A recent study published in the California Law Review states the Law School Admission Test may not make the grade in terms of fairness.
The study, which determined the LSAT is biased against minority students, found that when compared to applicants from the same colleges who had the same majors and equivalent grade-point averages, minority students scored several points lower than their white counterparts on the LSATs.
"The LSAT is culturally biased in the sense that it creates an artificial barrier to entering the legal profession," said William C. Kinder, a staff researcher with the testing group in a comment to the California Law Review.
The study was conducted by Testing for the Public, a non-profit educational corporation that offers courses to minority students to overcome test bias.
The report found that black students scored 9.2 points lower than white students with otherwise equivalent admissions criteria. The LSAT is scored out of 180 points.
Latino students scored 6.8 points lower than whites, Native Americans scored 4.0 points lower and Asian Americans scored 2.5 points lower.
The disparity in scores is a result of both "how the test is made and how it is taken," said David White, director of Testing for the Public. For example, "if you're a minority, you're not going to have the influence on how questions are chosen."
Also, the issue of "stereotype threat" puts minority students at a disadvantage, White said. This occurs "when people are put in a situation where their group is stereotyped as not doing well and [as a result] they don't do well."
"The LSAT is used as one of several factors in making admissions decisions," said University Law Prof. George M. Cohen. Law school admissions officers also may consider a student's GPA, undergraduate school prestige, work experience and extra-curricular activities, Cohen said.
"The test is a fairly good predictor of how people will do in law school," Cohen said.
He added that the test, which includes multiple choice and essay components, assesses students' reasoning skills, logical aptitude and reading comprehension.
The study examined pools of applicants to the University of California's Boalt Hall School of Law during 1996, 1997 and 1998. The applicants reviewed in the study came from 15 top undergraduate schools, including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Cornell, and the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles.
The American Bar Association requires the LSAT for accreditation purposes, so it would be difficult for schools to get rid of the test, White said.
But "affirmative action programs can be justified to overcome the large discriminatory bias" in dealing with standardized tests, he added.
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