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A group of law school deans are reportedly pressing the American Bar Association’s accrediting agency to require law schools to make the LSAT scores and undergraduate grade-point averages of transfer student’s public, according to The Washington Post. Legal educators claim that this is an effort by some schools to keep the data hidden in order to inflate the school’s credentials for ranking purposes.
Managing director of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Barry Currier stated at a March 14 meeting that, members have indicated they did not think the LSAT scores and undergraduate GPA of the transfer students is “relevant consumer information” that needs to be disclosed, according to reports by the Washington Post.
The dean of George Mason Law, Dan Polsby, reported that, “It’s a world in which sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.” He is not opposed to the idea of a student wanting to transfer to a higher-ranked school.
A spokesperson for American’s Washington College of Law, Franki Fitterer said that, “We continue to believe that if law schools are decreasing the size of the entering class for the purposes of improving LSAT scores and GPA, and then increasing the number of the second -year transfer students to compensate for lost income, that is a poor academic practice that is damaging to the student experience.”
“The students we accept by transfer make great contributions to the law school, and we are delighted to welcome them to our campus,” said the interim dean at George Washington, Gregory Maggs.
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