Re: Brooklyn Gaming the Rankings
Earlier this week we wrote, much to the dismay of one of our readers, that Brooklyn Law School had probably gamed the rankings. We contacted Brooklyn both by phone and email about the article before its publication; we are still waiting for a response. As we learned from an email this morning, we are not alone:
I’m attending to Brooklyn part-time in the fall. I emailed the school about the rankings on Wednesday and I have yet to be contacted. I called on Friday and the receptionist told me that everyone was out of the office but that they were aware of the rankings. This really sucks! It’s like my school doesn’t even exist.
We hear you. Maybe we were caught up in the moment and were too aggressive in our accusations, but Brooklyn’s part-time students (current and future) deserve some kind of statement from the school.
The US News has limited information about Brooklyn’s part-time program listed on their website (such as part-time tuition), meaning that the magazine is apparently aware that Brooklyn’s part-time program exists. So what happened? How did the US News get some information on the program but not all information?
In response to questions about the rankings data, the US News stated that “a few schools submitted incorrect data,” so we are going to assume, for the time being, that they are not responsible for the error. Based on this statement and conversations with administrators at other schools regarding the rankings survey, the blame most likely falls on Brooklyn. The best explanation is that Brooklyn failed to submit the information on their part-time requested by the US News. We toyed around with the numbers, and Brooklyn likely gained 5-10 spots in the rankings thanks to this missing information. Brooklyn was fortunate enough to have only their favorable full-time statistics considered in the ranking.
As you can see, while this elaborates very slightly on our previous post, information is still sparse. If Brooklyn ever addresses the inconsistency, the school will undoubtedly chalk it up to an internal error – and maybe that’s true. We at LSH think something sinister is afoot, but we will never be able to prove it. The US News is going to release more information on the erroneous data early next week. While the US News cannot pull back the magazines they sold this week, hopefully the online version of the rankings will be corrected. More to come…
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9:24 pm on April 25th, 2009
[...] A follow up post can be found here. [...]
9:28 pm on April 25th, 2009
When I applied for my firm job, I omitted a few bad grades from my transcript. It was no big deal.
11:28 pm on April 25th, 2009
BLS cheated. If I ran the US News, I would remove them from the rankings.
1:26 am on April 26th, 2009
I still find this very shoddy reporting. Your anger is better directed at U.S. News, which is responsible for the content it publishes. If what you report is correct, U.S. News could see that the part-time data were omitted and published the rankings anyway. Why did it rank based on the full-time data instead of demanding part-time data or omitting Brooklyn from the rankings? The notion that Brooklyn is perpetrating fraud rather than just messing something up or being the beneficiary of U.S. News’ error is wholly unsubstantiated here or anywhere else on your blog, your snide comments notwithstanding.
I am also interested in seeing your calculations with respect to the rankings hit Brooklyn would allegedly suffer if part-time numbers were included. As you are undoubtedly aware, the U.S. News rankings are based on median LSAT scores, which are not published as far as I can tell.
What we do know is that at least 75% of the full-time students have a 162 LSAT or above. They make up about 48.5% of the overall class. Thus, I think it’s safe to assume that the median of the class is at least 162. (At least a handful of part-time students likely have scores at or above 162, and at least a handful of students below the 25th percentile in the full-time class likely have 162s.) Did you use 162 or some other number?
7:21 am on April 26th, 2009
I spoke with the alumni relations director about this problem. They were confident that Brooklyn had selectively forgot to include their part-time program in the sheet.
I always hated the part-time program as anyone could use it to backdoor into the full-time program. Very few people actually graduate from the part-tiem program.
I bet Occum goes to Brooklyn. Occum, the school cheated, get over it.
7:30 am on April 26th, 2009
Brooklyn is a terrible law school. Occam has no job and must spend his days on the internet fighting injustice.
The reporting is great and I’m glad that someone is running this story. Brooklyn should say something, but since they benefit from the error, they are going to keep their lips sealed. Terrible law school hellbent on exploiting the NYC market for all its worth.
7:54 am on April 26th, 2009
lsac and law school numbers list brooklyns overall median at 161.
9:00 am on April 26th, 2009
Yes, I go to Brooklyn. I didn’t realize you thought I was trying to keep that a secret or I would have said so earlier. And actually, I am one of the few 3Ls has a job with a regular start date. And I was lucky enough to come in with a near-full scholarship. So, yeah, I feel pretty good right now.
My school isn’t the best, and it isn’t the worst. I strongly dislike the administration, and I am under no illusions about its credibility or transparency. I agree with others who have commented here and elsewhere that at least one of the reasons Brooklyn runs the part-time program is because, in the past, it could admit tuition-payers who would otherwise slam the numbers; now that U.S. News has changed its methodology, it’s going to have to find another way to get spendthrift chumps to enroll. I bet the part-time day program disappears within the next couple of years due to the change in rankings methodology, which goes to show how little educational function it serves.
