Law Schools

Law School Without The LSAT? Another Law School Tests The GRE Waters

The LSAT's death grip on law school admissions is slipping.

By  
on

The GRE’s creep into the realm of law school — once the exclusive province of the LSAT —  as a part of the admissions process continues apace. Penn State Law at University Park recently announced they would accept the GRE — but conditions apply. The law school is only accepting the alternative to the LSAT for joint degree candidates that meet certain standard.

As Penn State News reports:

To be accepted with a GRE score at Penn State Law, students must be seeking a J.D. in combination with a degree in a different discipline and must meet minimum requirements as established by the ABA, which include a GRE score at or above the 85th percentile and a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or above through six semesters of undergraduate work. Penn State Law will average the scores of all three sections of one GRE to determine whether the 85th percentile threshold has been met.

In addition to being lower-cost and offered much more frequently than the LSAT, Amanda DiPolvere, assistant dean of admissions and financial aid, also points out the diverse academic background this move is intended to draw:

“Students who are interested in joint programs previously may have been required to prepare for, pay for, and take multiple tests, but now can apply to both degrees with one score,” DiPolvere said. “We also want to encourage students from diverse academic backgrounds — STEM, health care, public policy, for example — to consider law, and this expansion of our admissions process will help provide that opportunity.”

The GRE is rapidly gaining acceptance at law schools around the country. Those currently accepting the GRE are: 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, Penn, USC, Cornell, Buffalo and NYU allow applicants to take the GRE. (University of Chicago and University of Georgia both allow candidates in dual degree programs to skip the LSAT.) Though this is but a small percentage of the total number of law schools in the country, it’s an academic movement that is gaining steam. According to a survey by Kaplan Test Prep, a full 25 percent of law schools have plans in the works to accept the GRE.

Despite all the changes in the air in the testing landscape, the American Bar Association — the body responsible for law school accreditation — hasn’t taken an officially stance on the use of the GRE in the admissions process. ABA accreditation Standard 503 currently mandates that law schools require admissions testing, and that the test used be “valid and reliable,” but what that means for the GRE isn’t clear. (Though a number of law schools and ETS, the maker of the GRE, have done their own validity testing.) The ABA considered a resolution that would elimination the testing requirement in admission, however, in August of last year, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar officially withdrew that resolution before the ABA House of Delegates. Since then, there’s been no official word from the accreditation body.

Sponsored

headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Sponsored

Topics

, , ,