Law Schools

A Preview Of The 2023 U.S. News Law School Rankings

Which law schools are new to (and excluded from) the T-14 in this version of the rankings?

By  
on
Title Law school on a book and a gavel.

(Image via Getty)

Prospective law students, current law students, and law school alumni are eagerly awaiting the release of the 2023 U.S. News Law School Rankings sometime in March. It’s only a week from now, but March still seems so far away, doesn’t it? Time moves slowly during the ongoing pandemic. So, what if we told you that we had a preview of those rankings? Sounds great, right? Let us help you scratch that rankings itch.

The methodology used by U.S. News places a 21% weight on law school admissions in the overall ranking. That category is comprised of three separate components, each with a different weight: acceptance rate (1%); median undergraduate GPA (8.75%); and median LSAT (11.25%) (GRE scores omitted for lack of data). Which schools come out on top using this data?

Back in December, Dean Paul Caron of Pepperdine University School of Law provided charts for all of the ABA data for those components, and this week, he’s created two admissions rankings using that data. The first ranking is simple, while the second ranking better approximates the actual U.S. News rankings using Z scores.

Here are the Top 14 schools, using each of Caron’s rankings.

RANKING 1

Law

School

 Acceptance Rate Rank UPGA Rank LSAT Rank Weighted Ranks
1 Yale 1 1 1 1.0
2 Harvard 3 4 1 2.3
3 Stanford 2 5 4 4.3
4 Chicago 8 5 4 4.6
5 Virginia 5 5 7 6.1
6 NYU 15 10 4 7.0
7 Penn 4 8 7 7.3
8 Columbia 7 17 1 8.0
9 Northwestern 12 10 7 8.5
10 Cornell 17 10 7 8.7
11 Washington Univ. 20 3 13 9.2
12 Georgetown 9 14 7 10.0
13 Michigan 6 17 7 11.1
14 Vanderbilt 13 9 16 12.9
RANKING 2

Sponsored

Law

School

 Acceptance Rate Rank UPGA Rank LSAT Rank Weighted Z-Scores
1 Yale 1 1 1 1.79
2 Harvard 3 4 1 1.74
3 Stanford 2 5 4 1.69
4 Chicago 8 5 4 1.68
5 Virginia 5 5 7 1.66
6 Washington Univ. 20 3 13 1.65
7 Penn 4 8 7 1.64
8 Columbia 7 17 1 1.58
9 NYU 15 10 4 1.57
10 Northwestern 12 10 7 1.55
11 Cornell 17 10 7 1.54
12 Vanderbilt 13 9 16 1.54
13 Georgetown 9 14 7 1.53
14 Michigan 6 17 7 1.52

We bet Washington University, Vanderbilt, and Georgetown wish that the U.S. News rankings were based only on their admissions profiles right about now, while schools like Duke, UC-Berkeley, and UCLA are thanking their lucky stars that the rankings are based on more.

We’ll check back in March to see how close to reality these partial rankings are.

Preview Of The 2023 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Admissions [TaxProf Blog]

Sponsored

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Topics

, , , ,