All that said, there’s just no evidence that Brooklyn perpetrated fraud here. Yes, Brooklyn may be keeping mum because it benefits from the error. Who wants to issue a press release that says, “Oh, actually, our numbers are a bit lower than we said, and we could be down as far as 70 in the rankings”? But someone sent me a screen-shot of the Brooklyn data on the U.S. News site, and it is entirely clear that U.S. News published the full-time numbers as both full-time numbers and overall class numbers, leaving part-time numbers blank. Whose fault is that? We don’t even know if the error occurred because Brooklyn omitted the data inadvertently, tried to slip it in without comment, refused to provide it on principle, or provided it in some kind of confusing way. And yet we do know that it should have been obvious to the U.S. News editors what it was publishing, and they went forward with Brooklyn’s ranking anyway.
***
@bk4life: LSAC is down, but the 2007 entering class data lists Brooklyn as having a median of 162 (and a middle 50 of 159-164). The Google cache of the Official Guide listing is here: http://tinyurl.com/BrooklynLSACcache; go to page 2. The 161 on LSN is class of 2009 (holla!) data; it is for the class that entered in 2006.
9:42 am on April 26th, 2009
something that everyone seems to be missing is that part-time employment data probably isnt factored in either
brooklyn doesnt deserve to be ranked where they are
10:28 am on April 26th, 2009
@bk4life: There’s no reason that would be the case. The enrolled class and the graduating class are two different groups of people, especially given the movement from the part-time program to the full-time program in the first two years of law school. For what it’s worth, nearly all part-timers move into the full-time program before graduation. I think about 10% of the class graduates from the part-time program (the NALP guide indicates even fewer), and almost all of these graduates were in the part-time evening program.
I also strongly doubt that the evening students would reduce, rather than improve, the employment statistics if they were somehow excluded from the rankings. Almost all people who stay in the night program do so because they have jobs during the day. Often, they are just earning the J.D. to get a credential or promotion and plan to remain with the same employer. Indeed, students in the part-time evening program are some of the most successful Brooklyn students, even if their entering credentials are often lower.
10:31 am on April 26th, 2009
Who says bk isn’t keeping the students listed as pt students at graduation?
GULC did this last year.
10:39 am on April 26th, 2009
brooklyn should release something about this error and these articles make it more likely
cheaters deserve exposure
10:46 am on April 26th, 2009
I forgot to include my terrible community college grades when I applied to BLS. It wasn’t intentional, just an internal error.
I’m sure they won’t mind, right?
10:55 am on April 26th, 2009
@bk4life: Did you even read my response? Even if Brooklyn separated out students who graduate from the part-time program, there are fewer than 50 of them each year, and most of them already have jobs.
@occam=brainwashed: There’s no evidence of cheating. And if Brooklyn did actually try to bury the part-time numbers (admittedly incredibly lame), it’s still U.S. News’ responsibility to base the rankings on accurate data. If the fact that the part-time data was omitted was so obvious to you all, don’t you think it should have been obvious to “Rankings Czar” Bob Morse and his staff?
11:06 am on April 26th, 2009
brooklyn probably took the student who started part-time and moved them back to part-time for reporting reasons – like gulc did last year
occam, would your firm be ok with you forgetting to include your worst grades?
11:17 am on April 26th, 2009
@bk4life: That sounds a whole lot more ambitious and organized than Brooklyn generally is, but I suppose it’s possible. I strongly doubt that this would affect the employment stats, though. Part-time students in the day program often have very good grades (because they have so much less work to do), and they get three summers of internships/SA work to make connections in the field. Part-time students in the night program usually have jobs already.
And no, obviously, my firm would not be okay with me forgetting to submit my worst grades. But it also would ask for a transcript instead of my personal recollection of my grades, and if I glaringly omitted three classes from the required first-year curriculum, it would investigate. The firm also wouldn’t put that I graduated summa on its website if it had any reason to doubt that I actually did. So . . .
11:19 am on April 26th, 2009
LSH editors/admins, I’m still curious about how you did those calculations . . .
11:39 am on April 26th, 2009
Using the methodology found on the US News website, we built a model for the top 100 law schools. When we adjusted Brooklyn’s three selectivity metrics to include the part-time program, the school fell into the high 60s.
We don’t know what the exact overall score would become, but it looks like the change would knock them into one of the two rankings groups below them (5-10 spots.)
- LSH
11:57 am on April 26th, 2009
What number did you use for the medians (which are the figures used to calculate for rankings), both for Brooklyn and for its peer schools? Thanks.
12:20 pm on April 26th, 2009
We used what was listed on the LSAC data sheets. We removed your big lsat post, we know that there are schools ranked above Brooklyn with lower LSAT spreads. That is not the issue.
- LSH
12:39 pm on April 26th, 2009
I find it hard to believe that the overall score would go down so much based on the difference between a 163 and a 162, a 3.46 and a 3.42, and a 29.4% and a 30.8% acceptance rate, but you may be right. I am still very interested in seeing your calculations. Perhaps it’s worth a separate post.
(Also, I don’t know how you got the LSAC datasheets of the other 63 schools ranked above and with Brooklyn since the website is down. Is this something I should know how to do?)
