Law Schools

Top 20 Law School Is The Latest To Accept GRE Scores

How many more people will apply to law school if they don't have to take the LSAT?

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About half of the nation’s top 20 law schools have now adopted the GRE as a valid exam for admissions purposes, and today, yet another elite law school has joined the bandwagon. Applicants at the University of Southern California will no longer have to take the LSAT to get into one of the country’s most prestigious schools.

USC-Gould is now the 20th law school to accept the GRE in its admissions decisions. They join the ranks of law schools like Harvard, Columbia, St. John’s, Brooklyn, Northwestern, Arizona, Georgetown, Hawaii, Washington University in St. Louis, Wake Forest, Cardozo School of Law, Texas A&M, BYU, John Marshall Law School, Florida State, Pace, UCLA, Chicago-Kent College of Law, and Penn. (University of Chicago and University of Georgia both allow candidates in dual degree programs to skip the LSAT). And we should expect even more schools to jump aboard the good ship GRE — according to a Kaplan survey, a full 25 percent of law schools have plans in the works to accept the GRE.

In announcing the decision, Dean Andrew Guzman said, “USC has a long history of encouraging interdisciplinary studies, and we hope that students with an interest in multiple disciplines will consider pursing joint degree programs that include a law degree.” David Kirschner, admissions dean of USC, said that the school — which was part of Education Testing Service’s national study to determine that GRE’s validity in predicting first-year law school grades — first began to consider the GRE way back in 2016 when Arizona Law started accepting the test for admissions, but per Karen Sloan’s reporting, there may have been another factor involved.

UCLA’s decision to accept the GRE was another motivation, although a minor one, Kirschner said. The two campuses are competitors, with both located in Los Angeles and similarly ranked.

“I won’t say it didn’t play a role, but in all honesty this is not a decision we would have made if we didn’t think it would be beneficial to our student body and work for our law school,” Kirschner said.

The ABA is still the body responsible for law school accreditation, and they’ve been dragging their feet on officially weighing in on the validity of law schools using anything but the LSAT in admissions decisions. The current ABA Standard 503 requires admissions tests and that they be “valid and reliable” but in April, an ABA committee recommended eliminating the accreditation standard mandating that schools use a standardized test in admissions. The ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has agreed to the change, but it still must be adopted by the ABA House of Delegates before it’s official.

Keep in mind that law schools will likely keep standardized testing as a component of the admissions process, but backing away from the requirement language in law school accreditation standards (should it be approved) will give the all-clear to law schools experimenting with GRE.

USC is the Latest Top Law School to Embrace the GRE [The Recorder]

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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