Law Schools

Major Change For Yale Law School Admissions

Yale Law is getting on board with the GRE.

By Kathryn Rubino on July 26, 2019 10:41 am

The GRE train is coming to New Haven.

Here at Above the Law we’ve been dutifully tracking the changing landscape of law school admissions. The GRE has steadily encroached on the LSAT’s stranglehold on law school admissions, with more and more law schools affording applicants the choice of taking the GRE in lieu of the LSAT.

Law schools adopting the GRE come from all corners of the USNWR rankings, but the trend definitely gets a boost when elite schools opt in. On that note, Yale Law School’s recent decision to allow prospective students to submit their GRE scores instead of taking the LSAT — beginning in the fall with applications for the Class of 2023 — is bound to get a ton of attention in legal academia.

For those keeping track at home, the law schools that are 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, NYU, Florida International University College of Law, and Penn State Law at University Park. (University of Chicago and University of Georgia both allow candidates in dual degree programs to skip the LSAT.) And we are likely to only see this trend continue. According to a survey by Kaplan Test Prep, a full 25 percent of law schools have plans to accept the GRE.

But even though more and more law schools are on board with the GRE, the  body responsible for law school accreditation, the American Bar Association, hasn’t officially weighed in on using anything other than the LSAT in admissions. ABA accreditation Standard 503 currently mandates that law schools require admissions testing and that the test used be “valid and reliable.” (In August, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar officially withdrew a resolution before the ABA House of Delegates that called for the removal of Standard 503.) Whether the GRE meets that standard, the ABA hasn’t officially said.

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).