Princeton Review Gives High Marks to Law, Darden Schools

October 15, 2010 — Law and graduate business students at the University of Virginia gave their schools high marks in the Princeton Review's latest rankings of their schools.

The U.Va. School of Law and the Darden School of Business were included in the 2011 editions of the Princeton Review's "Best 172 Law Schools" and "Best 300 Business Schools," neither of which ranked the schools from top to bottom.

However, both guides included rankings in several categories, and U.Va. was well-represented in those lists.

The Law School was listed as having the No. 1 quality of life for students. It ranked No. 2 in "Best Classroom Experience," No. 4 in "Professors Rock (Legally Speaking)," No. 5 in "Toughest to Get Into" and No. 7 in "Best Career Prospects."

The Darden School was top-ranked in "Best Professors," and was ranked second in "Best Campus Facilities" and fifth in "Best Campus Environment."

Both guides drew heavily from student rankings, and quoted students extensively in two-page profiles of each school.

In the Law School's profile, the guide said, "It's all about work-life harmony at the University of Virginia School of Law." It went on to laud the accessibility, knowledge and helpfulness of the school's faculty, extracurricular academic opportunities, the effectiveness of the school's career services and clerkship placement programs, the facilities and the strong alumni network.

"It is hard to imagine a group of people more laid-back" than U.Va. law students and faculty, the guide quotes one student as saying. Another said the students manage to be "smart, driven and successful, and at the same time be down-to-earth, fun and friendly."

The Darden profile extols the school's case-based curriculum and its student-friendly attitude. Students rave about the faculty's accessibility ("Professors at Darden are there because they want to teach. Students are the priority, not the research," one student is quoted as saying), and praised a much-improved Career Development Center, noting that 85 percent of last year's graduates had job offers by graduation and 91 percent had offers within three months of graduation.

The Princeton Review guide is the latest in a string of rankings successes for Darden. In September, it was rated No. 7 in the nation for entrepreneurship in a ranking done by the Princeton Review for Entrepreneur magazine.

Also in September, Darden leapt from 11th to seventh in the U.S. (and from 24th to 11th in the world) in rankings compiled by The Economist. Darden fared well in several of The Economist's sub-rankings, including student rating of the program (first), student rating of the faculty (second), alumni effectiveness (second) and student rating of career services (sixth).





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