Rankings Rumblings

Mail today brings this from Mark F. Grady, Dean and Professor of Law at George Mason University:

I write with good news --

For the third year in a row, George Mason is ranked in the top tier in the U.S. News and World Report rankings of law schools. [emphasis his] We continue to be the youngest and fastest rising law school in the nation, now ranked by U.S News [sic] as 40th among law schools in the United States.

And while that's all fine and dandy, I'd just like to know how Dean Grady knows his school's U.S. News rank before anyone else does. I guess some controversy has been raging at the PR boards about whether the rankings have already been released or not, but Mason would have had to have the rankings sometime last week for me to be receiving this letter today. Do schools get the rankings in advance of publication? (For some reason I haven't been able to access the PR boards all day.)

I won't be going to Mason. The more I hear about this school the more I wonder what made me think it was a possible choice in the first place. The initial lure may have been the low tuition. When I was there last week one of the student's boasted that he'd be getting a J.D. from Mason for the cost of just one year at Georgetown. The cheap degree is definitely a persuasive argument, but at what cost to your worldview, I wonder.

Does it bother anyone else that a school renowned for its conservatism is also the "youngest and fastest rising law school in the nation"?

UPDATE: GM has this to say about its early knowledge of rankings. Hmmmmmm...

Posted March 31, 2003 08:03 PM | law school