Forget The LSAT. This Law School Will Accept Your GRE Scores
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
If you want to go to law school, you have to take the LSAT, the dreaded Law School Admissions Test, at least that's the way it's worked for decades. Now one school in Arizona says applicants can skip the LSAT. And as Carrie Jung at member station KJZZ reports, more could follow.
CARRIE JUNG, BYLINE: On a recent spring evening at the University of Arizona, about 20 members of the co-ed prelaw fraternity Phi Alpha Delta are gathered. President Shannon Sylvester calls the group to order.
SHANNON SYLVESTER: All right, we're going to go ahead and start our meeting. We do have two upcoming opportunities for LSAT practice coming up.
(APPLAUSE)
JUNG: Simon Brick is a senior, and he's one of several people here studying for the LSAT right now. Brick plans on applying to about five law schools in the next few months, including this one, the University of Arizona.
SIMON BRICK: Right now I'm keeping my options open. But I know that I'm interested in international law, and I know it has a very good immigration law program.
JUNG: But this fall, he could skip out on having to take the LSAT - well, at least to get into the University of Arizona's law school. Earlier this year, the school announced it would also accept scores from the Graduate Record Exam, or as it's commonly known, the GRE. The American Bar Association says law schools must require a standardized test that is valid and reliably predicts student performance.
MARC MILLER: But it doesn't say that that standardized test must be LSAT.
JUNG: Marc Miller is the dean of the U of A law school, He points to a study that says the GRE is reliable. And he thinks it's more accessible in part because students can take it most any day of the year instead of just four times a year with the LSAT. That, he hopes, will help expand the pool of applicants and with it the school's racial diversity. It's no secret the legal field lacks it. According to the last U.S. census, about 88 percent of working lawyers were white.
MILLER: It allows us to then build a class that will be more diverse in every respect.
STACI ZARETSKY: I have a much more critical point of view about this.
JUNG: Staci Zaretsky is an editor at abovethelaw.com, a blog covering news and issues in the legal industry. She argues diversity may be one of the motivators, but student enrollment and money are also major factors.
ZARETSKY: The number of applications and applicants have both gone down a lot. And schools right now are looking at ways to fill their seats.
JUNG: Zaretsky points out law school applications peaked in 2004 at around 100,000. By 2014, that dropped to roughly 55,000. She doesn't have a dog in this fight. But the Law School Admissions Council, the group that administers the LSAT, does.
Recently, the Council's board of trustees considered whether the U of A could lose its membership for violating council bylaws. Marc Miller, the U of A law school dean, has always maintained the move to the GRE is more about innovation.
MILLER: Has the downturn led us to think about the different ways in which we can broaden the base? Absolutely. We don't view that as a bad thing.
JUNG: And 149 other law school deans agreed. They wrote a letter to the council urging it to reconsider, and it did. As for law school hopeful Simon Brick, he has mixed feelings.
BRICK: I think it's good because it fosters a more diverse environment.
JUNG: But he argues the LSAT tests for a very specific skill set that students will use in law school.
BRICK: Allowing the GRE to be used for admittance is kind of undermining the work that law school students have put it in the past.
JUNG: The University of Hawaii and Wake Forest in North Carolina are also studying the possibility of switching. And GRE officials say about a dozen other schools have also shown an interest. For NPR News, I'm Carrie Jung in Tucson.
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