Under a pilot program to begin in the fall of 2018, Cornell Law School will accept the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) as an alternative to the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). With the program, which will be limited to no more than 20 students, Cornell joins a growing number of peer law schools nationwide that have changed or are considering changing their policies to allow alternative test scores.

“By experimenting with greater flexibility in our application process, we hope to make a world-class legal education accessible to an even wider variety of students,” says Eduardo Peñalver, Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Cornell Law School. “Our hope is that accepting the GRE and GMAT will allow us to reach a diverse group of prospective students from different academic backgrounds, such as engineering or technology.”

The goals of the pilot program are to encourage students with a broad range of backgrounds to apply for admission and to provide data that would permit the Law School to evaluate whether these alternative standardized tests provide a good measure of success in law school. Other top law schools have found the GRE to be a good indicator of law school success.

The Law School has partnered with multiple Cornell University colleges in the past to broaden graduate study opportunities for its students. As part of its multidisciplinary program, Cornell Law and the Johnson College of Business (Johnson) have partnered to offer two very successful JD/MBA programs, a three-year and traditional four-year program. Johnson accepts the GMAT and the GRE for admission and has accepted the LSAT in years past. Additionally, the Law School’s faculty previously approved a Three-Plus-Three program, which allowed Cornell Undergraduate students to be admitted to the Law School by submitting an ACT or SAT score.