Take/study GRE and LSAT at the same time- possible?

juillet
Wed, 28 May 2014 01:46:35 +0000

Many, many schools have dual MA/JD programs - in fact, I would say that most schools with law schools probably have at least one joint MA program. The question is what do you want the MA to be in? That’s going to vary by school.

Columbia Law, for example, offers a joint JD with master’s degrees in business (the MBA), journalism, public health, urban planning, international affairs, public administration, fine arts (the MFA), and social work (the MSW). So awesome if you want a JD/MBA or a JD/MS in urban planning; not so awesome if you wanted a JD/MA in Jewish studies or a JD/MPP.

Harvard Law has a JD/MBA, JD/MPP, JD/MPA-ID, JD/MPH, and JD/MUP. Many of the same programs as Columbia, but let’s say you wanted a JD/MFA, you can’t do that at Harvard Law. Penn Law has joint degrees with engineering, business, criminology, education policy, higher ed, environmental studies, public administration, international studies, city & regional planning, bioethics, social policy, global business, public health, Islamic studies, and social work. Yale Law allows you to design a joint degree program with most of their schools. And so on and so forth.

My advice is to check the websites of top law schools and check what kind of joint degree programs to determine whether they have the master’s you want. I’m assuming that the JD is the centerpiece here, and that you want to be a lawyer. In today’s glutted law market, you really need a JD from a top law school to compete for the kinds of jobs that will enable you to repay your law school debt. So focus on the top law schools and then see if they have joint programs that you like.

As a last note, I just want to mention that getting a joint JD/MA is not really a remedy if you can’t choose what to do. I think that some joint JD/MA programs can actually be very useful and enriching, but that a student who wants a joint JD/MA needs to choose carefully and think about why they want a JD and a master’s. It shouldn’t be a “just because” add-on, because they add on an additional year of loans and expenses. For example, a student interested in environmental law and protection might get a JD + an MA in environmental studies/sciences. Someone interested in child advocacy or public interest law might want the JD/MSW. People interested in certain types of healthcare law and policy may want the JD/MPH (with a reminder that MPHs focus on public health, not individual healthcare practice).

I’ve heard it said in many places, including here, that JD/MBA programs aren’t very useful. Most people who do these seem interested in corporate law, but most corporate lawyers just have a JD. They hire MBAs to do the management and business stuff.

You may also want to ask about this in the law school forum.

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As for the two tests - first of all, if you are a sophomore in a 5-year program it is way too early to begin studying for the GRE or LSAT. You should look to take them - at earliest - in the summer before your fourth year and at latest in the fall of your fifth year. You may choose to take the LSAT one summer and the GRE a different summer, or maybe you take the GRE in the summer/fall of your fourth year and the LSAT in the spring of your fourth year or something. Seriously, you have 3 years left, why rush?

Is there overlap between them? Some. You can look up the structure of the tests on their respective websites:

LSAT: Take the LSAT - Law School Admission Test | The Law School Admission Council;
GRE: http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/about

The biggest overlap is between the reading comprehension questions. There are some on the LSAT and some on the GRE. Both are structured in such a way that they present you a passage to read, then you answer a set of questions about the material. I have never taken the LSAT, so I don’t know what the passages are like there.

Otherwise, the tests are quite different. The GRE requires quantitative reasoning and a writing section, whereas the LSAT favors logical and analytical reasoning.