Law Schools

The 10 Law Schools Students REALLY Want To Go To (2017)

Which law schools made the list this year?

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Happy student girl showing thumb up sing. Closeup portraitYou may have heard some bad things about law schools in the news, but the yield rates — the percentage of admitted students who actually choose to enroll — at some law schools continue to soar. Despite horror stories about employment statistics and bar passage rates, some law schools still have a certain je ne sais quoi that causes students to enroll in droves.

But which ones?

U.S. News recently released a list of the schools with the highest yield rates for the 2016-2017 academic year. For the sake of comparison, at all of the 195 schools that are numerically ranked, the average yield was 24 percent. At the schools with the highest yield rates, about half (54 percent) — and in some cases, WAY more than half — of accepted students enrolled, but you may be surprised by some that made the list.

Here are the 10 schools with the highest yield rates for the 2016-2017 school year:

Law School Yield Rates 2016-2017

It’s worth noting that the top three schools in the U.S. News rankings all make an appearance on this list (although according to the yield rates, it seems like prospective law students want to go to Harvard a lot more than they want to go to Stanford). Stanford might be #2 in the rankings, but not in would-be law students’ hearts.

It’s worth noting that many of the law schools on this list have yield rates that are almost double or more than double the average yield for all other law schools, but we should pair that fact with words of warning. Many of the schools on this list have had some troubles in the past when it came to finding employment for their graduates, and at least one of the schools on this list places students at an “extreme” risk of failing the bar exam (Appalachian, which we’re surprised is still around). People are eager to enroll, but they may wish they would’ve considered other choices when they can’t find a decent job or pass the bar.

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Here’s a sad little nugget of information about the schools that didn’t do so well:

At the other end of the spectrum, the University of Massachusetts—Dartmouth and Western Michigan University’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School had the lowest yields among law schools, at 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Why doesn’t anyone want to go to Cooley Law? We thought it was the “second-best” law school in the nation! This just goes to show that we really are living in a post-truth world.

10 Law Schools Where the Most Accepted Students Enroll [The Short List / U.S. News]

Earlier: The Law Schools With The Highest LSAT Scores
An Interesting New Set Of Law School Rankings

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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