Bob Morse Releases New Information Regarding Brooklyn’s Ranking
According to our data-entry records, in late October 2008, when Brooklyn Law first worked on its U.S. News law school statistical survey, it entered complete full-time, part-time, and combined full-time and part-time law admissions data (LSAT, undergraduate grade-point average, and applications and acceptances) for all students in the 2008 entering class.
However, in early December 2008—when Brooklyn submitted its final data to U.S. News —the school had deleted the part-time admissions data and instead copied the full-time LSAT, full-time undergraduate grade-point average, and full-time applications and acceptances into the fields labeled “All Students.” It should also be noted that this was the first year that U.S. News asked law schools to report admissions data for all students (full, part-time, and combined).
Brooklyn Law would have ranked lower in the 2010 Best Law Schools ranking if the original combined all-students data it entered in October had been used in the rankings. Additionally, if Brooklyn had reported its part-time admissions data, it would have appeared in the new, separate rankings for part-time law programs.
[US News]
Previously:
Brooklyn Speaks Out About Rankings
Re: Brooklyn Gaming the Rankings
Did Brooklyn Law School Game the Rankings?
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2:13 pm on May 18th, 2009
So it is confirmed that Brooklyn has provided incorrect data and that it would have ranked lower if the correct data had been provided. But US News, having confirmed this fact, will mislead students and others using the rankings by continuing to list Brooklyn as # 61. And Dean Wexler will likely get a raise to her $500K + salary for raising Brooklyn’s ranking in US News.
Well, I hope Dean Wexler has learned a lesson from all of this and will be sure not to do it again.
7:49 pm on May 18th, 2009
Hi. Where you at now Occam?
8:43 pm on May 18th, 2009
@ CROOOOKLYN
I’m right here. I’ve already commented extensively on this on the other threads, and I stand behind my previous comments. I don’t think this somewhat self-serving post form Bob Morse offers any news. It hardly corroborates any accusations of “fraud” or absolves U.S. News of its responsibility to fact check or revise the rankings. I’m just waiting for LSH to publish its own revised rankings. Until then, we have no way of knowing how much the omission would have hurt Brooklyn in the rankings, if at all.
5:40 am on May 19th, 2009
1 point drops them 5 spots, 2 points drop them 10 spots.
That’s the answer.
7:59 am on May 19th, 2009
@ “Well,”
One point in what? Score? Sure, a one-point drop in score would move Brooklyn down to 64, and a two-point drop in score would move Brooklyn down to 70, assuming all the other schools stay the same. The problem is that we don’t know (or at least I don’t know) the U.S. News model, so we can’t determine what effect, if any, the drop from 163 to 162, 3.46 to 3.42, and 29.4% to 30.8% would have on the scaled score.
8:07 am on May 19th, 2009
?
The US News says that Brooklyn would have ranked lower, meaning their total score would have been lower.
According to Bob Morse, Brooklyn would have dropped to AT LEAST 64.
9:47 am on May 19th, 2009
My point is that we don’t know how much. LSH says it has a model and that Brooklyn would have dropped ten spots. I am looking forward to seeing that model, and I am sure others are as well. It’s irresponsible of U.S. News not to revise the rankings since it clearly knows how the numbers would have affected Brooklyn’s score.
1:22 pm on May 19th, 2009
This was the only thing I could find about the 10 spots thing. (found on the re: Brooklyn post)
“We toyed around with the numbers, and Brooklyn likely gained 5-10 spots in the rankings thanks to this missing information.”
Looks accurate. US News already confirmed this claim.
1:41 pm on May 19th, 2009
If by 5-10, you mean at least 3, yes, U.S. News confirmed this claim.
And I apologize for misremembering LSH’s claim as bolder than it was.
3:06 pm on May 19th, 2009
Wow. Still being a baby about this Occam?
Brooklyn obviously filled out the form and made the conscious choice to remove the information – WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE THAT IT WOULD IMPROVE THEIR RANKING.
No longer can you whine about anyone accusing Brooklyn for gaming the rankings. They are guilty!
5:28 pm on May 19th, 2009
I think there is no evidence that Brooklyn is in the top 100 schools anymore. US News says their ranking is inaccurate, and they should be ranked lower, but it does not say how much. Thus, they cannot claim to be a top 100 school this year — I am going to assume they are in the third, maybe fourth, tier.
8:46 pm on May 19th, 2009
lol. I think it’s hilarious that someone with the username “Occdumb” accuses me of being a baby about this. I’ve said it before, and I’ll undoubtedly say it again: my cards are all out on the table here. I am a soon-to-be Brooklyn grad, and my school is being maligned. I think my frustration with the accusations is perfectly understandable. What I don’t understand is why all of you care so much, and especially why this has become personal for some of you (”Where you at?” “Still being a baby?”).
Brooklyn claims that it omitted the part-time data on principle (admittedly a self-serving one) and notified U.S. News about this by letter. U.S. News has not denied this. Obviously, Brooklyn either purposefully misled U.S. News by revising its submission to list the full-time stats as both full-time and whole-class stats or made an honest administrative error. If the former, it didn’t do a very good job of covering its tracks since it had already told U.S. News that it wasn’t going to include the part-time numbers. This makes me think the latter is more likely.
In any event, the only thing that is perfectly clear is that U.S. News had plenty of reason to doubt the whole-class numbers Brooklyn submitted and went ahead and used them in the rankings anyway. The fact that no one here seems to blame Bob Morse and crew is bizarre to me.
The LSH editors seem to think that Brooklyn students and prospective students deserve to know the truth about where Brooklyn should have ranked. They developed a model based on U.S. News’ methodology. I look forward to seeing how that turns out for my school.
