The GRE: A Breakdown For Law School Applicants
The GRE: A Breakdown For Law School Applicants
Last week, Harvard announced that, as part of a pilot program, it would accept GRE scores for admission to its law school. It joins the University of Arizona as the only two accredited law schools to allow the GRE to be used in place of the LSAT. As one of the top law schools in the country, Harvard might be a bellwether for larger changes taking place in law school applications. What does this mean for the future of the LSAT, and how will it change applying to law school? And how does the GRE compare to the LSAT?
The GRE: A Breakdown For Law School Applicants
1. This is not the end of the LSAT.
As mentioned above, only two accredited law schools are accepting GRE scores. The LSAT still reigns supreme in law school admissions. Even if more schools accept GRE scores, it does not mean the LSAT will disappear immediately. If law schools en masse decide to switch to the GRE for admissions, a wholesale change will take years, if not decades, to complete. So, the LSAT is going nowhere soon!
2. Applying to law school did not just become easier, as some have claimed.
As someone who’s taken both the GRE and LSAT (I went to graduate school), I can assure you that the GRE is not tangibly easier than the LSAT. In fact, in many ways it can be more difficult because of its breadth of coverage (see below). They both include reading comprehension and logical reasoning, but those sections make up a much smaller part of the GRE. Also, you’ll be competing against people applying to a variety of graduate programs who might have a better grasp of certain concepts tested on the exam (again, see below).
3. The tests do share some things in common, but differ on others.
Both tests have reading comprehension and logical reasoning questions. The GRE, however, also includes a vocabulary section as well, which can be difficult if you do not prepare for it. On the LSAT, I always advise students, if they don’t know a particular word in a section, to try to glean its meaning from context clues. On the GRE, if you don’t have a large vocabulary, or didn’t prepare, you’ll struggle to do well on some sections.
The reading comprehension section on the GRE is also much more uneven. The LSAT sections are pretty uniform in length, and the questions are pretty similar from passage to passage. On the GRE, the sections vary in length, and the questions asked are much more diverse. So in certain ways, the GRE might be a little more difficult.
4. You need to be fairly good in math to do well on the GRE.
Yes, you do need to know a decent amount of math to do well on the GRE, Roughly half the test involves mathematical concepts. You need a good grasp of the basic principles of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and even some calculus. If you hated math in college, this section is really going to be a struggle for you. Furthermore, you’ll be competing on the test with those applying to graduate programs whose majors require a lot of math. If you majored in a liberal art, and didn’t take a lot of math classes (luckily I did), you’ll have a lot of ground to make up in preparing for the test,
5. Overall, it’s very difficult to compare the tests.
Although they share some sections in common, the GRE and LSAT are not very comparable otherwise. If you’re thinking about applying to law school in the future, I would definitely focus on the LSAT for now. Just because schools start to take GRE scores doesn’t mean the LSAT will be phased out. It has become such an entrenched part of law school applications that, as I said earlier, any major changes would be years, if not decades, in the making.
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