College Rankings for Law, Politics & Government

Personforce produced a new way to look at College Rankings. Basically it creates way to measure what schools are ranked best for a career in politics or law.

Hope it produces some interesting insight! Republished below with permission.
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At Personforce we help connect employers with students at the top universities in the country through our network of college job boards. In that capacity, we're interested in the question - what are the top universities and how do you rank them?

Rather than measuring an arbitrary set of metrics, why not look at what schools best prepare their students for the careers they want to pursue? This post examines the question: if you are interested in politics and law, what schools produce alumni that seem to excel in that area.

As a proxy for success in the field of politics and law, we use acceptance to Yale Law School. We are using this because Yale Law seems to produce a disproportionate number of Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, legislators, and partners at white shoe firms and is very difficult to get in to. Oh, and most importantly, Yale publishes a list of what undergraduate institutions each of its graduates attended.

First, here is a dump of the number of students each undergraduate school has contributed to the current Yale Law student body:

Yale University - 82 students

Harvard University - 66

Stanford University - 33

Columbia University - 30

Princeton University - 24

Brown University - 17

Dartmouth College - 15

University of California at Berkeley - 15

Duke University - 11

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - 11

University of Pennsylvania - 11

Williams College - 11

Amherst University - 9

Northwestern University - 9

University of Notre Dame [Indiana] - 9

Cornell University - 8

University of California at Los Angeles - 8

University of Chicago - 8

University of Virginia - 8

Georgetown University - 7

Swarthmore College - 7

University of Texas at Austin - 7

Wesleyan University - 7

Brigham Young University - 6

Massachusetts Institute of Technology - 5

New York University - 5

University of Toronto [Canada] - 5

Washington University [Missouri] - 5

Wellesley College - 5

Emory University - 4

Howard University - 4

Johns Hopkins University - 4

Middlebury College - 4

University of Georgia - 4

Arizona State University - 3

Boston College - 3

Fordham University - 3

National Taiwan University [Taiwan] - 3

Oberlin College - 3

United States Naval Academy - 3

University of Maryland - 3

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - 3

University of Southern California - 3

University of Washington - 3

University of Wisconsin at Madison - 3

American University - 3

Bard College - 2

Columbia University [Barnard College] - 2

Hebrew University of Jerusalem [Israel] - 2

McGill University [Canada] - 2

Morehouse College - 2

Ohio State University - 2

Peking University [People’s Republic of China] - 2

Rice University - 2

Université Panthéon-Assas Paris II [France] - 2

University of California at San Diego - 2

University of Delaware - 2

University of Iowa - 2

University of Mary Washington - 2

University of Missouri - 2

University of South Carolina - 2

University of the South - 2

Univerzitet U Pritini [Yugoslavia] - 2

Vanderbilt University - 2

Wake Forest University - 2

Washington and Lee University - 2

Whitman College - 2

Albertson College of Idaho - 1

Alma College - 1

American University in Bulgaria [Bulgaria] - 1

Aristoteleio Panepistimio Thessalonikis [Greece] - 1

Austin College - 1

Bar-Ilan University [Israel] - 1

Bates College - 1

Baylor University - 1

Benedictine College - 1

Biola University - 1

Bowdoin College - 1

Brandeis University - 1

Bryn Mawr College - 1

California State University - 1

Calvin College - 1

Chulalongkorn University [Thailand] - 1

Claremont McKenna College - 1

Colgate University - 1

College of William and Mary - 1

Concordia University [Canada] - 1

Denison University - 1

Depauw University - 1

East China University of Politics and Law [People’s Republic of China] - 1

Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen [Germany] - 1

Ewha Woman’s University [Republic of Korea] - 1

Fairfield University - 1

Gettysburg College - 1

Gonzaga University - 1

Gordon College - 1

Grinnell College - 1

Hamilton College - 1

Hampton University - 1

Harding University - 1

Haverford College - 1

Indiana University - 1

Ithaca College - 1

Kansai University [Japan] - 1

Lahore University of Management Sciences [Pakistan] - 1

Lewis and Clark College - 1

Louisiana State University - 1

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München [Germany] - 1

Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg [Germany] - 1

Masarykova Universita V Brnó [Czech Republic] - 1

Minnesota State University - 1

Mount Holyoke College - 1

National Law School of India University [India] - 1

National University of Singapore [Singapore] - 1

North Carolina State University - 1

Ohio Wesleyan University - 1

Pennsylvania State University - 1

Pomona College - 1

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [Chile] - 1

Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo [Brazil] - 1

Rutgers, State University of New Jersey - 1

Saint Olaf College - 1

Santa Clara University - 1

Sarah Lawrence College - 1

Sookmyung Women’s University [Republic of Korea] - 1

State University of New York at Buffalo - 1

State University of New York at Stony Brook - 1

Sveuilite U Zagrebu [Croatia] - 1

Tel Aviv University [Israel] - 1

Texas A & M University - 1

