The Washington Monthly Magazine has produced an idiosyncratic list of rankings of undergraduate colleges. I haven’t looked at the methodology, but the rankings for Florida are quite suspect from the point of view of a person trying to decide where to send their kids. That has nothing to do with law schools, but bear with me.
The University of Florida is ranked 37th. The Florida Institute of Technology is ranked 121st. FSU is 132nd. Nova is 157th. The University of South Florida is 158th. FIU is 169th. And UM is 170th.
I’m not offended by the idea that the undergraduate college at UF might beat UM on a value-for-money scale: especially if one is weighing the cost of in-state tuition, UF might well be a better deal for your educational dollar despite the gigantic class size and the location in Gainesville. And I’m sure that every college in the state has departments that shine. But overall I simply find it inconceivable that the college at UM, which has made such enormous strides in the past 10-20 years and which today boasts by far the strongest faculty in its history, could possibly be ranked so much lower than UF, not to mention behind those other schools.
OK, UM isn’t quite at the rear of the state sweepstakes, as UCF got ranked at 193, and FAU at 240, but still.
