Changing The Law School Admissions Game: The GRE Is Now Available To Take At Home
Law school admissions in the time of COVID-19 looks a little different.
Trying to chart out the course of your life is particularly challenging during a pandemic. The lack of certainty about, well, pretty much everything is a real fly in the ointment for planners everywhere. That’s especially true if you’ve been working to attend law school in the near future.
The Law School Admission Council, the group that administers the LSAT, has already canceled the March administration of the traditional law school entrance exam, and whether the April test day follows suit is up in the air. What is the preparing law school hopeful to do?
Well, they may want to consider taking the GRE. An increasing number of law schools (currently over 50!) are willing to take the GRE in lieu of the LSAT in admissions decisions. And because of COVID-19, the GRE is being offered from the comfort — and more importantly, safety — of your own home. From ETS, the administrators of the GRE:
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To meet the needs of students who are unable to take the GRE® General Test at a test center due to public health concerns, ETS is temporarily offering a GRE General Test at home option in selected areas. The test is identical in content, format and on-screen experience to the GRE General Test taken at a test center. It is taken on your own computer at home and is monitored by a human proctor online through ProctorU®.
For those law school hopefuls trying to weigh the value of taking the GRE, here are the 50+ schools that accept the GRE for admissions purposes:
- American University Washington College of Law
- Boston University School of Law
- Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School
- Brooklyn Law School
- California Western School of Law
- Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Columbia Law School
- Cornell Law School
- Florida International University College of Law
- Florida State University College of Law
- George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School
- Georgetown University Law Center
- Harvard Law School
- John Marshall Law School
- Kern County College of Law
- Massachusetts School of Law at Andover
- Monterey College of Law
- New York University School of Law
- Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
- Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law
- Pennsylvania State University Dickinson Law
- Pennsylvania State University — Penn State Law
- Pepperdine School of Law
- San Luis Obispo College of Law
- Seattle University School of Law
- Seton Hall University School of Law
- Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law
- St. John’s University School of Law
- Suffolk University Law School
- Texas A&M University School of Law
- University of Akron School of Law
- University of Alabama School of Law
- University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law
- University of Baltimore Law School
- University at Buffalo School of Law
- University of California, Davis School of Law
- University of California, Hastings College of the Law
- University of California, Irvine School of Law
- University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
- University of Dayton School of Law
- University of Hawai’i at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law
- University of Montana Alexander Blewett III School of Law
- University of New Hampshire School of Law
- University of Notre Dame Law School
- University of Pennsylvania Law School
- University of Southern California Gould School of Law
- University of South Carolina School of Law
- University of Texas at Austin School of Law
- University of Virginia School of Law
- Wake Forest University School of Law
- Washington University School of Law
- Yale Law School
- Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
- University of Chicago and University of Georgia both allow candidates in dual degree programs to skip the LSAT
- Berkeley Law lets students in concurrent or combined degree programs and specialized practice fields submit their GRE score
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And we are likely to only see the GRE trend continue. According to a survey by Kaplan Test Prep, a full 25 percent of law schools have plans to accept the GRE. Another Kaplan study determined 49 percent of students surveyed support the move to the GRE.
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.” Whether the GRE meets that standard, the ABA hasn’t officially said. But now that so many law schools have moved on the GRE and are accepting students based on their score on that test, it might be impossible to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Now the pressure is really on the LSAC to see if they’re able to provide wannabe law students with a similar option.
Kathryn 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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