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PrezRand

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by PrezRand » Thu Mar 09, 2017 5:10 am

BillPackets wrote:First it's the GRE, next the GMAT, MCAT, literature section only of the GRE...hey why not use the SAT/ACT??? Surely they can find the SAT scores of H grads and see how they correlate with success rates (spoiler: all standardized test scores of H admits are most likely going to be >95th percentile)
In the MCAT's defense, I'm sure most who score well on it could easily score well on the LSAT.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by RedPurpleBlue » Thu Mar 09, 2017 6:03 am

PrezRand wrote:
BillPackets wrote:First it's the GRE, next the GMAT, MCAT, literature section only of the GRE...hey why not use the SAT/ACT??? Surely they can find the SAT scores of H grads and see how they correlate with success rates (spoiler: all standardized test scores of H admits are most likely going to be >95th percentile)
In the MCAT's defense, I'm sure most who score well on it could easily score well on the LSAT.
MCAT is a content based test. The LSAT is not, so I have a feeling there will at least be a decent portion of MCAT test takers who struggle with that transition.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by PrezRand » Thu Mar 09, 2017 6:14 am

RedPurpleBlue wrote:
PrezRand wrote:
BillPackets wrote:First it's the GRE, next the GMAT, MCAT, literature section only of the GRE...hey why not use the SAT/ACT??? Surely they can find the SAT scores of H grads and see how they correlate with success rates (spoiler: all standardized test scores of H admits are most likely going to be >95th percentile)
In the MCAT's defense, I'm sure most who score well on it could easily score well on the LSAT.
MCAT is a content based test. The LSAT is not, so I have a feeling there will at least be a decent portion of MCAT test takers who struggle with that transition.
They added Physics to the MCAT

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by 34iplaw » Thu Mar 09, 2017 6:54 am

RedPurpleBlue wrote:
PrezRand wrote:
BillPackets wrote:First it's the GRE, next the GMAT, MCAT, literature section only of the GRE...hey why not use the SAT/ACT??? Surely they can find the SAT scores of H grads and see how they correlate with success rates (spoiler: all standardized test scores of H admits are most likely going to be >95th percentile)
In the MCAT's defense, I'm sure most who score well on it could easily score well on the LSAT.
MCAT is a content based test. The LSAT is not, so I have a feeling there will at least be a decent portion of MCAT test takers who struggle with that transition.
AFAIK, the MCAT is largely content based, but it's also application based rather than straight regurgitation. Supposedly, that is the area that many MCAT students struggle with and don't necessarily perform well on.

I have heard that the MCAT is far less time constrained than the LSAT. Then again, I've never done anything MCAT related other than some physics questions for fun.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by Npret » Thu Mar 09, 2017 8:41 am

Don't you think other schools will follow? Once you are admitted all that matters is how well you do at school. I can see people who are good at test taking submitting two very high scores to help them get in.

I fail to see how this hurts prestige of a school at all. This forum is LSAT obsessed but that's only because admissions is so numbers driven thanks to USNews. The rest of the world doesn't care about the LSAT.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by jjcorvino » Thu Mar 09, 2017 8:47 am

I'm a bit upset about this. I studied hard for my LSAT score and I believe that the LSAT is the hardest standardized test out there. I have a lot of friends that did almost perfect on the GRE after a week of reviewing old concepts. This opens up the gates to a lot of people attending law schools that are not passionate about law. Who wouldn't want to go to Harvard law if they can study for a few weeks for the GRE and ace it? There is no investment for the applicants.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by 34iplaw » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:04 am

Npret wrote:Don't you think other schools will follow? Once you are admitted all that matters is how well you do at school. I can see people who are good at test taking submitting two very high scores to help them get in.

