NYU’s School of Law rose to No. 8 out of 195 law schools nationwide in the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, marking a one spot-increase from last year and an improvement in all 13 specialty rankings. 

NYU Law maintained its tie with the University of Michigan Law School and its No. 1 spot in international law, tax law and criminal law. Other private New York schools fell in the rankings this year, with Columbia Law School dropping two spots to No. 10 and Cornell Law School dropping four spots to No. 18. 

U.S. News also introduced three more specialty rankings for law schools with the most graduates in public interest law, Big Law and federal clerkships — where NYU ranked No. 5, No. 13 and No. 26, respectively. These additions are based on employment outcome data reported to the American Bar Association, which U.S. News has used to inform its report after NYU joined dozens of institutions that stopped providing data for the rankings in 2022, out of concern that the methodology discourages students pursuing careers in public interest.

This year marks the third cycle that NYU stopped providing U.S. News with private data for its ranking, meaning that categories including student debt, employment at graduation and percentage of students who submit their LSAT as opposed to GRE exams — none of which influence the rankings — are left blank.

The law school kept its score of 95 on the 100-point scale used by the U.S. News, which maintained its methodology from last year. The scale considers 10 factors relating to the law school’s overall quality, selectivity, facilities and resources, and students’ post-graduation success, including the law school’s 16.7% acceptance rate, 4.4 out of 5 peer assessment score and 5.4-to-1 student-faculty ratio.

This year’s U.S. News rankings for graduate programs put NYU as No. 1 in Urban Policy, No. 6 in Business, No. 6 in Education and No. 9 in Nursing. The university also climbed five spots to No. 30 in U.S. News’ latest undergraduate rankings, marking its first increase since the methodology placed more emphasis on graduation rates and replaced consideration of first-generation students with that of Pell Grant recipients. 

In 2023, NYU Law ranked No. 5 before falling to No. 9 — its lowest spot in history — last year. Prior to that, it upheld its No. 6 position for nearly 12 years straight after initially falling from its spot in the top 5 that it held from 1999 to 2009.

Contact Lekhya Kantheti and Amanda Chen at [email protected].