to mid-May, then nothing until mid-June when the big overlap report, the one that names names, is about to be released.