Brian Leiter Student Quality, 2007

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Posted April 5, 2007; updated June 26, 2007

No feasible measure of student quality is particularly ideal, but LSAT scores are the best, crude proxy we have available. GPAs can be 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 are two rankings of the top 40 schools in terms of student quality as measured by, first, the 75th percentile LSAT (the top quarter) and, second, the 25th percentile (bottom quarter) for the class that entered in fall 2006. 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.” (How schools fare in placing their graduates in Supreme Court and appellate clerkships and law teaching jobs is also a good proxy for how strong the high end of the class is.) On the other hand, some believe the “bottom” of the class matters more.

Class size (rounded to the nearest 50) served as a tie breaker: the larger school with the same LSAT credentials was ranked higher. (Class size is for the day class only; schools with evening programs, usually have lower numerical admissions standards for those programs.) For Harvard to boast a 75th percentile LSAT of 175, higher than other top schools half its size, requires Harvard to recruit two to three times as many students as other top schools with those outstanding 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 half 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.

In both rankings, we have listed the corresponding percentile GPA. Since it is clear that some schools sacrifice GPA in order to boost LSAT, we have factored in GPA this year as follows: where schools are within 50 in class size, and have the same LSAT, a school with a GPA .1 or more higher than its peers is ranked first in that cluster. (Differences of .1 or more are probably significant, though one would still need to know more about the undergraduate schools and the student majors to make a fully informed comparison.) This was important for, among others, Stanford, which clearly weights GPA heavily in admissions.

Since some schools have much better (or much weaker) relative scores at the high end or the bottom end of the class, the first chart below reports just "the top 30" schools in terms of overall numerical student quality, based on an average of the school's performance in the second two charts.

I. Top 30 in Terms of "Overall" Student Numerical Quality

Rank	School	Avg. Rank Based on 75^th and 25^th Percentile Scores
1	Yale University	1
2	Harvard University	2
3	Columbia University	3
4	New York University	4.5
5	University of Chicago	5.5
6	Stanford University	6.5
7	Georgetown University (day class only)	7
8	University of Virginia	8
9	Northwestern University	9
10	University of Pennsylvania	9.5
11	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	10.5
12	Cornell University	13.5
	Duke University	13.5
14	University of California, Berkeley	15.5
15	Vanderbilt University	16.5
16	University of Southern California	17
17	University of California, Los Angeles	17.5
18	Fordham University	18.5
	University of Notre Dame	18.5
	University of Texas, Austin	18.5
21	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	20
22	George Washington University	21
23	Boston University	22.5
24	Boston College	25.5
	Washington University, St. Louis	25.5
26	Washington & Lee University	27
27	College of William & Mary	27.5
28	Emory University	28.5
29	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	29
30	Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University	30

II. Rank by 75th Percentile LSAT

Rank	School	LSAT	GPA	Approx. Class Size
1	Yale University	176	3.97	200
2	Harvard University	175	3.95	550
3	Columbia University	174	3.82	400
4	New York University	172	3.89	450
5	Stanford University	172	3.96	200
6	Northwestern University	172	3.80	250
7	University of Chicago	172	3.77	200
8	Georgetown University	171	3.82	450
9	University of Virginia	171	3.82	350
10	University of Pennsylvania	171	3.84	250
11	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	170	3.80	350
12	University of California, Los Angeles	169	3.80	300
13	University of California, Berkeley	169	3.89	250
14	Duke University	169	3.85	200
15	University of Texas, Austin	168	3.80	450
16	Cornell University	168	3.80	200
17	Fordham University	167	3.74	300
18	Vanderbilt University	167	3.88	200
19	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	167	3.74	250
20	University of Southern California	167	3.75	200
21	University of Notre Dame	167	3.84	150
22	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	167	3.71	200
23	Washington University, St. Louis	167	3.70	200
24	Washington & Lee University	167	3.73	150
25	George Washington University	166	3.81	500
26	Boston University	166	3.83	300
27	Boston College	166	3.76	300
28	College of William & Mary	166	3.84	200
	University of Washington, Seattle	166	3.84	200
30	Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University	166	3.72	250
31	Emory University	166	3.69	250
32	Brigham Young University	166	3.80	150
33	George Mason University	166	3.78	150
34	University of Maryland	165	3.77	250
35	University of Alabama	165	3.83	150
36	University of Colorado, Boulder	165	3.75	150
37	Lewis & Clark College	165	3.63	200
38	University of California, Hastings	164	3.74	400
39	Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute of Technology	164	3.77	250
	Indiana University, Bloomington	164	3.78	250
	University of Georgia	164	3.85	250
	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill	164	3.77	250

Runners-up: Brooklyn Law School (164 LSAT, 3.62 GPA, 300 students); University of San Diego (164 LSAT, 3.56 GPA, 250 students).

III. Rank by 25th Percentile LSAT

Rank	School	LSAT	GPA	Approx. class size
1	Yale University	170	3.83	200
2	Harvard University	169	3.72	550
3	Columbia University	169	3.51	400
4	University of Chicago	169	3.51	200
5	New York University	168	3.58	450
6	Georgetown University	167	3.49	450
7	University of Virginia	167	3.49	350
8	Stanford University	167	3.77	200
9	University of Pennsylvania	167	3.47	250
10	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	166	3.53	350
11	Cornell University	166	3.50	200
12	Northwestern University	166	3.40	250
13	Duke University	165	3.66	200
14	University of Southern California	165	3.47	200
15	Vanderbilt University	164	3.49	200
16	University of Notre Dame	164	3.28	150
17	George Washington University	163	3.45	500
18	University of California, Berkeley	163	3.65	250
19	Boston University	163	3.52	300
20	Fordham University	163	3.41	300
21	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	163	3.25	250
22	University of Texas, Austin	162	3.33	450
23	University of California, Los Angeles	162	3.44	300
24	Boston College	162	3.41	300
25	Brooklyn Law School	162	3.22	300
26	Emory University	162	3.30	250
27	College of William & Mary	162	3.33	200
28	Washington University, St. Louis	162	3.20	200
29	Washington & Lee University	162	3.28	150
30	Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University	161	3.23	250
31	Brigham Young University	161	3.40	150
32	Wake Forest University	161	3.19	150
33	University of Maryland	160	3.40	250
34	Villanova University	160	3.27	250
35	University of California, Davis	160	3.35	200
36	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	160	3.15	200
37	Loyola University, Chicago	160	3.21	150
38	George Mason University	160	3.10	150
39	Rutgers University, Camden	160	3.00	150
40	University of California, Hastings	159	3.41	400

Runners-up: Tulane University, (159 LSAT, 3.35 GPA, 300 students); Loyola Law School, Los Angeles (159 LSAT, 3.15 GPA, 350 students); Temple University (159 LSAT, 3.23 GPA, 250 students); University of San Diego (159 LSAT, 3.06 GPA, 250 students).

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