I’ll make this short & sweet…
I started out at community college and received a 4.0 in the next semester. The following semesters is when it took a turn for the worst. I was a science major at the time and then decided that science was not for me. I withdrew from all my classes in the second semester and I immediately joined some online business classes. Still, I was not motivated and stop doing work which led to F’s in all of those courses. I tried going back to school and repeated the cycle… Registered for classes and stopped going which led to more F’s… Eventually, I got my sh*t together and graduated from community college with a 3.65 GPA earning cum laude honors. I then transferred to a university (which I’m still attending) and am on pace for summa cum laude honors with a GPA over 3.91 from this university.
I have taken the LSAT and scored a 173.
Question - From my early school career, have I ruined my chances for T14?
Schools will only care about your LSDAS GPA. Calculate that and we can be more certain, but it sounds like it should be fine.
All college coursework taken counts for LSDAS’ calculation of your GPA. Do the college(s) you attended provide for complete grade replacement, i.e., when you repeated the course, the F was replaced with a A or B? And by replace, I mean complete replacement in that the original F does not show up anywhere on the transcript? If so, you can ignore those F’s when you calc your GPA.
If not, those F’s will count as zero grade points and your cum GPA will be poor, at best. In such case, better to put some time between you and those grades. In other words, work for a year or two.
The 173 will get you a lot of interest from the T14, outside of HYS, but with a year or two of work experience, you’ll look even better.
btw: you had better come up with a good story on how/why you lost “motivation” for school, so you can explain it in a supplement.
Good luck.
I appreciate the input. Truly do.
I was a knucklehead but theres nothing I can do now. Whats done is done.
Do you know of anyone that was has been in a similar situation and was accepeted into a T14?
I know people who failed out, got their grades up, and got into good schools. It’s all about getting the GPA up to where it needs to be, even if that means delaying the receipt of the BA.
Understood. Thanks for all your help!
You will end up being a splitter (high scores/low GPA). Unfortunately, splitters are hard to predict, especially if you have no hooks or a really compelling story.
@bluebayou is correct that you will benefit from a few years of work experience to put some distance between you and undergrad. This will also help to demonstrate that you have matured.