Chances at schools that accept the GRE? Forum

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sweetbrown95

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Chances at schools that accept the GRE?

Post by sweetbrown95 » Mon Aug 13, 2018 11:05 pm

I'm new to TLS and law school admissions in general, so any advice is helpful. I'm wondering what my chances are at schools that accept the GRE:

Undergrad GPA: 3.98/4.00 (Unweighted), 4.08 (Weighted)
Undergrad institution: Ivy (not HYPSM)
GRE: 169 Verbal 170 Quant
Extracurriculars: lots of published research in public health, extensive volunteering
Demographics: straight, white, male from East Coast

I'm particularly interested in Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, UPenn, Northwestern, and Cornell. According to ETS (https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/about/law/), these are the law schools that accept the GRE:

Boston University School of Law
Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School
Brooklyn Law School
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Columbia Law School (beginning in September 2018)
Cornell Law School
Florida State University College of Law
George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School
Georgetown University Law Center
Hamd Bin Khalifa University Law School
Harvard Law School
John Marshall Law School
Massachusetts School of Law at Andover
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law
St. John's University School of Law
Texas A&M University School of Law
University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
University of Hawai’i at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law
university of pennsylvania law school
University of Southern California, Gould School of Law (beginning September 2018)
Wake Forest University School of Law (beginning in fall 2018)
Washington University School of Law (beginning in fall 2018)
Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law


Thank you for your help!!

GoeBluth11

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Re: Chances at schools that accept the GRE?

Post by GoeBluth11 » Tue Aug 14, 2018 11:24 am

Dude just take the LSAT. With that GPA from an Ivy you're definitely smart enough to do well. With the potential upside of doing well on the LSAT and potential downside of relying on the GRE I don't see a reason not to take the LSAT. You really want to throw away a chance at Harvard, Yale, or Stanford because you're too lazy to take the LSAT?

QContinuum

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Re: Chances at schools that accept the GRE?

Post by QContinuum » Tue Aug 14, 2018 12:25 pm

GoeBluth11 wrote:Dude just take the LSAT. With that GPA from an Ivy you're definitely smart enough to do well. With the potential upside of doing well on the LSAT and potential downside of relying on the GRE I don't see a reason not to take the LSAT. You really want to throw away a chance at Harvard, Yale, or Stanford because you're too lazy to take the LSAT?
Mostly agreed, except that Harvard does accept the GRE. However, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, NYU, Michigan, Berkeley, UVA and Duke do not. That's more than half the T14. Absent a compelling reason to not take the LSAT, it'd be foolish to cut oneself off from 8 of the top 14 schools.

lawschool99

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Re: Chances at schools that accept the GRE?

Post by lawschool99 » Tue Aug 14, 2018 1:43 pm

Mostly agreed, except that Harvard does accept the GRE. However, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, NYU, Michigan, Berkeley, UVA and Duke do not. That's more than half the T14. Absent a compelling reason to not take the LSAT, it'd be foolish to cut oneself off from 8 of the top 14 schools.
I think NYU does take the GRE? Chicago only takes GRE if you apply to a dual program such as MS/JD. Depending on your ugrad major, you can perhaps apply to a dual program if interested.

OP, were you originally thinking about law school? Or was a big factor in considering law school that schools began taking the GRE?

QContinuum

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Re: Chances at schools that accept the GRE?

Post by QContinuum » Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:34 pm

lawschool99 wrote:I think NYU does take the GRE?
I stand corrected - I was going off of ETS' list. You're right that NYU does take the GRE. Still, that means 7 out of the 14 T14 schools don't take the GRE for J.D.-only applicants.

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sweetbrown95

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Re: Chances at schools that accept the GRE?

Post by sweetbrown95 » Thu Aug 16, 2018 7:52 pm

Hey everyone -- thanks for the advice. I probably should have clarified -- I'm planning to apply for a PhD in a different field, which is why I took the GRE to begin with. I've been thinking more and more about law school (especially now that Harvard and others are taking the GRE) and possibly a JD/PhD. That said, I'll probably be focusing on the PhD application at least this cycle and so I'm probably not going to take the LSAT (at least until next year). I was just asking if you think I have a shot at a place like Harvard / Columbia / UPenn / Northwestern / etc. because then I'll put forth the effort to apply with just my GRE, see if I can get in, and perhaps even check out the JD/PhD options (if I'm lucky enough to get into both)

Does anyone have any idea if the schools that accept the GRE would be interested in a candidate like me? Or like what my chances would be? Is there any (rough) "conversion" from GRE to LSAT so I can compare myself against the stats of the other applicants? Someone told me that you'd need a 170/170 GRE for Harvard and others to consider you w/o the LSAT, but I don't know if there's any meaningful difference between that and 169/170 anyways.

lawschool99

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Re: Chances at schools that accept the GRE?

Post by lawschool99 » Fri Aug 17, 2018 12:37 pm

With that GPA/GRE score, you definitely have a good shot. I've actually read a couple posts on this forum where applicants with lower stats/lower GRE scores than you have gotten into T14 schools. I'm not too sure about Harvard though.

For a rough comparison, you can try comparing your GRE percentile to LSAT percentile and estimate a corresponding LSAT score.

sweetbrown95

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Re: Chances at schools that accept the GRE?

Post by sweetbrown95 » Wed Aug 22, 2018 8:21 am

OK, so by comparing percentile scores --

A 169/170 Verbal GRE Score is 99th percentile
A 170/170 Math GRE score is 97th percentile
(Unfortunately, the GRE percentile isn't given for the total score, just for the individual sections).

Conservatively, the average of the two is 98th percentile, which would put my LSAT at around a 171 (98.0th percentile). Of course, I believe that my percentile score is higher than the average. For example, if I use the ETS tool (https://www.ets.org/gre/law/comparison) with these two scores, my "predicted" LSAT score is a 178 (99.9th percentile).

I've just been looking around, and it seems like a 4.08 LGPA and a 171+ LSAT could probably (>50% chance) get you into Harvard, Columbia, etc. It seems like you'd basically be a shoo-in at Harvard with a 4.08 LGPA and 178 LSAT. Am I doing that correctly? Is there any "discount" for taking the GRE rather than the LSAT?

I'm particularly interested in Harvard because they have a highly-ranked PhD program in the field I'm interested in (for a dual degree) -- so if I can get in at the law school without taking the LSAT, that would give me the time I need to focus on my other application!

Also, I got a 6.0/6.0 on the GRE's Writing Section (which is 99th percentile). Does that matter?

jboog

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Re: Chances at schools that accept the GRE?

Post by jboog » Wed Aug 22, 2018 1:58 pm

Really the only people that have the answers you seek work at HLS admissions.

I'm in a similar boat to where you are, with a high GRE, wondering about applying to LS. I asked here a couple weeks ago about GRE stats, and not one person responded with any stories of folks being admitted with the GRE, rejected, WL etc.

There just isn't enough data to say much at this point. You seem like a strong candidate but no one has any idea how HLS looks at the GRE scores and compares them to LSAT yet. Whereas we have tons of data points on GPA/LSAT vs chances of admission.

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