tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3829599.post115117748010747690..comments2024-01-28T00:20:40.933-08:00Comments on Agoraphilia: The University of Florida's Score in the USN&WR RankingsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3829599.post-1151598660950646342006-06-29T09:31:00.000-07:002006-06-29T09:31:00.000-07:00Carnival: I of course cannot rule out the possibi...Carnival: I of course cannot rule out the possibility that bribery affects the rankings. Heck, for all I know, death threats do, too! I'm skeptical of such explanations, though. Lawyerly types usually find it sufficient to rely on their wiles when they want to misbehave.Tom W. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02790351458154066358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3829599.post-1151512138889258692006-06-28T09:28:00.000-07:002006-06-28T09:28:00.000-07:00Tom, Obviously, you've found one way the schools...Tom,<BR/> Obviously, you've found one way the schools try and manipulate data they report to USNWR. I'm no conspiracy theorist but... What about under the table payments to USNWR data collectors to influence some of the subjective ranking criteria?Carnival Knowledgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14306043955220290487noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3829599.post-1151345394719352042006-06-26T11:09:00.000-07:002006-06-26T11:09:00.000-07:00Anon: Please let me emphasize that I do not know ...Anon: Please let me emphasize that I do not know how Florida will in fact classify the students it admitted in January, 2006, for purposes of reporting to the ABA or USN&WR. You may be right that it will group them with it's 1Ls, and properly so. I suspect, though, that Florida might have an argument for reporting matters differently.<BR/><BR/>I agree that the USN&WR questionnaire evidently focuses on when a student matriculates--not whether a student qualifies as a 1L or 2L. But the ABA questionnaire, available at http://www.abanet.org/legaled/questionnaire/2006questionnaires/part2enrollment.pdf, speaks both in terms of matriculants and first-year students, and the USN&WR questionnaire references the ABA one. I've not worked through the ABA questionnaire carefully to see what it would require of a school that, like Florida, has 2L students that matriculated in the reporting period. I suspect that neither the ABA nor USN&WR had a situation like Florida's in mind. That might give Florida some wiggle room to exclude its January 2006 matriculants from what it reports in the fall of 2006 about its 1L students.Tom W. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02790351458154066358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3829599.post-1151179854558285742006-06-24T13:10:00.000-07:002006-06-24T13:10:00.000-07:00Tom: You write:"I gather, then, that Florida need...Tom: You write:<BR/>"I gather, then, that Florida need never report to the ABA or USN&WR the LSATs and GPAs of the students admitted in January 2006. Those students would have come in too late for Florida to report in the fall 2005 and will no longer qualify as first-year students by the fall of 2006."<BR/><BR/> Why should it matter that they are not "first-year" students by next fall? Is there something in the questionnaire that says the admissions numbers are supposed to be based on first-year students? As I understand it, it talks in terms of students who "matriculate" as a first time student in an entering class. The Spring 2006 group would be non-transfering first-year matriculating students, so they should show up in the admissions numbers with the group that starts Fall 2006.<BR/><BR/>If Florida thinks the students aren't going to count because they are 2Ls by Fall 2006, such a conclusion seems to be based on the notion that you couldn't be counting a student in the incoming matriculating data that might be counted as a "2L" in the enrollment data. But why not? Nothing in the questionnaire says this couldn't be the case, so why wouldn't Florida be compelled to include these "special" students?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com