On the Fact that Belmont University School of Law (In Nashville, Tennessee) Has One of Highest Bar Passage Rates In the Country and Yet U.S. News and World Report Continues to Have Them Ranked Outside the Top 80 In Their Ordering of U S. Law Schools (Lower than George Mason, Richmond, Villanova, Tulane, and William and Mary - All of Which Are Excellent Institutions but Which Have a Much Lower Bar Pass Rate)

   I don't have the answer to this. I suspect that there's at least some cronyism (in one of the comment sections a dude claimed that there was a Penn graduate on the committee and that that was one of the reasons why Penn was always ranked higher than Dartmouth, Cornell, and Brown - not sure if the claim is true or not as I never fact-checked the info) in that there's certainly a lot at stake here when it comes to accruing power (a marker that Belmont might not be sufficiently endowed with).

   But I think that there might be something else at work here (and I need to be careful with this as I don't wish to be sued). Have you ever heard the phrase, teaching to the test? Not suggesting that Belmont is doing this intentionally but there is such a phenomenon as institutional zeitgeist that on certain occasions spreads like wildfire.