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Prospective law students, current law students, and law school alumni are eagerly awaiting the release of the 2023 U.S. News Law School Rankings sometime in March. It’s only a week from now, but March still seems so far away, doesn’t it? Time moves slowly during the ongoing pandemic. So, what if we told you that we had a preview of those rankings? Sounds great, right? Let us help you scratch that rankings itch.
The methodology used by U.S. News places a 21% weight on law school admissions in the overall ranking. That category is comprised of three separate components, each with a different weight: acceptance rate (1%); median undergraduate GPA (8.75%); and median LSAT (11.25%) (GRE scores omitted for lack of data). Which schools come out on top using this data?
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Back in December, Dean Paul Caron of Pepperdine University School of Law provided charts for all of the ABA data for those components, and this week, he’s created two admissions rankings using that data. The first ranking is simple, while the second ranking better approximates the actual U.S. News rankings using Z scores.
Here are the Top 14 schools, using each of Caron’s rankings.
RANKING 1
| Law
School |
Acceptance Rate Rank | UPGA Rank | LSAT Rank | Weighted Ranks | |
| 1 | Yale | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1.0 |
| 2 | Harvard | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2.3 |
| 3 | Stanford | 2 | 5 | 4 | 4.3 |
| 4 | Chicago | 8 | 5 | 4 | 4.6 |
| 5 | Virginia | 5 | 5 | 7 | 6.1 |
| 6 | NYU | 15 | 10 | 4 | 7.0 |
| 7 | Penn | 4 | 8 | 7 | 7.3 |
| 8 | Columbia | 7 | 17 | 1 | 8.0 |
| 9 | Northwestern | 12 | 10 | 7 | 8.5 |
| 10 | Cornell | 17 | 10 | 7 | 8.7 |
| 11 | Washington Univ. | 20 | 3 | 13 | 9.2 |
| 12 | Georgetown | 9 | 14 | 7 | 10.0 |
| 13 | Michigan | 6 | 17 | 7 | 11.1 |
| 14 | Vanderbilt | 13 | 9 | 16 | 12.9 |
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| Law
School |
Acceptance Rate Rank | UPGA Rank | LSAT Rank | Weighted Z-Scores | |
| 1 | Yale | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1.79 |
| 2 | Harvard | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1.74 |
| 3 | Stanford | 2 | 5 | 4 | 1.69 |
| 4 | Chicago | 8 | 5 | 4 | 1.68 |
| 5 | Virginia | 5 | 5 | 7 | 1.66 |
| 6 | Washington Univ. | 20 | 3 | 13 | 1.65 |
| 7 | Penn | 4 | 8 | 7 | 1.64 |
| 8 | Columbia | 7 | 17 | 1 | 1.58 |
| 9 | NYU | 15 | 10 | 4 | 1.57 |
| 10 | Northwestern | 12 | 10 | 7 | 1.55 |
| 11 | Cornell | 17 | 10 | 7 | 1.54 |
| 12 | Vanderbilt | 13 | 9 | 16 | 1.54 |
| 13 | Georgetown | 9 | 14 | 7 | 1.53 |
| 14 | Michigan | 6 | 17 | 7 | 1.52 |
We bet Washington University, Vanderbilt, and Georgetown wish that the U.S. News rankings were based only on their admissions profiles right about now, while schools like Duke, UC-Berkeley, and UCLA are thanking their lucky stars that the rankings are based on more.
We’ll check back in March to see how close to reality these partial rankings are.
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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.