I fail to see how this hurts prestige of a school at all. This forum is LSAT obsessed but that's only because admissions is so numbers driven thanks to USNews. The rest of the world doesn't care about the LSAT.
I think it may hurt if alumni view the GRE as much easier, but I'm not really certain that would happen. I think that could have maybe been a risk for lesser schools. There does seem to be a bit of a circle of hazing that seems to happen in law to a certain extent.
jjcorvino wrote:There is no investment for the applicants.
Well, that and the need to outlay $200k for tuition plus all of the other time to get stuff sorted for applications. That said, I get why people would be upset. I think this is mostly going to hurt fringe admits, and the high GRE will replace their low LSATs. Due to the way the tests are structured, there isn't really an equivalent to a 176 on the GRE. A perfect score on the GRE roughly encompasses the entire band of 172-180 if we go by percentiles.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by etramak » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:27 am

Am I the only one that thinks the vocab questions on the GRE make it just as hard as the LSAT?

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in place of LSAT

Post by saf18hornet » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:29 am

cavalier1138 wrote:
What? Who was paying to take both?
Any applicant with an advanced degree would obviously have already taken the GRE.
But, I took the GRE in 2009, so obviously the cost of that is not weighing heavily on me any more and I doubt the scores last more than 5 years.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by Npret » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:31 am

jjcorvino wrote:I'm a bit upset about this. I studied hard for my LSAT score and I believe that the LSAT is the hardest standardized test out there. I have a lot of friends that did almost perfect on the GRE after a week of reviewing old concepts. This opens up the gates to a lot of people attending law schools that are not passionate about law. Who wouldn't want to go to Harvard law if they can study for a few weeks for the GRE and ace it? There is no investment for the applicants.
You're invested in the test not the outcome. There are people do well on the LSAT without devoting hours and weeks to studying. If you are a person who read a lot your whole life and you are good at puzzles and logic, you can have a strong base for doing well. That doesn't mean they aren't invested in law.

Who cares if the GRE replaces the LSAT?

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by freekick » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:39 am

A one off study is all it took to get there:

"The change is supported by an HLS study, designed in 2016 and completed earlier this year, examining, on an anonymized basis, the GRE scores of current and former HLS students who took both the GRE and the LSAT. In accordance with American Bar Association (ABA) Standards for Legal Education, the aim of the study was to determine whether the GRE is a valid predictor of first-year academic performance in law school. The statistical study showed that the GRE is an equally valid predictor of first-year grades."
https://today.law.harvard.edu/gre/

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by cavalier1139 » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:45 am

freekick wrote:The statistical study showed that the GRE is an equally valid predictor of first-year grades."
https://today.law.harvard.edu/gre/
I wonder what GRE score I need, guess I'll be applying to Harvard after all.

I took the old GRE (when it was two sections scored out of 1600). The two tests are not comparable at all. The LSAT tests purely logic as it should. The GRE tests vocab and "math".

The GRE is adaptive, which makes it interesting, but your verbal score depends heavily on your understanding of the first 10 words you are presented. I would think with study, anyone could score well on the quant section of the GRE, much like logic games. But for the verbal, you would really need to study a dictionary, as opposed to the more easily learnable LSAT RC and LR.

With enough time, anyone can score a 170 on the LSAT, but on any day I think the GRE could give you a 20% deviation. I do remember acing the writing portion of the GRE. (which if I remember correctly is pretty identical to the LSAT)

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by OnlyHumean » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:52 am

This strikes me as really weird. I've taken both, as have a significant contingent of my friends, and (as others have pointed out) the GRE is the easier test by far.

That said if "The statistical study showed that the GRE is an equally valid predictor of first-year grades" is true, then I think this is a problem for LSAC more than anyone else. If a more accessible, generally easier, much more convenient test, already taken by a much larger number of students has the same predictive power as their test, that's a problem for them.

Though to be fair, I'm a little dubious of the methodology though I was never good at this stuff, so someone people explain if I'm thinking about this wrong. Since they only studied the GRE's of current and former HLS students with GRE + LSAT, everyone in their sample has a high enough LSAT score to get into HLS in the first place. How is it that they can tell that the GRE is a predictor, if everyone in the sample also had am extremely high LSAT? It seems like they would have to make the (I think unjustified0 assumption that everyone with a high GRE could have gotten and equally high LSAT. I just don't get how else they could separate the two.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by freekick » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:12 am

OnlyHumean wrote:This strikes me as really weird. I've taken both, as have a significant contingent of my friends, and (as others have pointed out) the GRE is the easier test by far.

