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The Effect of Law School Marketing Materials on U.S. News and World Report Rankings
The Effect of Law School Marketing Materials on U.S. News and World Report Rankings
Source: Social Science Research Network
In the last few years, law schools have inundated each other with glossy brochures, postcards, magazines, and other marketing materials in an attempt to influence their “peer assessment scores” in the annual U.S. News and World Report rankings. This article describes a study that attempted to determine whether law schools’ print marketing efforts to one another have an impact on their U.S. News rankings data. From June to December 2011, the author’s school collected and coded all of the materials it had received from schools, including materials that it itself had sent to others. In total, 427 unique pieces of marketing were received from 125 of the 191 schools that were the subjects of this study. They varied considerably in size, format, content, and audience. A number of statistical tests were conducted to compare a school’s marketing efforts with its overall rank, overall score, peer assessment score, and tier, along with any change in those variables from the 2011 rankings to the 2012 ones. The results showed that there was some correlation between a school’s marketing efforts and its U.S. News data. Schools that sent marketing materials had, on average, higher tier placement and peer assessment scores; however, there was not a significant change in year-to-year rankings variables. The number of pieces a school sent during the study period was, for the most part, not significant. On the other hand, the number of pages in its materials was correlated with a number of U.S. News variables. Schools that sent longer, magazine-type publications geared towards a specific audience had higher U.S. News scores and also showed a slight improvement in their overall score between the two years of rankings data in this study. However, it is possible that a co-variate, such as institutional financial resources, may be causing the results. Additional study is needed to determine whether marketing materials have a longer-term effect on U.S. News ranking variables that cannot be captured in a one year study.
NICB Names 10 Most-Stolen Vehicles for 2011
NICB Names 10 Most-Stolen Vehicles for 2011Source: National Insurance Crime Bureau
The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) today released Hot Wheels − its list of the 10 most-stolen vehicles in the United States. The report examines vehicle theft data submitted by law enforcement to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and determines the vehicle make, model and model year most reported stolen in 2011.
For 2011, the most-stolen vehicles* in the nation were:
1. 1994 Honda Accord
2. 1998 Honda Civic
3. 2006 Ford Pickup (Full Size)
4. 1991 Toyota Camry
5. 2000 Dodge Caravan
6. 1994 Acura Integra
7. 1999 Chevrolet Pickup (Full Size)
8. 2004 Dodge Pickup (Full Size)
9. 2002 Ford Explorer
10. 1994 Nissan Sentra
Where do American Cities Rank in Eighth Annual “Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report™?”
Where do American Cities Rank in Eighth Annual "Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report™?"
Source: Allstate
The Allstate Insurance Company (NYSE: ALL) today released its eighth annual "Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report™." The report, based on Allstate claims data, ranks America’s 200* largest cities in terms of car collision frequency to identify which cities have the safest drivers.
This year’s top honor of "America’s Safest Driving City" is Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the fifth time in the history of the report that the city has held the top spot. According to the report, the average driver in Sioux Falls will experience an auto collision every 13.8 years, which is 27.6 percent less likely than the national average of 10 years.
TED Reveals Top 20 Most-Watched Talks, Sir Ken Robinson Tops The List
TED Reveals Top 20 Most-Watched Talks, Sir Ken Robinson Tops The List
Source: TechCrunch
TED tabulated data from its top sources including TED.com, YouTube, Hulu, iTunes, and several others. Sir Ken Robinson’s 2006 talk about how schools kill creativity tops the list with 13,409,417 views. It’s followed by brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor’s epic story about suffering a stroke — and documenting her body shutting down. Next is Pranav Mistry, David Gallo and then again by Pranav Mistry and Pattie Maes with an astounding demo of SixthSense, a wearable projection computer. Further down the list is Tony Robbins, Steve Jobs, Stephen Hawking, and Mary Roach’s talk on 10 things you didn’t know about an orgasm. It’s an impressive collection of fascinating lectures.
Hat tip: PW
Top 25 Most Difficult Companies To Interview; Consulting Firms Lead The Way
Top 25 Most Difficult Companies To Interview; Consulting Firms Lead The Way
Some companies are notorious for using interview processes that bring you back to the days of your college entrance exams wrought with riddles, written tests, bizarre questions, and multiple rounds of group or in-person interviews. So which companies have the toughest interview processes out there? Glassdoor dug through more than 80,000 interview reviews shared over the past year to uncover the Top 25 Most Difficult Companies to Interview.
Digital Government Achievement Awards – 2012
Digital Government Achievement Awards – 2012
Source: Center for Digital Government
e.Republic’s Center for Digital Government has announced the 2012 winners of its annual Best of the Web and Digital Government Achievement Awards.
