<p>Right now I go to a less prestigious school and i'm worried the affects this will have if I have an average gpa (3.3ish)</p>
<p>To supplement my GPA and less than stellar school, i've been working two jobs since going to college (one in the college radio station as a business manager and another at a state delegates office)</p>
<p>Recently I've been offered a chance to do NCAA Division I Sailing at my school. Obviously nothing is as important as the LSATs and GPA, but would stuff like this make any difference in the app. process for a mid-level law program or am i wasting my time?</p>
<p>At some law schools, it will make a large difference. I know that William & Mary explicitly asks if you did college athletics. Often, you can find out what is important to a school by the nature of its application. Trust me on this one. Find applications that seem to emphasize extra-curricular activities and such.</p>
<p>If your GPA will go down, don't do it; your grades are somewhat low for law school anyway - in that your grades aren't going to work for you. In many ways, it would be better for you to have athletics-harmed grades instead of work-harmed grades; a law school will be concerned that you will continue to work throughout your legal education and sacrifice both the education and your studies for a few extra dollars. It's easier to point out that you'll stop doing athletics once you're no longer eligible. </p>
<p>I do think that some law schools are more career-savvy than others. Many of the people at the height of their professions used to be college athletes. The correlation is unmistakeable; some law schools will know it and value it. Others simply will not care and will consider DI athletics to be indistinguishable from IM softball. 'Tis the nature of law school admissions anyway - beyond GPA and LSAT, schools will assign their own weights and values to other aspects of your application. Sometimes, those values will change from year to year and from school to school. The best thing is to cast a wide net if you have some feature that deviates from the norm.</p>
<p>Thanks alot, W&M was actually my dream school since my hometown is about 35 minutes away and up until this summer I thought I had a decent chance because I had a 3.6 and my practice LSATs have been coming in at around 165, so I had it in my reach area, then my GPA dropped big time.</p>
<p>I thought since that was when I had two jobs the schools may have some sympathy... What if I was to put in my app that my parents I was having to pay for my own schooling, would they look at this as a respectable reason to be working and to give some slack or grade drop is a grade drop?</p>
<p>I was curious if I'd be better off working at the school paper or doing Sailing as a general rule of thumb? And at a school where they look into work and sports, how much on average do you believe thats worth? I'm leaning towards paper since I already know the staff and sailing didn't peak my interest, I simply had an offer and was trying to weigh the pro's and con's of it.</p>
<p>P.S.- W&M care if its D1 or IM? I may need to join the dodgeball team :)</p>
<p>I think that, in that situation, you ought to stick with the work and not pick up a sport that you say you're not even particularly interested in. However, I don't know how law schools would see it, since I'm a relative newbie here myself.</p>