In a comment on Berman on Enrollment Management, Prof. Berman (Ohio State) asked where an academic attrition rate of 10% would fall. In A Tale of Two Law Schools: Academic Attrition, I gave discussed the distribution of first-year academic attrition for the Fall 2008 entering classes.
The following charts look at average first-year academic attrition for the Fall 2006 through Fall 2009 entering classes at ABA-approved law schools in the continental United States. As shown in the scatter-plot below, while academic attrition rates vary widely, they generally rise as law-school LSAT 75th percentiles fall.
To look more closely at the trend, I grouped ABA-approved law schools in the continental United States into six groups, Historically Black Law Schools ("HBLS"), and other law schools by quintile* according to the average LSAT 75th percentiles for the Fall 2006 through Fall 2009 entering classes. The box-plot** below compares the distribution of first-year academic attrition for each group.
Law schools with first-year academic attrition rates of 10% or higher are almost entirely HBLSs or in the firsst quintile (lowest) of average LSAT 75th percentiles. No law school in the upper three quintiles has an academic attrition rate of 10% or higher. In the second quintile, one school has an academic attrition rate above 10%, but the next-highest rate is much lower. Almost 25% of law schools in the first (lowest) quintile have academic attrition rates. The median academic attrition rate for HBLSs is 9.9%.
Notes
*Because of the way the average LSAT 75th percentiles were grouped, there are 44 schools in the first quintile, but 35 in the second, 36 in the third, 38 in the fourth, and 36 in the fifth quintiles.
**In a box plot, the red box shows the 25th and 75th percentiles of the distribution, the bar in the middle shows the median. the lines ending in bars show the general extent of the distribution, with circles or asterisks showing outliers.
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