In its 17th year, Best of the Web (BOW) recognizes outstanding government portals and websites based on innovation, functionality and efficiency. The BOW first place winners are Alabama (state), Louisville (city), and Orange County, Fla. (county).
The Digital Government Achievement Awards (DGAA) highlight outstanding agency and department websites and applications. Fifty-six awards in eight categories were given this year.
The Mindset List – 2016
The Mindset List – 2016
Source: Beloit College
This year’s entering college class of 2016 was born into cyberspace and they have therefore measured their output in the fundamental particles of life: bits, bytes, and bauds. They have come to political consciousness during a time of increasing doubts about America’s future, and are entering college bombarded by questions about jobs and the value of a college degree. They have never needed an actual airline “ticket,” a set of bound encyclopedias, or Romper Room. Members of this year’s freshman class, most of them born in 1994, are probably the most tribal generation in history and they despise being separated from contact with friends. They prefer to watch television everywhere except on a television, have seen a woman lead the U.S. State Department for most of their lives, and can carry school books–those that are not on their e-Readers–in backpacks that roll.
The class of 2016 was born the year of the professional baseball strike and the last year for NFL football in Los Angeles. They have spent much of their lives helping their parents understand that you don’t take pictures on “film” and that CDs and DVDs are not “tapes.” Those parents have been able to review the crime statistics for the colleges their children have applied to and then pop an Aleve as needed. In these students’ lifetimes, with MP3 players and iPods, they seldom listen to the car radio. A quarter of the entering students already have suffered some hearing loss. Since they’ve been born, the United States has measured progress by a 2 percent jump in unemployment and a 16-cent rise in the price of a first class postage stamp.
Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall.
Hawaii, Utah, South Dakota Lead in “Thriving”
Hawaii, Utah, South Dakota Lead in "Thriving"
Source: Gallup
Residents of Hawaii, Utah, and South Dakota were the most likely to be "thriving" in the first half of 2012 based on how they rate their lives today and their expectations for their lives in five years. Residents of West Virginia and Maine were the least likely to be thriving.
Top 10 back-to-school trends for 2012
Top 10 back-to-school trends for 2012
Source: National Retail Federation
The tardy bell will be ringing sooner than we know it. Parents, kids and retailers have one thing on their minds: back-to-school shopping. According to the National Retail Federation, combined K-12 and college spending will reach a record $83.8 billion. That’s quite a few colored pencils and new backpacks.
See also: NRF Back to School Headquarters
Waiting in Line at Mount Rushmore: Understanding the Rankings of Presidential Greatness
Waiting in Line at Mount Rushmore: Understanding the Rankings of Presidential Greatness
Source: Eastern Michigan University (Digital Commons)
Carved into a granite cliff six thousand miles above sea level in rural South Dakota is where we find ourselves. It was here in October 1927 that a Danish-American man, Gutzon Borglum, and his son, aptly named Lincoln, began sculpting a monument to greatness. Construction took fourteen years and four-hundred workers with a price tag of nearly $1 million. Three million people will visit this year, which is more than three times the state’s population. The architect of this pantheon explains the rationale best by saying, "The purpose of the memorial is to communicate the founding, expansion, preservation, and unification of the United States with colossal statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt." Arthur Schlesinger would not publish the first rankings on Presidential Greatness for another twenty one years, but in the fall of 1927, Borglum’ s team had already registered an unofficial vote in what would become a central debate in American life: Who are the great presidents?
Worldwide IKEA Price Comparisons
Worldwide IKEA Price Comparisons
Source: Idealo Blog
IKEA is the world’s largest furniture retailer. The popularity and conformity of their products allows for an intriguing price comparison. Back in 2009, prices for the Billy Bookshelf were compared across 38 countries to create an IKEA Billy Bookshelf Index.
In our price comparison, we increased the scope to include 40 IKEA products which can be found in 33 different countries. Five products were chosen from 8 distinct home furnishing categories in order to improve the product diversity in our research and help to ensure the results are not skewed in favour of any particular country.Since the prices for the USA do not include VAT, we compared the prices for each country both with and without VAT, based on each country’s tax rate.
Best Global Green Brands 2012
Best Global Green Brands 2012
Source: Interbrand
Though “green” was once the province of empty promises, the world’s most valuable green brands have earned their place in our report, which examines how leading brands perform in the arena of sustainability and how their environmentally conscious efforts are perceived by the public. These two critical halves—performance and perception—make up the whole of a green company: one that operates sustainably and has built a positive image that can be leveraged to strengthen brand value.
The best green brands are vital, relevant, powerful and pioneering. They are profitable, ethical, and ecologically responsible. They have a proven record of performance, strive to operate with transparency and they practice what they preach when it comes to sustainability. The best green brands show us what is possible.
