Dive Brief:
- The Harvard University School of Law will become the second accredited law school in the country to accept Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores for consideration of admission, with officials saying it is a step towards ensuring diversity in its pool of applicants and enrollees.
- The school has bucked national law school trends in recent years, with applications increasing while other institutions have reported declines in attendance, and higher rates of bar exam passage by its graduates, which have caused accrediting bodies to consider stronger institutional standards.
- Harvard officials say they will pilot the new admission standards for the applicants beginning with students entering in the fall of 2018, and announced the move as data reveals that GRE and Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) scores are equal in predicting student success.
Dive Insight:
Harvard officials say the revised standards will yield higher applications from global pools of students from a variety of majors. For an industry struggling with the amount of legal information available online and a decline in practicing lawyers in corporate settings, this move could spur similar changes in law schools around the country, which could allow institutions to project increases in application and admissions revenue.
Additionally, broader law school admission standards allow more undergraduate programs pathways into legal professions can introduce new possibilities for student pipelines and inter-major articulation agreements in critical areas like healthcare, cybersecurity and social justice.