As we may have mentioned already, our methodology for the ATL Top 50 Law Schools ranking focuses on outcomes, with a particular emphasis on employment stats. Today we look at the top performing schools in the some of the various categories that make up our rankings formula. (The 2015 overall rankings can be seen here.)
Employment Score
We only include full-time, long-term jobs requiring bar passage, excluding solos and school-funded positions. (And of course many of the various positions tagged with the “J.D. Advantage” label are great jobs — it’s just that the category itself is too nebulous to be helpful.) Here are the 5 schools with the top employment scores for the class of 2014:
1. University of Pennsylvania (91.4%)
2. Cornell (90%)
3. Duke (87.9%)
4. Columbia (87.2%)
5. University of Chicago (86.7%)
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Quality Jobs Score
We’ve combined placement with the country’s largest and best-paying law firms (using the “NLJ 250”) and the percentage of graduates embarking on federal judicial clerkships. So we effectively double count those jobs which best enable graduates to pay off their debts. (Sorry to equate “quality” with “remunerative,” but then again the class of 2014 did take out about $3.8 billion in student loans to finance their studies.) The top 5 by this measure:
1. Chicago (76.13%)
2. Columbia (75.95%)
3. Penn (71.57%)
4. Stanford (70.95%)
5. Harvard (70.13%)
Alumni Rating
This is the only non-public component of our rankings, drawing on our ATL Insider Survey which asks alumni to rate their schools in terms of academics, financial aid advising, career services advising, social life, and clinical training (scale of 1 through 4 (highest)). The top 5 overall ratings:
1. Stanford (tie) (3.37)
1. Seton Hall (tie) (3.37)
3. Virginia (3.36)
4. Washington and Lee (3.35)
5. Northwestern (3.34)
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M7 Ratio
Our “debt per job” metric. How much debt accrued per student translates into an actual job? Here are the 5 best performing schools:
1. BYU – J Reuben Clark ($51,647.72 in debt per job)
2. University of Alabama Law ($62,790.98)
3. University of New Mexico ($77,424.80)
4. Georgia State ($81,968.06)
5. University of Georgia ($91,166.02)
Supreme Court Clerkships
Number of SCOTUS clerkships landed by graduates since 2010, adjusted for the size of the school. A non-factor for most schools, but a useful differentiator among the elite.
1. Yale
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Virginia (tie)
4. University of Chicago (tie)