After evaluating the world’s top brands on the basis of their performance as well as the public’s perception of their green credentials, Interbrand and Deloitte have carefully ranked—and wholeheartedly applaud—the 50 Best Global Green Brands that are featured in this report. These strong, highly innovative brands are paving the way to a new era of stability, prosperity and confidence—and they embody our greatest hopes for the future.
Worldwide, Greeks Most Pessimistic About Their Lives
Worldwide, Greeks Most Pessimistic About Their Lives
Source: Gallup
The Greek government’s promise of no new austerity measures this year may offer some much-needed hope to its citizens, whom Gallup surveys show are the most pessimistic in the world about the direction of their lives. More than four in 10 Greeks (42%) in 2011 expected their lives in five years to be worse than they were at the present time. Syria, the Czech Republic, and Portugal are the only other countries worldwide where at least one in three people rated their future lives worse than their current lives.
Infrastructure 100
Infrastructure 100
Source: KPMG
Presenting the Infrastructure 100 – report on the most exciting infrastructure projects from around the world, as selected by independent judging panels due to their scale, complexity, innovation and impact on society.
KPMG’s Global Infrastructure practice, in conjunction with Infrastructure Journal, is pleased to present the Infrastructure 100 – a showcase of the most interesting infrastructure projects from around the world.
Of those 100 projects – all shortlisted for their scale, complexity, innovation and impact on society – 10 have been highlighted by the independent judging panels as notable projects in different infrastructure sectors.
They are:
- Water – The Venice MOSE Flood Barrier, Italy;
- Power – Green Power Express, USA;
- Oil & Gas – Project Mthombo oil refinery, South Africa;
- Renewable energy – Incheon Tidal Power Project, South Korea;
- Rail – TAV high speed rail link, Brazil;
- Roads – Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge;
- Other transport – Panama Canal extension, Panama;
- Healthcare – CRCHUM P3 research centre, Canada;
- Education – King Abdullah University of Science & Technology, Saudi Arabia;
- Other Social Infrastructure – Greater Manchester Waste, UK.
The projects considered are at different stages of development. However, the judges were consistently impressed by the ambition which these projects demonstrate. They address major social concerns in a bold manner, despite huge engineering challenges.
United States Peace Index 2012
United States Peace Index 2012 (PDF)
Source: Institute for Economics and Peace
The United States Peace Index (USPI), produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), provides a comprehensive measure of U.S. peacefulness dating back to 1991. It also provides an analysis of the socio-economic measures that are associated with peace as well as estimates of the costs of violence and the economic benefits that would flow from increases in peace. This is the second edition of the U.S. Peace Index.
This year a Metropolitan Peace Index has also been produced which measures the peacefulness of 61 metropolitan statistical areas within the U.S. The USPI is based on the work of the Global Peace Index, the preeminent global measure of peacefulness, which has been produced by IEP every year since 2007.
The last twenty years have seen a substantial and sustained reduction in direct violence in the U.S. The homicide rate has halved since 1991, with a concurrent reduction in the violent crime rate from 748 to 399 violent crimes per 100,000 over this period. Although this trend seemed to be levelling off at the turn of the century, the last three years have seen successive improvements in peace.
The 2012 USPI results have also been correlated against a large secondary dataset of economic, educational, health, demographic, and social capital factors, in order to determine the environments which are most closely associated with peace in the U.S.
Although there was a strong relationship between the drop in crime and the increase in the incarceration rate in the 90s, this relationship is no longer evident with 27 states decreasing their incarceration rates while simultaneously experiencing reductions in their violent crime rates. Between 2000 and 2010, New York experienced a fall in violent crime and incarceration every year, as well as falls in its homicide rate.
Global Petroleum Survey 2012
Global Petroleum Survey 2012
Source: Fraser Institute
The 2012 Fraser Institute Global Petroleum Survey presents the results of the Fraser Institute’s 6th annual survey of petroleum industry executives and managers regarding barriers to investment in upstream oil and gas exploration and production in various jurisdictions around the globe. The survey responses have been tallied to rank provinces, states, and countries according to the extent of the investment barriers. Those barriers, as identified by the survey respondents, include high tax rates, costly regulatory schemes, uncertainty over environmental regulations and the interpretation and administration of regulations governing the petroleum industry, and security threats. A total of 623 respondents participated in the survey this year, providing sufficient data to evaluate 147 jurisdictions. By way of comparison, 135 jurisdictions were evaluated in the 2011 survey, 133 in 2010, and 143 in 2009. The jurisdictions were assigned scores for each of 18 factors that affect investment decisions. The scores are based on the proportion of negative responses a jurisdiction received. The greater the proportion of negative responses for a jurisdiction, the greater were its perceived investment barriers and, therefore, the lower its ranking.
