Law Schools

Team GRE Notches Another Victory In Law School Admissions

Another law school will offer students another choice in standardized testing.

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The landscape of legal education is rapidly changing, and admissions exams aren’t what they used to be. Not only has the LSAT, the traditional law school entrance exam, moved to an entirely digital format, but more and more law schools are making the decision to accept another standardized test, the GRE, in lieu of the LSAT.

You can now count Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law among the ever-growing list of law schools getting on board with the trend and accepting the GRE for admissions. In addition to being lower-cost and offered much more frequently than the LSAT, the move has been pitched by many in legal academia as drawing applicants with a diverse academic background. As noted by Dean Jennifer Collins:

“For nearly 100 years, SMU Dedman School of Law has always looked at the prospective student as a whole person,” said Jennifer Collins, Dean of SMU Dedman School of Law. “Adding the GRE as a standardized test option will help us identify an even broader pool of applicants who will flourish in law school and who will make meaningful contributions to our profession and our community.”

For those keeping track at home, the law schools that are currently accepting the GRE are: Harvard, Yale, 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.

Even though the GRE is gaining popularity in law school admissions, don’t expect an official statement from the American Bar Association — the body responsible for law school accreditation anytime soon. The accreditation body’s lack of an official response has functionally ceded the question to law schools. 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, it’s been radio silence from the ABA.

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).

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