A Law Center program offers a waiver to skip the LSAT, allowing students to avoid the excessive costs and time of the test while staying at the University. | File Photo
Starting in Fall 2021, the Law Center will offer a waiver to the LSAT in its admissions for qualifying UH undergraduates.
The Law Center may admit up to 10 percent of its Juris Doctor degree class from UH undergraduates without an LSAT score, if they meet GPA and SAT or ACT requirements. These students must have scored above the 85th percentile on the ACT or SAT and achieved a cumulative undergraduate GPA of 3.6 or above.
“It gives them the option to apply to law school and be admitted as a student without having the time and costs associated with studying for the LSATs,” said Pilar Mensah, assistant dean for admissions at the Law Center.
This program is going to be the first time the Law Center has created a “new sort of” waiver to the LSATs, Mensah said.
For any standardized testing, such as the LSAT, prep can be incredibly time-consuming and expensive, Mensah said. Taking classes to help you study, devoting hours to practice tests or purchasing test guides and other materials can add up.
“It just depends on the student, but they may study for several months,” Mensah said. “Time that they wouldn’t have to spend studying for LSATs and the cost associated with it.”
This new program comes from the American Bar Association, who had originally said one of the requirements for LSAT to be waved for UH undergraduate students was to have ranked in the top 10 percent of their undergraduate class.
Mensah said the Law Center took into consideration that undergraduate class ranking is not a practice at the University, so they adopted the program to its GPA and ACT or SAT requirements.
“We don’t know who’s in the top 10 percent because that’s not a ranking that occurs,” Mensah said. “Then we realized, well, we can’t use that language because it doesn’t apply to our undergrads.”
The 3.6 GPA requirement has been the median of students admitted to the Law Center in the last couple of years, so Mensah said they based their requirements off that data.
“We would like to see someone applying this way at least reaching our median GPA,” Mensah said.
The UH graduate and undergraduate catalogs must have the information posted for one year before students are admitted this way, Mensah said. The Law Center is on track to start admissions using this program in Fall 2021.
Mensah recommends that undergraduates interested in the Law Center apply early and get a conversation started.
“If you apply early in the process, and you definitely communicate with us that you’re interested, we can kind of help guide you through the process,” Mensah said. “I think that’ll just be better for everyone.”
Mensah said the Law Center’s goal with this program is to keep UH undergraduates and have them go to law school here. She said the UH Law Center has many highly ranked programs, and the Law Center wants to give UH undergraduates the opportunity to stay Cougars.
“This is a great law school to go to,” Mensah said. “So, we would love to keep our undergraduates in the family.”
