Yale and Harvard law schools leave the rat race
Last Wednesday, top-ranked Yale Law withdrew from the US News and World Report rankings for law schools, citing concern about how the ranking methodology penalizes schools that award need-based aid and enroll poor students and whose graduates take public-interest jobs.
Though it was the law school and not Yale College that bowed out of the rankings, this departure highlights how much the US News and World Report rankings constrain universities’ behavior. The schools don’t like the ranking, but they have to play the game to attract students/clients.
Let’s look at a few elements of the ranking methodology that Yale Law dislikes. The numbers don’t sum to 100 because we’re not examining the whole methodology.
Fourteen percent of the ranking score comes from employment rates 10 months after graduation, and 4 percent at graduation. Graduates who work at an NGO, with their salary covered by the law school (my very smart and principled friend, who happens to read my posts, did this!) count as unemployed for this metric. Same goes for graduates who go on to get another degree rather than working.
The share of graduates who pass the bar account for 3 percent, and the median LSAT or GRE scores of the enrolled class counts for 11.25 percent. These measures are themselves closely correlated. Just as colleges want to enroll undergraduates with high SAT or ACT scores, because those scores boost rankings themselves and predict graduation, law schools want to enroll applicants with high LSAT scores, because they’re likelier to pass the bar a few years later.
Yale Law’s dean neatly diagnosed what those incentives mean for financial aid:
“It also pushes schools to use financial aid to recruit high-scoring students. As a result, millions of dollars of scholarship money now go to students with the highest scores, not the greatest need. At a moment when concerns about economic equity stand at the center of our national dialogue, only two law schools in the country continue to give aid based entirely on need — Harvard and Yale.”
Merit aid for undergraduates is the same. Colleges are buying high test scores to boost themselves up the rankings. This is another reason why your kid should take a test.
Returning to the ranking methodology, average indebtedness at graduation and the share of students who have to take on debt to get a law degree count together for 5 percent of the ranking. There’s a clear incentive there for law schools to enroll students rich enough not to need student loans.
Last in our list, law schools’ acceptance rate accounts for just 1 percent of the ranking score, mercifully. This is the nastiest metric and incentivizes law schools to recruit applicants and then reject them.
What about the next-ranked law schools? Aren’t they chafing within these fetters too?
The same day as Yale’s announcement, Harvard Law announced that it would withdraw from the rankings too. But Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Columbia, whose law schools rank just after Yale’s, aren’t bowing out or aren’t talking.
Why?
The interim dean of UCLA’s law school explains: “we can’t afford to unilaterally in our part of the market opt out.” He added, “I would suspect that we would be very seriously considering it if other schools in our band were to drop out” and that “if a lot of other schools follow their lead, then the U.S. News rankings and the stranglehold that it has over law schools will disintegrate. I don’t think you can find a dean that would be upset to see that happen.”
These comments demonstrate how participation in the US News ranking is a textbook game-theoretic problem. All of the schools would prefer to opt out, but most (except for places with monumental endowments and prestige like Harvard and Yale) can’t afford to do so unilaterally. Writing this post is reminding me to dust off my Schelling!
A similar episode happened with early action in 2006. Harvard, UVA, and Princeton called off early action.
At the time, Harvard’s admission dean said:
“This is a clear message to everybody, rich and poor, that, you know, Harvard is open to you. And that we're not playing games, you know, we don't have any, you know, trick program early. It's going to be a free and open competition for everybody.”
Harvard’s press release said:
“The college admissions process has become too pressured, too complex, and too vulnerable to public cynicism. We hope that doing away with early admission will improve the process and make it simpler and fairer.”
No other colleges followed suit. UVA reinstated early action in 2010, and Harvard and Princeton did in 2011. They tried to be the cooperative prisoners in the prisoner’s dilemma situation, but nobody else was game. No other colleges voluntarily disarmed.
If you’ve stuck with me this far, thanks for indulging me in these musings, which are not immediately relevant for the parents of middle and high schoolers. Let’s focus again on the US News ranking for undergraduate programs, which impose similar constraints on colleges’ admission choices. What do they mean for your kid’s admission chances?
An application with the traits that the US News rankings reward will be an appealing one, because it will help the college rise up the rankings and/or fight off the competitors nipping at its heels. Take a look at this previous blog post to see how your kid can dangle those traits in his or her application.
Want to muse together about game theory, or to talk about admission strategy tailored to your kid’s goals and strengths? You can book a one-on-one session here.