1:23 pm on April 26th, 2009
The scores are very tight among schools ranked 50-90.
We began working on this earlier in the week and downloaded the pdfs.
- LSH
1:58 pm on April 26th, 2009
Cool. Why not just post your spreadsheet? I’m legitimately curious, and I bet some of your other readers are too.
2:25 pm on April 26th, 2009
We will post it up if the US News fails to take corrective action. If you have any more questions for us, please contact us directly.
- LSH
4:11 pm on April 26th, 2009
Brooklyn won’t admit it, but we all know they cheated.
5:01 pm on April 26th, 2009
The article’s use of the term “gaming” would describe what Brooklyn had done in previous years — enroll nearly 200 students each year into the part-time program where their LSAT, etc. doesn’t count, then move almost all of them to the full-time program when US News isn’t counting anymore. Then, the next year, they have a higher ranking and get students with higher LSATs as a result. That’s “gaming” to me – technically within the letter of the rules, but not the spirit. What they appear to have done this year probably deserves stronger language, like “lying” or “fraudulent.” In the end, I agree when all is said and done someone will claim it is an innocent error by some low level person — but in the face of years of “gaming,” the fact that their part-time numbers are still somehow not counted after US News goes to such lengths to change the formula looks sinister to me. No direct proof, but the circumstantial evidence is there.
Now, is it a surprise that two notorious Ponzi schemers — Bernie Madoff and the guy that murdered his family this past week — both went to Brooklyn Law School?
5:29 pm on April 26th, 2009
Don’t you think you all are making a little much of this? If Brooklyn left the part-time stats blank, it wasn’t even a lie. It was an omission — perhaps in error, perhaps in an effort to evade a rankings hit, and perhaps out of opposition to the inclusion of part-time numbers. Who knows! But lying is something else. Brooklyn would be lying if it said that its numbers were something they weren’t. But all the evidence suggests that (a) Brooklyn simply didn’t provide the part-time numbers or (b) U.S. News omitted them in error, just as it failed to include Brooklyn among the schools listed in the part-time ranking.
And who cares! For all of your righteous anger about Brooklyn, it’s U.S. News that holds itself out as an authority, and it’s U.S. News that made the mistake in publishing the rankings with the bad data — data that was so bad, this blog picked up on it without even seeing the magazine and website. Skeptic says U.S. News went to great lengths to adjust its formula, but why couldn’t it do a simple fact check? Perhaps this should give you all some indication of how seriously to take the rankings in the first place.
And seriously, get some perspective. This is, what, a difference of at most a handful of spots in law school rankings? Bernie Madoff swindled billions of dollars from pensioners and other investors, leading to at least two suicides and the closure of half a dozen important charities. William Parente killed his own family. Even assuming the absolute worst about Brooklyn administrators, there’s no connection between dishonesty about the entry credentials of a class of law students and tragedies of such magnitude. None. It’s sick even to bring it up.
6:26 pm on April 26th, 2009
}}} If Brooklyn left the part-time stats blank, it wasn’t even a lie.
On your tax returns, if you leave spaces blank where you should be reporting your income, I believe the IRS would consider it a lie.
Agreed that US News should do more fact checking than it does on these numbers, and the IRS should be auditing more tax returns. Both systems rely heavily on integrity in self-reporting, and when someone cheats on their taxes it is not fair to those who did not.
6:34 pm on April 26th, 2009
Ah, clever, but it’s not a fair analogy. On the tax return, items are totaled; if you omit numbers, the total is a lie. We have no idea what Brooklyn’s submission looked like to U.S. News. For all we know, it could have listed the numbers for the full-time program and explicitly declined to answer questions about the part-time program and overall numbers. Moreover, I am under a legal and ethical obligation to report my full income to the IRS. No school is under any obligation to report all or any part of its numbers to the U.S. News cabal. Most do because they wish to be ranked.
9:31 pm on May 4th, 2009
Is there some reason you deleted my post?
10:39 pm on May 4th, 2009
Occam,
We emailed you at your given email address. We have asked you to send any questions you have for us directly through email.
Thanks,
- LSH
11:54 pm on May 4th, 2009
As I said in our LSH email exchange, I posted it on the blog because I thought that your reasons for not posting the rankings model were a matter of public interest. You are, of course, free to do whatever you want with your blog, but if you email me about your reasons, your other readers won’t have the benefit of hearing you out. I’ll email you if I have a question of solely personal interest or if I want to speculate about something too sketchy to publish, but my request for you to post the rankings model is neither.
I am sincerely curious about your model and where my school ends up, and I imagine other readers are as well. You’ve made a big deal about how Brooklyn students and students at schools ranked near Brooklyn in the rankings have the right to know the schools’ “true” ranks, and you claim to have answers. Why not share?
8:10 pm on May 5th, 2009
[...] We investigated most of these tips and wrote about anything interesting that turned up. (See here, here, here, and here) We were even typing up a “Did 64 Law Schools Game the Rankings?” [...]
1:01 pm on May 18th, 2009
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7:40 am on May 21st, 2009
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