Talk:University of Illinois College of Law/Archive 1

Archive 1

Wikified

Removed weasel words to conform to a more neutral point of view. Also, Googled a couple of phrases from the paragraph inserted by "15:55, 10 July 2006 130.126.85.51" to find the probable reference used for the article. ndyguy 01:57, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

This entire article has been rewritten atrociously: the introductory paragraph had a sentence like "smack in the middle of a gorgeous college town," and this hideous sentence appeared in the "Admissions" section: "As with most schools, gaining admission to UIUC is largely a numbers game. If your LSAT score and GPA are at or above the school’s medians (3.8 and 166), you will have a decent shot of getting in." You will have a decent shot of getting in? This direct address is wholly inappropriate for a Wikipedia article. This is supposed to be addressed to lay readers informing them about the law school, not just to law students (with 'tips' on how to get in, no less). What is even more horrifying is that there is no 'History' section to speak of, just a perfunctory statement about when the school was established and when it gained ABA accreditation, because I guess rankings-obsessed law students aren't interested in actual history. This does a terrible disservice to a fine institution. I have deleted almost all of the promotional material, and I realize that there is very little left. Someone responsible will have to rewrite this article from scratch. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.42.239.211 (talk) 01:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Section on 2011 manipulations of admissions data / promotional and unreliable content in the rest of the article

After anonymous editors deleted this entire section without explanation, I have restored it to give them an occasion to explain their reasons. It should be noted that the section in its current form is the result of a consensus merge from this article (now a redirect pointing to this section), after this AfD discussion.

With regard to the rest of the article, it should be noted that this affair concerned, in the words of the Chicago Tribune, manipulations to make "classes appear more academically accomplished than they were" in order to distort e.g. the college's ranking, and based on them, the college touted the Class of 2014 as "'the most academically distinguished' in the school's history, with a median LSAT score of 168 that boosted the school into a 'rarefied level'". Unfortunately other touting and boasting statements that apparently originate from the college itself continue to be reproduced in the current version of this Wikipedia article (e.g. "the College of Law has built up a strong reputation for itself, earning a great measure of respect among members of the legal community" or "The school's prestige, small class size, and strong placement into Chicago law firms make its admissions process highly selective" - these are contained in similar form e.g. in this profile, which extends "Special thanks to Paul Pless, Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Illinois Law ... for providing insight and additional details for this profile" - i.e. exactly the person who was blamed for faking information in the report that the university commissioned from Jones Day and Duff & Phelps).

At the very least, the affair indicates that information which this institution has published about itself in order to attract future students should not be considered to have "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (WP:RS), and be replaced by information cited to independent reliable sources. In adddition, many statements in the "History" and "Academics" sections have problems regarding WP:V (lacking citations at all) and WP:PEACOCK (promotional adjectives which don't convey factual information).

Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this page continues to receive anonymous edits (under IP addresses that geolocate to India) that are trying without explanation to delete article improvement tags and statements related to this topic, in particular the information sourced to the Chicago Tribune [1] [2] [3]. Regards, HaeB (talk) 13:30, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Sadly, this anonymous editor continues edit-war while ignoring the invitation to discuss the reasons for these blanket deletions: [4], [5], [6].

Please also notice that statements about living people (such as the assertion that someone attended a particular educational institution) should be sourced. Regards, HaeB (talk) 14:10, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Independence and reliability of hg.org

Another editor and I seem to be having a disagreement about some material in this article. The disagreement centers on the use of hg.org as a reference, particularly this page. I contend that the page has obviously been written by the college and is not useful as an independent reference or a reliable one. On those bases, the material should be removed from this article until it can be substantiated with a reliable independent source. ElKevbo (talk) 16:44, 22 October 2012 (UTC)