Regardless (@ To Occam, especially), it’s obvious that Brooklyn would have ranked in the top 100 schools. The main thing dragging Brooklyn down is its reputation score, no? There aren’t schools in the third and fourth tiers with median LSAT scores of 162, etc.
8:41 am on May 20th, 2009
Your school cheated the rankings. Yes, the US News should have kept better track of the data, but it is irresponsible to shift the blame to the magazine.
Hopefully this further trashes Brooklyn’s already terrible reputation. They don’t care about the students or the law – they care about new buildings and prestige. Now that they have cheated their way up another couple of spots, maybe they can hike tuition even further into the stratosphere.
You can choose to shift the blame and see this through rose-colored glasses if you wish, but everyone knows what really happened.
BROOKLYN CHEATED THE RANKINGS.
8:52 am on May 20th, 2009
And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
9:08 am on May 20th, 2009
@ BLS2L
“Irresponsible to shift the blame to the magazine”?
This isn’t blame-shifting; it’s just blame where blame is due. U.S. News makes all of its money off of college rankings that it holds out to be the best in the business (and that, incidentally, distort the admissions market). The “journalists” at the magazine knew, or should have known, that the data they used was inaccurate, but they ranked Brooklyn anyway, knowing it would likely mean Brooklyn’s rank was inflated and other schools’ ranks were correspondingly deflated. It has yet to acknowledge any fault or take any corrective action.
Brooklyn, at least, has acknowledged that it made a mistake. There are legitimate questions about whether Brooklyn’s explanation is plausible, but I find the repeated accusation that Brooklyn “cheated,” without more, to be lacking. None of you have even acknowledged that BROOKLYN SENT A LETTER SAYING IT WAS GOING TO OMIT THE PART-TIME NUMBERS. This doesn’t sound like a very effective scheme to me. Perhaps they were banking on the U.S. News editors being as lazy, credulous, irresponsible, and/or disorganized as they apparently were, but that seems like a stretch.
From your username, I take it you are also a BLS student? I agree with some of what you said about our school: the administration is terrible and cares very little about students, and the tuition is out of control. That said, I had great opportunities at Brooklyn. I studied with wonderful faculty, was surrounded by a lot of smart people, and spent two full years doing clinical work where I won important victories for real clients. If you are there and you aren’t getting a lot out of the place, let me know and I’ll be happy to give you tips about faculty, journals, clinics, etc. But seriously, don’t waste your time grumbling about the construction in the lobby when you could be out doing something that will make you a better lawyer and a happier person.
10:02 am on May 20th, 2009
Awesome.
10:08 am on May 20th, 2009
Let me address Occam’s statement that: “BROOKLYN SENT A LETTER SAYING IT WAS GOING TO OMIT THE PART-TIME NUMBERS” (all caps in original)
Please go back and reread Brooklyn’s statement on this. Brooklyn never said it sent a letter to US News saying it was going to omit the part-time numbers. Rather, Brooklyn said it sent a letter to US News protesting the potential change in US News’ formula to include the part-time numbers. Sure, several other schools did as well, for fear that they including the part time numbers would hurt them in the rankings. But in the end, the other schools provided the part-time numbers to US News and Brooklyn did not, and Brooklyn does not claim that it simultaneously sent a letter telling US News what it was doing.
10:28 am on May 20th, 2009
@ “To Occam”
I just re-read the official statement, and you’re right. The external affairs office at school has been telling people that the letter said, “We will continue to provide numerical credentials for only our full-time program,” but that does not appear in the official statement. I don’t know if it appears in the letter.
Nonetheless, I still find the idea that Brooklyn was trying to deceive U.S. News about the existence of the part-time program absurd. Brooklyn has a part-time program. U.S. News knows that Brooklyn has a part-time program. Brooklyn has been supplying information about its part-time program to U.S. News for years. This year, in fact, it sent a letter specifically saying, at least, that it protested the use of part-time numbers in the rankings — even if it did not explicitly say that it would exclude those numbers. And then Brooklyn did, in fact, leave the part-time numbers on its submission blank while supplying other information about the part-time program.
Given this background, any person reading Brooklyn’s submission would know that the numbers for the whole entering class were inaccurate. F + P = F only if P is zero, and U.S. News knew that P could not possibly be zero. U.S. News does not even claim to have called or emailed about this inaccuracy. Instead, despite the fact that its rankings matter to a lot of people, it just went ahead and ranked Brooklyn with the bad numbers. That was a clear mistake.
9:40 am on May 23rd, 2009
Occam, wow. You are dense. I completely understand why you went to Brooklyn.
Brooklyn wanted a better ranking. They considered submitting all their data, but realized that they couldn’t stomach the ranking hit. They submitted the information hoping that the US News would take it a face value. Now you want to blame the US News?
Their “Our part-time student shouldn’t count because they are too stupid to get into our ft program” excuse is beyond terrible.
10:32 am on May 23rd, 2009
@ t14troll (nice name)
I really don’t understand the need for personal attacks here.
Of course Brooklyn’s “principle” about the part-time numbers was self-serving (though it has a point about the way that T14 schools and others game the rankings through both transfer and LLM admissions). That’s not the question. People here are claiming that Brooklyn was trying to perpetrate some kind of fraud. I just don’t think that makes sense given the facts. Yes, Brooklyn omitted the numbers to avoid the hit in the rankings. No, it wasn’t trying to trick anyone. If it were, it wouldn’t have written the letter in the first place, for one.
And yes, I hold U.S. News accountable for the rankings it published. They knew the numbers were wrong and ranked Brooklyn anyway. I would say that a discrepancy so obvious would merit at least an email or phone call before going forward.