Indiana deans support Arizona’s acceptance of GRE scores for law school admission

Three Indiana law school deans are part of a letter supporting the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law’s acceptance of GRE scores as well as LSAT scores for law school admission. The letter was sent to Law School Admission Council president Daniel Bernstine after the LSAC allegedly said it would possibly kick Arizona out of the council if it continues to accept GRE scores instead of its own test.

Andrew Klein at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Andrea Lyon at Valparaiso University Law School and Nell Jessup Newton of Notre Dame Law School were three of the 148 deans across the nation who signed the letter, which can be read here.

The Arizona law school says it is trying the initiative to diversify its pool of prospective students by letting them take the GRE instead of the LSAT, and the law deans said in the letter the project will benefit all law schools across the nation.

“Experimentation benefits all of us,” the letter says. “We all expect to learn from the University of Arizona’s experiment and it should not be punished by LSAC.”

Other schools who signed the letter include Yale Law School, UCLA School of Law, Harvard Law School and The Ohio State University College of Law.

The letter threatens that if the LSAC goes through with is threat to remove Arizona from the council, the deans will request a meeting of the members of the council.

The council issued a statement in reaction to the letter in order “to emphasize that our inquiry into the University of Arizona Law School was a request for clarification on the law school’s new policy, which we had only learned about through media reports. To characterize this as a ‘threat’ is unfortunate.”