The highly prized positions usually go to top-ranked students from the country's best law schools who already have clerked for a Federal court judge.

If the Legislature revises the formula, top-ranked students will still be admitted, but fewer of them.

Officer's daughter, champion fencer, top-ranked student she doesn't know the meaning of the word "lose"; hell, she probably doesn't know how to spell it.

Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student.

The school has produced two top-ranked students, who finished first in the country's highly competitive college matriculation exams, one in 1974 and another in 1984.

Many indicators - test scores, dropout rates, the performance of the top-ranked students - have varied little in the past 15 to 20 years, they say.

That compounded the new department's problems, because it could not lure top-ranked medical students.

Instead of calling for a better standardized test, Dr. Atkinson might have urged including a larger percentage of top-ranked students.

"The top-ranked students are never hurt by any system of ranking because the strength of their grade point average and transcript speaks for itself," he said.

They said it was pointless to compare the top-ranked students from different high schools because standards vary so widely.