DatabasesProject SEAPHE seeks to foster research on the use of preferences in higher education. We also seek to foster transparency. In pursuit of both goals, the Project seeks to secure relevant data from universities and research organizations, and to make that data available to a broad community of users. By the end of 2008, we hope to have made available half-a-dozen new datasets relevant to these issues. Some initial datasets are posted and explained below.Law School AdmissionsIn July 2007, Project SEAPHE began an effort to secure admissions data from all of the public law schools in the United States. The data is helpful in understanding not only the use of race in law school admissions, but on many related issues as well: (1) how much weight is given to numerical credentials in law school admissions? (2) How narrow is the band from which students are admitted? (3) What do the acceptance and rejection patterns of law applicants tell us about the degree to which "rankings" dominate other factors in law school choice? more...The data is available here in SAS, STATA, or Excel format.
The 1995 National Study of Law Student PerformanceIn September 1995, Richard Sander, Kris Knaplund, and Kit Winter wrote to every ABA-approved law school in the United States to invite their participation in a study of first-year law students. The principal motivation for the study was the investigation of whether there was a significant “gender gap” in law school – a gap either in the grades men and women received, or in how the law school was experienced by men and women. There was wide interest in these questions at the time, and no less than thirty law schools responded with a commitment to participate.
The Law School Admissions Council's (LSAC) National Bar Passage StudyFrom 1991 through 1997, LSAC tracked some twenty-seven thousand law students through law school, graduation, and sittings for bar exams. The result was the most comprehensive database that exists on the demography, experiences, and outcomes of a large cohort of aspiring lawyers. While the data has important limitations, it is a unique and very valuable source for studying a range of issues related to legal education. Note that LSAC's practices in making this data available vary; if you encounter difficulty accessing the data from the LSAC links provided below, please contact us directly.
|
