Major assumptions and goals on which professional school admission decisions are based, the use of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) as an admission criteria, and approaches to admission used by the Temple University Law School are examined. One consideration in making admissions policies is group needs, or whether there is a need for more black and other racial minority professionals in law, medicine, and other professions. The groups needs goal refers not only to blacks, Hispanics, Native American, and Asian Americans, but to ethnic minorities. It is suggested that regular admissions policy must be fair to all groups. A second societal goal is the individual's needs: that access to the professions should be within the reach of every American determined by that person's own individual merit. Individual merit means that the total relevant record of the applicant be examined, and that attention be directed to the record of the individual rather than the group to which the applicant belongs. It is suggested that the LSAT does not measure, and was not designed to measure, a person's capacity for being a good lawyer or community leader, but rather to predict performance in the first year examinations of law school. The LSAT does not measure common sense, self-discipline, motivation, judgment, character, leadership, and many other qualities. The individual circumstances, such as holding a full-time job during college, may be important considerations in addition to LSAT scores. One issue is that some colleges with a large proportion of ethnic minorities (e.g., Slavic and Polish-American) have been found to have lower median LSAT scores than predominantly white colleges: it is not just predominantly black colleges that may tend to score lower on the screening test. The Temple Law School uses both nondiscretionary and discretionary approaches to admission. (SW)