U.S. News & World Report has started preparing their first ranking of part-time programs, according to Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News. The rankings are scheduled to be published at the end of March 2009.
Morse said he believes that there is a need to assess the relative merits of part-time J.D. programs because many prospective law students are trying to determine the best part-time program in their metropolitan area, or even nationally, in order to help them decide which law school they should attend.
In order to compile the first-ever ranking, U.S. News has added questions on rating part-time J.D. law programs to the annual U.S. News reputation peer assessment survey that is sent to top administrators at each school accredited by the American Bar Association. They are asking each of these law school academics to nominate up to 15 top part-time J.D. programs, Morse said. They will also collect admissions statistics from each program including median LSAT score, undergraduate grade point average and acceptance rate of the class that entered in the fall of 2008.
