Another look at the top schools for externships

We published a list of the top schools for externship opportunities in our Fall issue of preLaw magazine and the October issue of National Jurist. We used the ratio of field placements to enrollment to rank the top 20 schools — with University of St. Thomas taking top honors. But we errored in that in the chart we listed it as full-time enrollment. While the data was total enrollment, we made the identification error because we had internally been debating whether to use full-time or total enrollment.

The difference, of course, are part-time students who presumably are working full-time and don’t have the opportunity to take on an externship. So, we went back and looked at the numbers using full-time enrollment only. There is no change in the top four, and 19 of the 20 schools are still in the top 20. But Thomas Jefferson rises from 15 to 5 on the chart, and University of Denver rises from 12 to 6. Santa Clara University, another school with a significant part-time enrollment, also rises — from 16 to 8.

FT Enroll Rank	Total Enroll Rank	Law School	2011 FT Enroll	2011 positions	2010 & 2011 avg % - Advertisement -
1	1	University of St. Thomas	475	609	131.8%
2	2	Northeastern University	629	483	81.8
3	3	University of Utah	402	278	62.2
4	4	Brigham Young University	443	252	50.2
5	15	Thomas Jefferson	687	368	44.8
6	12	University of Denver	768	324	44.3
7	5	Brooklyn Law School	1293	713	44.1
8	16	Santa Clara University	749	382	41.1
9	7	Arizona State	614	248	40.5
10	6	Earle Mack School of Law	440	222	40.3
11	8	Indiana Univ. – Bloomington	646	258	37.4
12	9	Appalachian School of Law	313	112	36.9
13	20	Southwestern University	741	267	36.5
14	18	University Nevada Las Vegas	347	125	36.3
15	10	University of Illinois	640	257	36.2
16	11	University of Colorado	546	199	34.9
17	13	University of Cincinnati	408	143	34.8
18	14	Valparaiso University	531	176	34.8
19	21	University of Maryland	734	230	32.7
20	19	Golden Gate University	616	171	32.6