Part-Time Rankings Question

[SpencerPratt]

How exactly should one take these rankings into account? Are these mainly for people working FT who are looking for programs that help with their situation or do they rank these programs by academic caliber, job prospects, faculty, etc? At the end of the day, you'll have the same degree.

I found some info on how they put these rankings together, but I still leaves me confused. I've been accepted to SMU's PT program, but it's ranked 46th behind T3's and T4's. Should I even worry about this?

Here's what US News says about their rankings:

Part-time J.D. law programs play a vital role in legal education. According to the American Bar Association, about 16 percent of all J.D. students are enrolled part time, and for many working adults, attending part time is the only way they can afford to go to law school. This year, U.S. News presents its first-ever rankings of 87 part-time J.D. programs at ABA-accredited law schools. U.S. News defines a part-time J.D. program as a law school that has a separate admissions process for part-time students and has at least 20 part-time J.D. students.
Click here to find out more!

The part-time J.D. program rankings are based solely on a fall 2008 peer assessment that asked academics at each law school to choose up to 15 "law schools with outstanding part-time law J.D. programs." Programs are ranked based on the number of part-time J.D. program votes they received, sorted in descending order: Those with a statistically insignificant number of votes are listed as N/A and are unranked. The statistical data were collected by U.S. News and are presented for information purposes only. Peer assessment data were collected by Synovate.

[flyingpanda]

The prospects of employment from part-time programs is basically the same as the school's full-time employment. The part-time ranking is just based on peer assessment from academics, they're not going to be the ones who hire you.

So, don't worry too much about the part-time rankings

[OperaSoprano]

Definitely go by the school's regular ranking. The PT rankings really make very little sense. We know GULC, GW and Fordham actually should be the top three, but after that some very strange choices were made. There is discussion about revamping the PT rankings, and schools may be evaluated in a more comprehensive manner in the 2011 rankings.