The University’s College of Law dropped 12 spots to No. 47 in this year’s U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of the nation’s best law schools.

Overall, the College of Law has dropped 24 spots since 2011. The college was ranked No. 35 last spring after a November 2011 report revealed that Paul Pless, former assistant dean of admissions, had allegedly manipulated student data to make the law school seem more selective.

Pless resigned at the end of the two-month long University-led investigation, in which it was found that he had changed LSAT scores and GPA data for the classes of 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Following the investigation, the college’s ranking dipped by 12 spots because of a significant drop in peer assessment scores or the ratings of other law schools’ opinions of the college, said Robert Morse, director of data research at U.S. News and World Report. But he said peer assessment scores did not significantly fluctuate this year.

Instead, the college dropped in rankings because the College of Law was less selective and because of a change in the way U.S. News calculates its rankings, with more emphasis on graduates getting quality jobs, Morse said.

“Previously the data was reported as all lumped together, as full-time, part-time, legal, non-legal, JD needed, JD not needed,” he said. “(This year) each one of those was given separately, so we weighted certain kinds of jobs more than others, and that accounted for the change.”

Although the complete methodology for the rankings has not been released, Bruce Smith, dean of the College of Law, said in an email that U.S. News put considerable emphasis on employment for the class of 2011 when determining this year’s rankings.

“That class of law students, as has been widely reported, faced considerable challenges in the legal market,” Smith said.

Since 2011, he said the college’s administrators and faculty members responded aggressively to those challenges. The college hired a new head of its Career Services Office and assembled a team of lawyer-counselors to locate jobs in the Chicago area for the college’s graduating students.

Smith said the college’s preliminary data for the class of 2012 already shows an increased percentage of graduates getting legal jobs that are weighted most heavily in the U.S. News report.

In addition, the college launched the Chicago Program last summer, which allows students to learn from professionals through classes and other events in the city.

“(The program) raises the visibility of our students and graduates in the nation’s second largest market,” he said.

Law student John Sample said he would not be surprised if the college saw a greater dip in the number of applicants for the class of 2016 or at least a dip in the number who accept their admittance.

He said he passed up full-tuition scholarships from lower-ranked schools so he could attend the University’s law school. But now that its rankings have dropped significantly, other students’ incentives for attending the college may change.

“Unless the school does something in regards to lowering tuition or heightening scholarship rates, it wouldn’t make much sense that people would come here in the same droves that they had before if the ranking is (more than) 20 points lower than it was,” Sample said.

Overall, Morse said there were 39 schools that moved 10 or more spots because of the new ranking system, but Illinois saw the largest decrease in the top 50. The University of Washington experienced the second largest drop from No. 20 to No. 28. The University’s College of Law is ranked No. 8 out of the 11 law schools at Big Ten schools.

“Although rankings of top law schools fluctuate, the core fundamentals and commitments of the University of Illinois College of Law do not,” Smith said. “We have outstanding faculty, superb students and distinguished alumni, and we are going to remain focused on our chief task: to prepare our students for careers of distinction in the legal profession.”

The College of Business also saw a fall in ranking, dropping 10 spots from No. 37 last year to No. 47. The College of Engineering remained ranked at No. 5, and the Graduate School of Library and Information science remained at No. 1, since it was last surveyed in 2010.

Johnathan can be reached at [email protected]. Lauren can be reached at [email protected].