GRE ® Comparison Tool for Law Schools

MBA Blog / 19th March 2018

With an increasing number of law schools now accepting both the GRE ^® General Test and the Law School Admission Test^® (LSAT) exam as part of the admissions process, the new GRE ^® Comparison Tool for Law Schools provides a way for institutions to appropriately compare results from the two exams.

Score users can now use the Comparison Tool to predict a test taker’s LSAT score using the test taker’s GRE Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning scores from the GRE General Test. However, scores from the GRE Analytical Writing score — while a very good predictor of first year law school grades — are not used in the comparison tool because the LSAT Writing Sample is unscored and does not contribute to the cumulative LSAT score.

“This comparison tool helps the growing number of law schools accepting GRE scores to understand and appropriately interpret those scores in the context of LSAT scores to better inform their admissions decisions,” said David Payne, ETS Vice President & COO of Global Education. “The GRE test can help institutions achieve their admissions goals because it is taken by over half a million test takers annually from a broad range of backgrounds — including science and technology fields — that are relevant to the changing needs of the law profession.”

Cary Cluck, Assistant Dean for Admissions at The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law agrees, “We already know that GRE scores are a valid predictor of law school success for us, and we’ve seen other law schools perform similar evaluations and reach similar conclusions. Based on those foundations, and the work of ETS in the national validity study they conducted, the new GRE Comparison Tool for law schools gives us even more insight when it comes to evaluating applicants. Our testing of the tool is consistent with our own standards for comparing GRE and LSAT scores, and the results from the tool give us very helpful additional data. Business schools have for years relied on a similar GRE Comparison Tool for business schools.”

The predicted score effectively allows the two GRE scores to be compared to the single LSAT score similar to the way that the GRE Comparison Tool for Business Schools has effectively predicted GMAT^®scores since 2008.

The Comparison Tool’s predicted LSAT scores were calculated using statistical analyses of the test scores of 1,587 admitted law school students from 21 law schools who took both the GRE General Test and the LSAT exam.

For more information about the GRE Comparison Tool for Law Schools please visit www.ets.org/gre/law/comparison.