That said if "The statistical study showed that the GRE is an equally valid predictor of first-year grades" is true, then I think this is a problem for LSAC more than anyone else. If a more accessible, generally easier, much more convenient test, already taken by a much larger number of students has the same predictive power as their test, that's a problem for them.

Though to be fair, I'm a little dubious of the methodology though I was never good at this stuff, so someone people explain if I'm thinking about this wrong. Since they only studied the GRE's of current and former HLS students with GRE + LSAT, everyone in their sample has a high enough LSAT score to get into HLS in the first place. How is it that they can tell that the GRE is a predictor, if everyone in the sample also had am extremely high LSAT? It seems like they would have to make the (I think unjustified0 assumption that everyone with a high GRE could have gotten and equally high LSAT. I just don't get how else they could separate the two.
A problem with the study is that it has studied people who took BOTH the GRE and the LSAT to draw a conclusion about those who will take ONLY the GRE. Like everyone has been at pains to point out, GRE is way easier than LSAT. Of course someone who does well on the LSAT would have done well on GRE. But not vice-versa. Major flaw in the study. In fact, this kind of flaw is often tested on the LSAT. How's that for irony.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by AJordan » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:20 am

After doing minimal research on the GRE I do know that as a pretty serious splitter (LSAT > 75 almost everywhere) I'm 100% going to take the GRE as evidence of another data point of my abilities if this is going to be considered by the committee. So guess what, for some of us this is going to cost even more, Harvard.
Last edited by AJordan on Sun Jan 28, 2018 12:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by OnlyHumean » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:22 am

Npret wrote:
jjcorvino wrote:I'm a bit upset about this. I studied hard for my LSAT score and I believe that the LSAT is the hardest standardized test out there. I have a lot of friends that did almost perfect on the GRE after a week of reviewing old concepts. This opens up the gates to a lot of people attending law schools that are not passionate about law. Who wouldn't want to go to Harvard law if they can study for a few weeks for the GRE and ace it? There is no investment for the applicants.
You're invested in the test not the outcome. There are people do well on the LSAT without devoting hours and weeks to studying. If you are a person who read a lot your whole life and you are good at puzzles and logic, you can have a strong base for doing well. That doesn't mean they aren't invested in law.

Who cares if the GRE replaces the LSAT?
I think their point is that the LSAT shows some kind of commitment to attending law school / pursuing the law that the GRE does not, given that the LSAT can only be used for this one thing.

Even if you consider the tests to be an equal investment of time / equally difficult (which most people here seem to doubt) the fact is that the GRE wouldn't represent the same kind of commitment to the idea of attending law school as the LSAT, since it can only be used for one law school, and a million other non-law programs.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by cavalier1139 » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:26 am

OnlyHumean wrote:
freekick wrote:
Of course someone who does well on the LSAT would have done well on GRE. But not vice-versa.
This is a bold and incorrect assumption.
Last edited by cavalier1139 on Thu Mar 09, 2017 11:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by cavalier1139 » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:28 am

AJordan wrote:After doing minimal research on the GRE I do know that as a pretty serious splitter (LSAT > 75 almost everywhere) I'm 100% going to take the GRE as evidence of another data point of my abilities if this is going to be considered by the committee. So guess what, for some of us this is going to cost even more, Harvard.
What if you don't break the 85% of the GRE?

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by OnlyHumean » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:29 am

freekick wrote:
OnlyHumean wrote:This strikes me as really weird. I've taken both, as have a significant contingent of my friends, and (as others have pointed out) the GRE is the easier test by far.

That said if "The statistical study showed that the GRE is an equally valid predictor of first-year grades" is true, then I think this is a problem for LSAC more than anyone else. If a more accessible, generally easier, much more convenient test, already taken by a much larger number of students has the same predictive power as their test, that's a problem for them.