Best Global Green Brands 2012
Best Global Green Brands 2012
Source: Interbrand
Though “green” was once the province of empty promises, the world’s most valuable green brands have earned their place in our report, which examines how leading brands perform in the arena of sustainability and how their environmentally conscious efforts are perceived by the public. These two critical halves—performance and perception—make up the whole of a green company: one that operates sustainably and has built a positive image that can be leveraged to strengthen brand value.
The best green brands are vital, relevant, powerful and pioneering. They are profitable, ethical, and ecologically responsible. They have a proven record of performance, strive to operate with transparency and they practice what they preach when it comes to sustainability. The best green brands show us what is possible.
After evaluating the world’s top brands on the basis of their performance as well as the public’s perception of their green credentials, Interbrand and Deloitte have carefully ranked—and wholeheartedly applaud—the 50 Best Global Green Brands that are featured in this report. These strong, highly innovative brands are paving the way to a new era of stability, prosperity and confidence—and they embody our greatest hopes for the future.
See: Best Global Green Brands (Deloitte)
J.D. Power and Associations 2012 Auto Insurance Study
JD Power and Associates 2012 Auto Insurance Study
Source: J.D. Power and Associates
Led primarily by increases in satisfaction with policy offerings and billing and payment, overall customer satisfaction with auto insurance companies has reached an all-time high, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Auto Insurance StudySM released today.
The study measures customer satisfaction with auto insurance companies across five factors: interaction; price; policy offerings; billing and payment; and claims. Overall satisfaction with auto insurance companies is 804 (on a 1,000-point scale), up 14 points from 2011. Satisfaction levels in 2012 are the highest since the study was launched in 2000.
Satisfaction increases in all factors in 2012, with significant improvements in policy offerings (+30 points) and interaction (+19 points). Satisfaction with price is essentially unchanged from 2011.
The 10 Largest Hispanic Origin Groups: Characteristics, Rankings, Top Counties
The 10 Largest Hispanic Origin Groups: Characteristics, Rankings, Top Counties
Source: Pew Hispanic Center
Among the 50.7 million Hispanics in the United States, nearly two-thirds (65%), or 33 million, self-identify as being of Mexican origin, according to tabulations of the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. No other Hispanic subgroup rivals the size of the Mexican-origin population. Puerto Ricans, the nation’s second largest Hispanic origin group, make up just 9% of the total Hispanic population in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Read the full report which includes these sections:
- The demographics of each group
- Educational attainment
- English proficiency and citizenship
- Economic and health insurance
- Regional distribution of Hispanic origin groups
- Changes in the characteristics of the Hispanic population
Texas Dominates List of Fastest-Growing Large Cities Since 2010 Census, Census Bureau Reports
Texas Dominates List of Fastest-Growing Large Cities Since 2010 Census, Census Bureau Reports
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Texas had eight of the 15 most rapidly growing large cities between Census Day (April 1, 2010) and July 1, 2011, according to population estimates for all of the nation’s incorporated cities and towns and minor civil divisions released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
“These estimates provide our first look at how much the total population has changed in each of our nation’s cities since we conducted the 2010 Census,” Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said. “These numbers provide further evidence of a continuation of the trend of rapid population growth in Texas we observed between the 2000 and 2010 censuses.”
Although Texas dominated the list as a whole, the fastest-growing large city was outside the state. Among cities with populations of 100,000 or more in 2010, New Orleans, still rebounding from the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, ranked first, growing by 4.9 percent to 360,740. This puts the city’s population at 79.2 percent of the pre-Katrina July 1, 2005, estimate of 455,188.
One of Texas cities that made the list of fastest-growing cities — Round Rock — broke the 100,000 mark since the 2010 Census. Another, nearby Austin, cracked the 800,000 mark. (See Table 1 for complete list.)
Looking at the highest numerical growth, New York topped the list, adding nearly 70,000 people since the 2010 Census. Again, Texas was well-represented, with six cities among the top 15, including Houston, San Antonio and Austin, which ranked second, third and fourth, respectively. California checked in with three cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose; Phoenix; Denver; Charlotte, N.C.; New Orleans; and Washington also made the list. (See Table 2 for a complete list.)
New York continued to be the nation’s most populous city by a large margin, with 8.2 million residents in 2011, followed by Los Angeles and Chicago. The 15 most populous cities remained unchanged since the 2010 Census. However, Austin, Texas, moved up from 14th to 13th in total population, supplanting San Francisco. (See Table 3 for complete list.)
