Sunday, February 21, 2010

Rank Envy

The dean recently posted a blog entry about law school rankings and the frustration they engender. My school is comfortably in the bottom half of law schools nationally and probably always will be, but it certainly doesn't look that way from the inside. The student/teacher ratio is low, the professors are all very expert, the classroom technology is top notch, and the students--at least the ones who aren't just punching the clock--are as sharp a group of people as I've ever been around.
For a guy like me, who has no plans to enter the national job market, it would be downright foolish to pay twice the money to go to a top twenty school, even if I could get into one. I'm not pulling that ratio out of the air, either. Every single school in the U.S. News top twenty costs at least twice what I'm paying (or, more accurately, what my wife is paying). More than half of them cost four times as much. I hope that my position on the moot court travel team gives me a chance to visit one or two top tier schools next year so I can see what all that money buys.

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