Though to be fair, I'm a little dubious of the methodology though I was never good at this stuff, so someone people explain if I'm thinking about this wrong. Since they only studied the GRE's of current and former HLS students with GRE + LSAT, everyone in their sample has a high enough LSAT score to get into HLS in the first place. How is it that they can tell that the GRE is a predictor, if everyone in the sample also had am extremely high LSAT? It seems like they would have to make the (I think unjustified0 assumption that everyone with a high GRE could have gotten and equally high LSAT. I just don't get how else they could separate the two.
A problem with the study is that it has studied people who took BOTH the GRE and the LSAT to draw a conclusion about those who will take ONLY the GRE. Like everyone has been at pains to point out, GRE is way easier than LSAT. Of course someone who does well on the LSAT would have done well on GRE. But not vice-versa. Major flaw in the study. In fact, this kind of flaw is often tested on the LSAT. How's that for irony.
That's what I thought was happening. Huh. Now I'm even more puzzled as to why they would put out such a dubious justification, and even more puzzled as to why the ABA would go along with it. Presumably the ABA doesn't care about increasing HLS's selectivity.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by hcss11 » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:30 am

Seconded! Going to get my GRE prep materials right now lol :p
AJordan wrote:After doing minimal research on the GRE I do know that as a pretty serious splitter (LSAT > 75 almost everywhere) I'm 100% going to take the GRE as evidence of another data point of my abilities if this is going to be considered by the committee. So guess what, for some of us this is going to cost even more, Harvard.
Last edited by hcss11 on Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by OnlyHumean » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:30 am

cavalier1139 wrote:
freekick wrote:
OnlyHumean wrote:
Of course someone who does well on the LSAT would have done well on GRE. But not vice-versa.
This is a bold and incorrect assumption.
It's also not one that I made. Please adjust the quote.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by freekick » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:33 am

cavalier1139 wrote:
freekick wrote:
OnlyHumean wrote:
Of course someone who does well on the LSAT would have done well on GRE. But not vice-versa.
This is a bold and incorrect assumption.
I will modify it to exlcude the quant section.

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by floatie » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:43 am

34iplaw wrote:
RedPurpleBlue wrote:
PrezRand wrote:
BillPackets wrote:First it's the GRE, next the GMAT, MCAT, literature section only of the GRE...hey why not use the SAT/ACT??? Surely they can find the SAT scores of H grads and see how they correlate with success rates (spoiler: all standardized test scores of H admits are most likely going to be >95th percentile)
In the MCAT's defense, I'm sure most who score well on it could easily score well on the LSAT.
MCAT is a content based test. The LSAT is not, so I have a feeling there will at least be a decent portion of MCAT test takers who struggle with that transition.
AFAIK, the MCAT is largely content based, but it's also application based rather than straight regurgitation. Supposedly, that is the area that many MCAT students struggle with and don't necessarily perform well on.

I have heard that the MCAT is far less time constrained than the LSAT. Then again, I've never done anything MCAT related other than some physics questions for fun.
I took the MCAT back in the day when I was still a pre-med. They are two different kinds of difficult. The MCAT has a ridiculous amount of content on it (especially the new one, where they've added biochemistry and a new sociology/psych section). It's so long now that there's a lunch break in the middle, and the stamina needed to take the MCAT is nothing like what it is to take the LSAT. That being said, knowing all of the content is half the battle, the content is all stuff you'd take during undergrad anyways, and the application isn't as difficult as you'd expect. At least for me, all of my pre-med classes had exams that borrowed questions from the MCAT so a lot of us had been "prepping" for the MCAT for 2-3 years before we actually took it.

With the LSAT, for the most part it's just totally different from anything you've seen in undergrad or other standardized tests (with the exception of RC) so you have to start from scratch. The good thing is you don't actually have to "know" anything," which IMO made it a lot easier. The bad thing is that you actually *have* to practice, and some people just can't grasp the logical concepts no matter how hard they try. Personally I don't think the LSAT is as "learnable" as people say (maybe the games section), and it is definitely more time-constrained than the MCAT (which, especially with the new timed sections, leaves people with at least 10 mins at the end to review)

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by hcss11 » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:49 am

Sub-thread for best GRE pre materials, go

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Re: Harvard to Allow GRE in Place of LSAT

Post by pitter » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:51 am

Does this mean that harvard law school will be harder to get in for kjd with high lsat score w/o good softs? :|

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