Law school remorse has been a hot topic this year, with jobless, debt-laden law school grads accusing their alma maters of having exaggerated their prospects in order to woo applicants - while deans hotly deny it. (Get the back story here.) Now the law school at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has issued a correction, saying that the class of 2014 had a median LSAT score of 163, not 168; and an undergrad GPA of 3.7, not 3.81. You might think that a few points here or there isn't such a big deal, but the decreased "competitiveness" of those admissions stats makes an enormous difference to the law school's placement in the national rankings.
It doesn't change how difficult it is to get into that law school, of course. Changing the published numbers doesn't change who actually got in this year and there's no doubt that anyone who emerged from their undergrad years with a 3.7 GPA did very well indeed. But it changes student expectations. They won't be graduating from the 21st or 23rd (depending on which rankings you read) law school in the country. They'll be graduating from ... well, whatever the new, lower ranking is.
Here's the upside: They'll be graduating from a law school that investigated when it was told there might be something wrong with its data, and that took responsibility for and corrected that error. Imagine, a law school staffed by honest lawyers. Here's hoping that other law schools follow that example, instead of lobbing lawsuits at those who dare to question the numbers.