There’s an interesting tempest in a teapot over at Abovethelaw, where two stories about Mac use during exams have generated a lot of heat, but not much light. It seems a student at American University’s Washington College of Law became upset when she was told that she would not be able to use a Mac during exams unless she would “either pay $200-300 to download the software to take exams or rent a non-Mac to take the exam.”

In the second story, a dean at the University of Kentucky College of Law sent students a detailed explanation of why the school was switching to ExamSoft’s SofTest for exams. He also noted that the school was working on ways to minimize the impact of this on Mac users.

Abovethelaw took the following lesson from these two stories:

So what have we learned? First, if you’re going to law school, it’s probably going to be easier on you if you have a PC laptop instead of a Mac one (also, you might consider remembering how to use pen and paper; we did it for all of our law school exams and the bar exam). Second, some real company needs to write a program for taking exams on laptops that is compatible with Macs.

That’s one interpretation, but not the one I’d follow.

American University

The American University situation is odd because earlier this year a WCL student emailed me with information about the exam software situation at the school. I entered it in the Mac Law Students Exam Software page:

American University - The Washington College of Law uses SofTest, though according to 1L Brian, many professors dispense with the exam software altogether, and allow students to use a standard word processing application instead of SofTest. The IT department does not support Boot Camp, but students are allowed to use it at their peril. Brian reports that he took all of his fall exams on his MacBook without a hitch, unlike some of his PC-using compatriots. [11 February 07]

Additionally, the WCL Exam Policies page states very clearly, in red letters:

NOTE FOR MAC USERS: WCL uses ExamSoft. ExamSoft does not offer a Macintosh client. If you have an Intel-based Mac, with BootCamp and Windows installed, you can use your Mac. WCL will not provide this software or provide technical support.

I don’t know how long this information has been available on the WCL site, but it confirms what Brian reported back in February. Perhaps there was a communication breakdown about what it meant to be able to take exams on a Mac at WCL. Yes, you can take an exam using your Mac, but you’ll have to run Windows on that Mac to do so. Boot Camp is free, but unfortunately Windows is not.

University of Kentucky

I couldn’t find anything on the law school’s site about its exam software policy, so it seems the thorough and reasoned letter sent by the Associate Dean for Student Affairs may be the only official statement from the school about how they’re handling exams. Unfortunately, while the letter does go into the specifics of why the school felt SofTest was the right choice for them, it doesn’t address whether Boot Camp will be supported or not. I actually get the feeling that the school IT folks either aren’t aware of Boot Camp or are choosing to ignore it as a possibility.

The Overall Trend

So two schools have chosen to use SofTest. One of them lets Mac users run Boot Camp. One of them seemingly does not, at least for now. If you don’t already have a licensed copy of Windows lying around, you’ll have to shell out about $300 (or closer to $150 if you use this approach) for a Windows XP license. This is obviously not the optimum solution for Mac users.

In the worst-case scenario, a SofTest school does not allow Boot Camp use. Until quite recently, my school fell into this category. But based on what I’ve been hearing from students at schools across the country, this scenario is fading from view. Boot Camp is no longer beta software, so IT departments feel more secure in allowing students to use it.

However, ExamSoft is one of four companies in the exam software market, and the remaining three vendors all support Macs natively. Some schools do not require exam software at all. Some use Electronic Blue Book, Exam 4, or Securexam. Since I started Mac Law Students almost two years ago, I have noticed a strong trend toward supporting Macs in exams. ExamSoft is still the dominant vendor, so at many schools Mac users will have to use Boot Camp + Windows to take exams. But before Boot Camp, at many schools the only option was to borrow a PC laptop for exams. In fact, that’s what I’ve done for four semesters. Because I have a PowerBook (which uses a PowerPC chip rather than an Intel chip and therefore can’t run Boot Camp), I’ll borrow a PC two more times before I graduate.

Back to the Lesson

Is it easier to go to law school using a PC? Well, yes, if the sum of your experience is taking exams. In three years, if we err on the generous side, you’ll take five exams a semester, for a total of 30 exams. Assuming eight months of academic work in a year, you’ll spend roughly 720 days in school (240 x 3). Thirty of those days will involve an exam. The rest will not. During those exam-free days, you could gain all the advantages of using a Mac, or you could decide to buy a PC instead, on the theory that the advantages of a Mac are outweighed by the drawbacks inherent in those 30 days of exams (and then only if you’re at a SofTest school).

As for the comment that “real company needs to write a program for taking exams on laptops that is compatible with Macs,” I have no idea how well Electronic Blue Book, Exam 4, or Securexam compare with SofTest in terms of reliability, security, and ease of use. I doubt anyone really knows for sure, because nobody has had the opportunity to compare all four in actual test conditions. Abovethelaw has pointed to the New York state bar exam snafu (potentially caused by Securexam), but this incident certainly doesn’t mean that ExamSoft is the only competent exam software vendor in the business.

The larger issue, of course, is whether exam software should be used at all.

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