Brian Leiter Student Quality, 2006

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No feasible measure of student quality is particularly ideal, but LSAT scores are the best, crude proxy we have available. GPAs are hard to compare, without knowing about the undergraduate institutions the students are coming from, and the courses of study they pursued. It would be useful to know about students in the incoming class with advanced degrees, or high quality work experience, but such data is not available, nor is it easily comparable. Class size is a further factor complicating comparisons, since the midpoint of 500 is not like the midpoint of 200, though each provides pertinent information.

Below is a ranking of the top 40 schools in terms of student quality as measured by the 75th percentile LSAT (the top quarter) for the class that entered in fall 2005. When the ABA publishes the official median LSAT data, this ranking will be updated to include that as well. Many academics and admissions officers, to be sure, favor 75th percentile rankings, because they do not penalize schools for “alternative admissions” procedures which may drag down the numerical credentials of the bottom end of the class. Others point out that the number of “top students” is more important than the “average.” On the other hand, some believe the average or median matters more.

In the ranking by 75th percentile LSAT, we have also listed the 75th percentile GPA, though it was not factored into the ranking. But dramatic differences in GPA between schools with comparable 75th percentile LSATs are probably significant—certainly one can infer pretty clearly from the data, below, which schools are fishing for high LSAT scores, at the expense of GPA (cf. Illinois, Emory, Wake Forest, and San Diego).

Class size (rounded to the nearest 50) served as a tie breaker: the larger school with the same LSAT credentials was ranked higher. For Harvard to boast a 75th percentile LSAT of 176, higher even than Yale, requires Harvard to recruit nearly three times as many students as Yale with those credentials. That speaks both to Harvard’s attractiveness, and to the existence at Harvard of an enormous pool of highly credentialed students, a fact, needless to say, that prospective employers register. The Fordham student body, with a 75th percentile LSAT of 167, is clearly a stronger student body than Washington & Lee, with the same 75th percentile LSAT, but one third as many students. There are more complicated statistical techniques for making comparisons between fractions of differently sized groupings, but the tie-breaker device is, we thought, the easiest to understand and involves the least intrusive manipulation of the data.

Ranking by 75^th Percentile LSAT for 2006

Rank	School	75^th Percentile LSAT	75^th Percentile GPA	Class Size
1	Harvard University	176	3.92	550
2	Yale University	175	3.95	200
3	Columbia University	173	3.80	400
4	New York University	172	3.89	400
5	University of Chicago	172	3.80	200
6	Stanford University	172	3.96	150
7	University of Virginia	171	3.83	350
8	University of Pennsylvania	171	3.85	250
9	Northwestern University	171	3.78	200
10	Georgetown University	170	3.80	450
11	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	169	3.78	350
12	University of California, Berkeley	169	3.90	250
	University of California, Los Angeles	169	3.82	250
14	Duke University	169	3.86	200
15	University of Texas, Austin	168	3.83	450
16	Cornell University	168	3.80	200
17	Fordham University	167	3.76	300
18	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	167	3.70	250
	Washington University, St. Louis	167	3.78	250
20	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	167	3.66	200
	University of Southern California	167	3.78	200
	Vanderbilt University	167	3.85	200
23	University of Notre Dame	167	3.78	150
24	Washington & Lee University	167	3.79	100
25	George Washington University	166	3.80	400
26	Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University	166	3.72	300
27	Boston College	166	3.79	250
	Boston University	166	3.77	250
29	Brigham Young University	166	3.86	150
	Wake Forest University	166	3.62	150
31	George Mason University	166	3.83	100
32	Emory University	165	3.63	250
33	College of William & Mary	165	3.80	200
34	University of Washington, Seattle	165	3.84	150
35	Baylor University	165	3.92	100
36	University of California, Hastings	164	3.69	350
37	Brooklyn Law School	164	3.64	300
38	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill	164	3.84	250
	University of San Diego	164	3.54	250
40	Indiana University, Bloomington	164	3.72	200
	Lewis & Clark College / Northwestern School of Law	164	3.65	200
	Ohio State University	164	3.72	200
	Southern Methodist University	164	3.86	200
	University of California, Davis	164	3.79	200
	University of Florida	164	3.86	200
	University of Georgia	164	3.80	200
	University of Maryland	164	3.76	200

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