Fordham University has officially become the 24th law school in the country to boycott the U.S. News & World Report rankings. According to a statement made by Matthew Diller, dean of Fordham Law School, the university “will no longer provide data to the U.S. News for use in its ranking other than information that is already generally available to the public.” Additionally, he described the U.S. News ranking system as “deeply flawed” and that it does not accurately represent Fordham as a university, as the algorithm is known for “omitting important criteria” when calculating university rankings.

According to the statement sent by Diller, the U.S. News and World Report is known by many users to provide rankings to the public that do not tell the whole picture of a school, disregarding important information that can impact a student’s experience.

Such factors would include student life, alumni connections, school culture and the location of the school. Diller also said he believes rankings do not calculate the most important characteristics of Fordham, which consist of the strength of the faculty, commitment to others, professional values, leadership of alumni within the legal field and warmth of the community as a whole. Moreover, Diller said they do not depict whether a school has the faculty expertise and desired programs that a student may want.

“[Rankings] shoot up or down based on small differences in data and the methodology is deeply flawed,” said Diller.

“At its heart, a unitary ranking of the nation’s 200 law schools that functions like sports standings sows more misunderstanding than clarity for prospective law students.”

When Diller was asked if he is concerned that Fordham’s popularity amongst law applicants will be negatively affected, he said, “I’m not concerned at all about our popularity… We have one of the best applicant pools in the country and we have no problem attracting applicants… Our graduates have tremendous employment rates across the board, but especially in regard to highly desirable jobs.”

“Prospective law students generally know us or get to know us once they decide they want to go to law school in New York City. And finally, I don’t think U.S. News has helped us attract applicants. To be clear, U.S. News will still rank schools who have withdrawn regardless of their withdrawal. They will rank all the law schools based on publicly available information,” said Diller.

When Diller was applying to law school, he stated that there were no U.S. News rankings and that what mattered in choosing a school was research opportunities, pre-law advisors and network connections. There is more access to information regarding law schools on the internet. Websites such as lawschooltransparency.com, isac.org and abarequireddisclosures.org are widely used upon potential students.

“I believe that the U.S. News ranked Fordham accurately,” says Jakub Gul, GSB ’26.

“I believe that it’s impossible to quantify the value of school in a number… I believe that faculty and student talent should be ranked publicly, but I do not know if there is a fair way to do that,” says Aakarsh Sriran GSB ’26.

Fordham Law is not the first to disassociate themselves from the U.S. News & World Report. Many of the nation’s top law schools such as Georgetown, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, the University of Michigan, Harvard, UCLA, the University of Virginia and others have already boycotted the ranking system.
With opinions of U.S. News’ rankings growing unfavorable, it is possible that many schools will follow Fordham in their effort.