Thammasat University [Thailand] - 1

Touro College - 1

Tsinghua University [People’s Republic of China] - 1

Tufts University - 1

Tulane University - 1

Universidad de Buenos Aires [Argentina] - 1

Universidad de Mendoza Law School [Argentina] - 1

Universidad de Palermo [Argentina] - 1

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro [Brazil] - 1

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul [Brazil] - 1

Università degli Studi di Sassari [Italy] - 1

Università degli Studi, Pisa [Italy] - 1

Universität Zürich [Switzerland] - 1

University of Alberta [Canada] - 1

University of Arizona - 1

University of Auckland [New Zealand] - 1

University of California at Irvine - 1

University of California at Santa Barbara - 1

University of California, Santa Cruz - 1

University of Central Arkansas - 1

University of Colorado - 1

University of Denver - 1

University of Florida - 1

University of Haifa [Israel] - 1

University of Illinois - 1

University of Massachusetts - 1

University of Minnesota - 1

University of North Carolina at Asheville - 1

University of North Texas - 1

University of Northumbria at Newcastle [United Kingdom] - 1

University of Oklahoma - 1

University of Oxford [United Kingdom] - 1

University of Pittsburgh - 1

University of Pugent Sound - 1

University of Saint Andrews [United Kingdom] - 1

University of Texas at Dallas - 1

University of Western Australia [Australia] - 1

Vassar College - 1

Wuhan University [People’s Republic of China] - 1

Yeshiva University - 1

It's a interesting list. As you would expect, schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford top the list. However, schools like Michigan out-perform schools like Amherst, mostly likely because they are about a gazillion times bigger.

So, as a final step we need to control for the size of the undergraduate institutions. Pulling the undergraduate data from Freebase and Wikipedia and dividing through, we create a ranking of undergraduate schools where students have the best chance of attending Yale Law School. We index these results to 100 (since the % on their own are meaningless) to present:

College Rankings for a Career in Law or Politics

1. Yale University - 100

2. Harvard University - 64

3. Columbia University - 49

4. Williams College - 36

5. Amherst University - 35

6. Stanford University - 32

7. Princeton University - 32

8. Swarthmore College - 30

9. Dartmouth College - 23

10. Brown University - 19

11. Wesleyan University - 16

12. Wellesley College - 14

13. Duke University - 12

14. Middlebury College - 11

15. University of Chicago - 10

16. University of the South - 9

17. Whitman College - 9

18. Massachusetts Institute of Technology - 8

19. Washington and Lee University - 7

20. Bard College - 7

21. Northwestern University - 7

22. University of Pennsylvania - 7

23. University of Notre Dame [Indiana] - 7

24. Oberlin College - 7

25. Georgetown University - 7

26. Johns Hopkins University - 6

27. Columbia University [Barnard College] - 6

28. Washington University [Missouri] - 5

29. Morehouse College - 4

30. United States Naval Academy - 4

31. Rice University - 4

32. University of California at Berkeley - 4

33. Emory University - 4

34. Cornell University - 4

35. University of Virginia - 4

36. Howard University - 4

37. American University - 3

38. University of Mary Washington - 3

39. Wake Forest University - 3

40. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - 3

41. Fordham University - 2

42. Boston College - 2

43. University of California at Los Angeles - 2

44. Vanderbilt University - 2

45. New York University - 2

46. Brigham Young University - 1

47. University of Texas at Austin - 1

48. University of Southern California - 1

49. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - 1

50. National Taiwan University [Taiwan] - 1

51. Hebrew University of Jerusalem [Israel] - 1

52. University of Georgia - 1

53. University of Toronto [Canada] - 1

54. Peking University [People’s Republic of China] - 1

55. University of Delaware - 1

56. University of Maryland - 1

57. University of South Carolina - 1

58. University of Wisconsin at Madison - 1

59. University of Washington - 1

60. University of Iowa - 1

61. University of California at San Diego - 1

62. University of Missouri - 1

63. McGill University [Canada] - 1

64. Arizona State University - 0

65. Ohio State University - 0

And so Yale University comes out first in our rankings of schools that prepare you for a career in law and politics. A few observations based on the data:

1. Attending a top 10 (or in particular a top 2) school in the ranking gives a huge advantage in terms of likelihood to get into Yale Law.

2. Yale Law seems to gives a disproportionate number of spots to its own undergrads. A student at Yale is 66% more likely to get into Yale Law than a student at Harvard?

3. Schools like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore do really well in this ranking! If you are interested in law and politics, it looks like they rank ahead of schools like MIT, Stanford, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, Northwestern. It makes me wonder if US News is doing a disservice to liberal arts schools by ranking them separately from universities.

Anyhow, there is no need to put too much stock in the results. It was an interesting and quick exercise based on some assumptions (reasonable ones hopefully) that produced a dramatically different ranking than other methods. It would be fascinating to produce similar analyses for the business and medical professions. Thanks for reading and if you are looking for a job, you can of course find jobs in law and policy on Personforce.