U.S. News and World Report released its annual graduate school rankings Thursday Notre Dame's law school, ranked 21st last year, dropped to 26th, while the previously unranked business school moved up to 48th.

In response to the law school's drop, director of public relations Dennis Moore said that the school is "very skeptical about the veracity of the rankings. There's no doubt we believe our law school is among the 25 best."

Moore likened the ranking process to a Rube Goldberg machine, in which "a candle is lit, which causes an egg to drop, which leads to some magical result."

"The premise that a school's quality can be expressed as a statistic is questionable," he said. "The process is very arbitrary."

Specifically, Moore noted, the score for reputation among academics, which accounts for 40 percent of a school's overall score, is essentially a "beauty contest" decided by people who often know little about the program.

The law school received 3.3 out of a possible 5 in this category, while it earned a 3.6 in reputation among judges and lawyers.

"It's interesting to note that we score higher with people who actually hire our graduates," Moore said.

While he emphasized that school officials continue to question the rankings and their methodology, Moore also noted that ranking results are reported openly and accurately.

"The bottom line is that we don't think people should put a lot of credence in the rankings, but we can't dismiss or ignore them because some people do pay attention," he said.

Law School dean Patricia O'Hara could not be reached for comment.

Regarding the business school, dean Carolyn Woo also downplayed the importance of the rankings.

"Overall, we use rankings as feedback as to where we need to improve and where we are on track," she said. "We do not see them as a definitive assessment of our school."

With respect to the individual categories, Woo was optimistic.

"Our placement number was low, but it refers to May 1999, and we had no placement director from February to April of last year," she said. "Since then, we've hired a new director and three new staff members, and are very excited about the future."

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