In the 2010 Best Law Schools, the top ten spot has a few tied positions. UC Berkeley and University of Chicago are tied for sixth, while Duke, Northwestern, and UVA are caught in a three-way tie for the tenth position. This means that the top ten list actually includes 12 different schools. Below is the finalized list of the top ten best law schools in 2010.
1) Yale
2) Harvard
3) Stanford
4) Columbia
5) New York University
6) UC Berkeley
6) University of Chicago
7) U Penn
9) University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
10) Duke University
10) Northwestern University
10) University of Virginia
While it does not seem appropriate for a top ten list to contain 12 items, the combination of student surveys and quantitative assessment scores create equal placements on the list for many schools. While there were many changes to the list of top 100 schools, the top ten has remained mostly the same. Harvard recently eclipsed Stanford, taking the number two position, while some schools, such as Berkeley hang on to their position by a thread.
Law schools are rated by many different sources such as Kaplan, the Princeton Review and media sources such as US News. The main ratings and assessments come from the school’s Quality Score and Placement Success.
Quality score is found by combining a peer assessment score, assessment score by lawyers/judges, selectivity, their median LSAT scores, median undergrad GPA’s and their Acceptance Rate. These are quite similar to the ratings place on undergraduate institutions as well.
Placement success is based on the Bar passage rate by graduates, as well as their employment rates. This is quite different from undergraduate institutions as all graduates from Law school are headed for the same profession with the same resources. Quality score and placement success rates give you the opportunity to choose the best school for you based on what is most important to you.
