UF’s Levin College of Law ranked 41st in the nation this month — up seven spots from last year.
The magazine U.S. News & World Report released the rankings, where UF was 41 out of 197 law schools, March 13, according to its website.
Laura Rosenbury, the college’s dean, said she’s worked to improve the college, which has grown in its diversity and number of applicants.
“As the best law school in the third largest state, we deserve a much higher national profile, and this is a step in the right direction,” Rosenbury said.
Since she started at UF on July 1, 2015, she said she has worked to choose quality applicants and help graduates find jobs.
The number of applications for the incoming 2016 class increased by 98 percent from the previous year, she said. That class also had a higher median law school aptitude test (LSAT) score, from 157 to 160, and a higher median GPA, from 3.5 to 3.6.
The class was the most diverse in the law school’s history, with 36 percent of students identifying as racially and ethnically diverse, she said.
Rosenbury said she worked with faculty to assure every 2015 graduate without a job would have one by March 2016, which was successful.
UF Law is on track to improve the university’s overall quality, she said.
“Raising our national profile increases the value of all of our students’ degrees, as well as the degrees of our alumni,” she said.
Nax Joye, a 26-year-old UF Law second-year student, said he believes the college should be ranked higher.
“Our faculty and several of our academic programs are actually far above what we’re ranked now,” he said. “I think that we have room to grow, and I think we’ll continue to do so.”
TOP FIVE NATIONAL LAW SCHOOLS
• Yale University
• Stanford University
• Harvard University
• University of Chicago
• Columbia University
