Law School Plans Admissions Exam

Beginning in November, the Law School will join 86 others in giving a new kind of admissions exam. Supplementing the current Aptitude test, required of all applications, the new one will include examinations in both writing ability and general background.

The 80-minute writing ability portion of the test hopes to "measure the student's command of grammar and diction as well as his ability to recognize verbose or unclear writing," the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., reports. The "test of general background," containing 90 questions, will test "the student's awareness of the intellectual and cultural context in which the law functions."

Announcement of the exam came yesterday at the Conference of Western Law Schools, attended by Louis A. Toepfer, Director of Admissions in the Harvard Law School.