There’s probably exceptions but people going to law school take the LSAT, people going to med school take the MCAT and everyone else getting a post-graduate degree takes the GRE.
At the university I work at, the LSAT and MCAT can be acceptable replacements for the GRE for some of our programs.
Ah, memory lane…Decades ago when I was applying to grad school, as far as I knew the graduate program I had my heart set on accepted either LSAT or GRE. There isn’t (or at least wasn’t at the time) a quant section on the LSAT, and I scored very well.
I didn’t want to take the GRE because I knew it would reveal that my quant skills are weaker than my verbal skills, and the grad program was famous for turning people away if they were perceived of as insufficiently math-savvy.* (The entire first year was virtually all math - operations research, statistics, econometrics, and calculus-based microeconomics.)
I was so psyched to apply that I had obtained and submitted my application forms very early - so early that they did not have new forms yet, and sent me the previous year’s. Later, I happened to discover that they had just changed the rule - now only GREs would be accepted.
I think I just barely had time to sign up for the GREs, but I didn’t want to. So I called up the admissions office and said, very sweetly, “gosh, I was so excited about applying that I contacted you early and you sent me last year’s application form, which I’ve already submitted using my LSAT score. I just found out by chance you don’t take those any more, but the form you gave me said you would. Is it okay?”
They said yes! And I was accepted.
*I bet I’d have been rejected with GREs, even though my quant score wouldn’t have been THAT bad. My class had 65 men and 17 women. The program was very sexist (this was 1979) and women were assumed not to be very good at math. Possible evidence of this - yes, I did take statistics so I know this may not be the correct interpretation - is that the men had undergrad degrees in everything: history, poli sci, English, basically any liberal arts degree you can imagine. Of the women, 15 of the 17 had STEM degrees, mostly in math. It certainly appears that the women were required to prove themselves to an extent that the men were not.
I wasn’t in a JD programme, but a masters - post grad. I guess they must have assumed if I’d got through law school already I didn’t need to do another test for the post grad work.
Now that is thinking like a lawyer, Cairo Carol! Problem exists; find why to resolve problem relying on precedent and reasonable persuasiveness. Your LSAT must have demonstrated your potential!
PS - what’s " quant"? I don’t do math stuff.
Quanitative Reasoning, I believe. That section of the GRE was the first part of a standardized test where I scored in the bottom 50th percentile; not surprising, since I just squeaked by with a D- in Algebra 2. I was just below 50th, though. I just remembered “if you do something to one side of the equation, do it to the other.”
Always allow extra time for an Uber in a big city, especially on a weekend. You’ll get plenty of people that come into the big city for the weekend from a nearby small city to drive over the weekend for extra $$$$. You can’t always rely on the GPS and sometimes big cities can be quite confusing for a newcomer.
I heartily endorse that sort of lawyer reasoning.
“Quant” is just short for the adjective “quantitative” or, more bluntly, math. Once upon a time, decades ago, I apparently had above-average (but never spectacular) math skills, if standardized tests like the SATs were to be believed.
Today, I’m an average Joe who isn’t particularly quick at basic arithmetic and regards actual math as an intellectually intriguing endeavor that is far too complex to be dealt with e-x-e-p-t r-e-a-l-l-y s-lo-w-l-y.
I was supposed to take an honor’s chemistry exam in high school. I ended up at Mt. Saint Mary’s rather than Loyola Marymount. I told my chemistry teacher that I blew it off because I was so embarrassed.
Carol, is it possible that he just doesn’t want to take the GRE? At least, not yet?
I ask, because I remember the day I wrote the LSAT. I signed up for it about five of six months before–no “last minutes” here. On the appointed day, the test started, and the doors closed, at 8:30 AM. No late admissions. I knew that this was an important test, and that I mustn’t miss it. A friend drove me to the test centre (I had a taxi company on speed-dial, in case Friend didn’t show up at our agreed-upon time), but my friend showed up, and we arrived at the test centre at about 7:30 AM. I had to kill time, but I was admitted on time, wrote the test, and did very well, FTR. For me, it was a Very Important Test.
Thing is, if it’s that important a test, why is he not making more of an effort to get there? Why the last minute sign-ups, why the question about Ubers (heck, where I’m from, you can hail any passing cab from the sidewalk if you absolutely must get someplace), why the lack of urgency in writing the test?
I hate to sound like Captain Bringdown, but it seems to me that he just doesn’t want to write the test. At this point anyway; maybe he will later. I hope that he does–this world needs more educated people–but right now, it seems to me that he doesn’t want to go to graduate school. Again, though, that’s at this point. Maybe he will change his mind in the future?