Some of the best law schools in the United States are allowing prospective students to apply without clearing that well-known hurdle of legal education: the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT.
Institutions including Harvard and Georgetown universities say they’ll allow applicants this year to submit scores from a different test—the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE—instead of the infamous LSAT.
The LSAT has long bedeviled wannabe law school students. Unlike the GRE, which like college entrance exams relies on knowledge that can be memorized, the LSAT evaluates logical reasoning and reading comprehension. The GRE is used for admission to myriad graduate programs for the arts and sciences alike.
(How might law school students change their own education? Here’s what they have to say—and here’s why they tend to hate it.)
The change in admission policies is meant to “attract students from a wider variety of backgrounds, particularly with science, engineering and math experience,” reports the Wall Street Journal. Diversity and inclusion is an oft-discussed topic for law schools. Meanwhile there are a number of legal fields that demand technical knowledge—the kind of expertise that today often ends up at high-paying technology companies.
About 14 law schools offer the GRE or plan to next year, including those at Brigham Young, Columbia, George Washington, Northwestern, and Texas A&M universities. There are approximately 200 law schools in the U.S.