1. U.S. News was aware Brooklyn had a part-time program due to past responses and other data about the part-time program Brooklyn supplied; and

2. Brooklyn notified U.S. News of its intention to omit the part-time LSAT and GPA data.

The “internal consistency” you point out actually lends some credibility to Brooklyn’s account. I can imagine a low-level administrator filling in the totals of the part-time (null) and full-time numbers before submitting the form. It does not, however, absolve U.S. News of its responsibility to investigate obviously bad data. U.S. News was on notice and failed to do anything about it. I mean, seriously, the editors of this blog, JD Undergrounders, and dozens of ATL posters were on this as soon as the rankings were leaked. It was not hard to figure out.

Of course it was “given the chance.” It just lazily accepted the numbers as accurate when all signs pointed otherwise. That’s poor journalism, regardless of whether Brooklyn’s bad data was a purposeful misrepresentation or just a stupid mistake.

US News wasn’t given the chance to disregard the blank space left by Brooklyn in the combined full/part time numbers because Brooklyn did not leave a blank space there.

They’re not “policemen,” they’re journalists compiling rankings — rankings which are the single most profitable thing the magazine does all year. I honestly don’t understand either your hostility or your incredulity that someone would try to hold a magazine accountable for the rankings it publishes.

gtfo with that.

If you read the statement, Brooklyn clearly states that it intended to leave the part-time numbers blank and alerted U.S. News to the fact that it would be doing so on principle. And sure, U.S. News would then be free to disregard the data entirely and leave Brooklyn unranked. But it didn’t.