Finishing Up the New Grad School Rankings

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What makes US News think that anyone outside a given region would know anything about a particular part-time program there? This is one more strike against your credibility as a serious ranking system.

Agness of CA 6:10PM January 23, 2009

Luke from TX, sure, and then why don't we have rankings for law schools by region or, better yet, by LLM program. Once that's done then, we can go ahead a rank the clinical programs and law schools by job placement depending on various aspects. While we're at it, we can rank moot court teams and then law reviews. Let's not forget about those "gray-area" full-time evening programs or part-time day programs. It would also be good to rank non-ABA approved schools and, we might as well, have a ranking of new law schools founded in the past five years or so.
All of these rankings will be Great! I mean, it's not like the law school rankings are already the most extensive ranking of any other profession done by USNews.
The truth of the matter is that once we have all this, we might as well use the pages for something useful like litter box lining or toiletpaper.

Cleveland Cynic of OH 2:08AM January 21, 2009

Part-time programs are increasingly necessary and useful for students in an increasingly debt-driven higher education market. Part-time programs across different schools differ widely in their composition and process and prospective students are limited in the quality and access to information to make an informed choice.
While the degree and therefore the underlying metrics are the same, the needs of part-time students and distinguishing factors of part-time programs are different in many respects from those of their full-time counterparts. The obsession with part-time programs as a "back door" in the admissions process misses the point entirely. Prospective part-time students need objective, comparative information on these programs. Hopefully U.S. News can provide it.
My only fear is that these new part-time rankings will copy the methodology without recognizing the unique needs of prospective part-time students finding the right fit.

Luke of TX 2:43AM January 20, 2009

Recently disseminated rumors of separate rankings have been scaring many prospective law students and rightly so. The result of such an augmentation to the current rankings would be, in effect, punishing the students rather than the institutions, which go through extraordinary lengths to cheat the system. The only fair way to mitigate the rankings game and those who unfairly cheat, would be to have one single ranking of law schools as opposed to two separate ones. After all, it seems a little ridiculous and redundant that there would be two rankings for law schools as opposed to all the other disciplines, which have limited rankings (and, not suprisingly, have been less affected by elitism).
So, please, do the prudent thing and, if part-time rankings have to be created at all, then include those statistics in the overall rankings!
But on a personal note, if it were up to me, I would do away with all law school rankings in general as they are not an accurate indication of educational quality but nothing more than an arbitrary set of variables comprised to inject snobbism into already snobbish profession. Not to mention, they corrupt the minds of the impressionable youth with materialism, focusing on a futile pursuit of high salaries rather than focusing on the more noble but antiquated pursuit of actual LEARNING!

DrBJohnson of DC 7:12PM January 18, 2009

Recently disseminated rumors of separate rankings have been scaring many prospective law students and rightly so. The result of such an augmentation to the current rankings would be, in effect, punishing the students rather than the institutions, which go through extraordinary lengths to cheat the system. The only fair way to mitigate the rankings game and those who unfairly cheat, would be to have one single ranking of law schools as opposed to two separate ones. After all, it seems a little ridiculous and redundant that there would be two rankings for law schools as opposed to all the other disciplines, which have limited rankings (and, not suprisingly, have been less affected by elitism).
So, please, do the prudent thing and, if part-time rankings have to be created at all, then include those statistics in the overall rankings!
But on a personal note, if it were up to me, I would do away with all law school rankings in general as they are not an accurate indication of educational quality but nothing more than an arbitrary set of variables comprised to inject snobbism into already snobbish profession. Not to mention, they corrupt the minds of the impressionable youth with materialism, focusing on a futile pursuit of high salaries rather than focusing on the more noble but antiquated pursuit of actual LEARNING!

DrBJohnson of DC 7:09PM January 18, 2009

I also am wondering the same thing as the two comments above.

Fred of KY 4:56PM January 18, 2009

This allows schools like Georgetown, GW and Fordham to game YOUR rankings by slipping in people through the part-time backdoor that they just subsequently put into FT. You guys should look into the number of people who move from PT to FT. If it's substantial, you should just incorporate it all into one set of rankings.
This kills your credibility.

Tim of DC 4:54PM January 18, 2009

I also am wondering the same thing as the comment above

Nathan of TX 1:17PM January 17, 2009

Will you be publishing a seperate ranking for the part-time programs independent of the "regular" law school rankings, similar to the speciality rankings? Or will the part-time programs affect the overall score of the law school and be mixed in with the "regular" law school rankings?

Jacob of VA 4:53PM January 16, 2009