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The University of Texas School of Law is in rarified air.

U.S. News and World Report has released its rankings of the top law schools in the country for 2022, and UT was ranked No. 16, tied with Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Washington University in St. Louis.

It was the top Texas law school on the list.

No other Texas law school made the national top 50, though Southern Methodist University in Dallas ranked No. 52, Texas A&M ranked in a tie at No. 53, Baylor University ranked No. 58 and the University of Houston ranked in a tie at No. 60.

According to U.S. News and World Report, the rankings are based on "successful placement of graduates, their faculty resources, the academic achievements of entering students, and opinions by law schools, lawyers and judges on overall program quality."

Yale University ranked first in the nation in law schools.

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news ... hools.html

It's good to be slightly best of the rest. It's surprising that A&M's peer ranking and outcomes would be nearly the same as SMU's. I can't access that piece but saw that SMU's median LSAT is one point better than A&M's and GPA is 3.7 at SMU vs. 3.76 at A&M.

#21 Florida is the best OOS bargain at $38K in tuition. Its OOS tuition is just $2K more than UT's in-state rate. Top 10 public U's Berkeley (#9) and Michigan (#10) charge over $60K for in-state tuition.

At #25, ASU and Alabama rank much higher than their undergrads. Same is true for Iowa (#29), George Mason (#41), Utah (#43), Arizona (#46), Colorado (#48) and Houston (#60). Big city draws?

Someone should ask Turner and the law school dean to justify this. This is due to many years of conformist behavior. There is no reason SMU law should not be top 25 in the nation.

Same question should be asked of Turner and the Cox dean why it’s not top 25 as well, and why UTDallas and A&M are ranked higher. Embarrassing.

To get into the low 30s with BC and Fordham, SMU needs to boost its median LSAT by 3 points and GPA by about 0.05. Key difference is those other two get 3x the applications for 1.2-2x the enrollment.

At #25 GW has a 5 pt advantage on LSAT and 0.13 on GPA. They get almost 5x the apps for 2.6x the enrollment.

Need lots of scholarship money for starters.

Kind of surprised by the rankings of BYU, Utah, George Mason, and GW for that matter.

Mustangs_Maroons wrote:There is no reason SMU law should not be top 25 in the nation.

Well, there are probably 50 schools who think the same thing.

horsemanx wrote:

Mustangs_Maroons wrote:There is no reason SMU law should not be top 25 in the nation.

Well, there are probably 50 schools who think the same thing.

You’re totally missing the point. SMU, along with its business school and law school, has been treading water for decades. And how many of the other schools from 20 to 50 have the benefit of being in Dallas? Most major metropolitan areas have top notch academic institutions. See NY, Boston, Chicago, LA, San Francisco. You also have Houston with Rice, Atlanta with Emory. These are both top 25 undergrad and they also tend to rank high in key grad programs. SMU has a strong tradition, alumni base and is in Dallas, and yet look at our rankings. Not good enough.