<p>I think a top 20 law school will look more at a 3.4 from a top 20 school than a 4.0 from bum**** state school.</p>
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Until US News changes its methodology, the largest problem is that schools have no incentive to accept students in hard majors.
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<p>i think that is a good point, and it completely baffles me that a magazine ranking can have such a hold on universities everywhere. </p>
<p>a few weeks ago, the dean at University of Houston resigned for all the heat she had to take due to their drop in USNEWS rankings. </p>
<p>still i think it is inane to call an action that improves a school's ranking an "incentive." these priorities are completely out of whack.</p>
<p>What about undergrad schools that award A+ grades, but still give only 4.0 for it? Will LS recalculate these as 4.33? How will they consider a 92% A- grade? </p>
<p>Do all law schools recalculate GPA in the same way?</p>
<p>If there is a plus sign next to the A, LSDAS will count it as an A+. By the way, I doubt there are many schools, if any, that award 4.0s for A+s.</p>
<p>Pitt. It really is unfair that you can't get more than a 4.0 for A+ while they deduct 0.25 for an A-. Furthermore, an A grade is 93 and above, while 90-92 is A-. Is that abnormal? :(</p>
<p>A+
A 4.00 Superior
A- 3.75</p>
<p>WF, I'm glad to hear that LSDAS counts the + grades. :) Thanks!</p>
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have all grades come in two sets, one of which is your grade and the second one being the median grade in the class.
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<p>This has the same problems as comparing the median for the university as a whole. Putting your grade, the median grade for the class and the median SAT score of the other people in the class might get at the "difficulty," but it's completely impractical. </p>
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some schools use average LSAT to develop the "index" for each student.
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<p>Right, and using the LSAT score at least makes some sense. This is why, again, an engineer with a 3.0/160 isn't going to be able to sell the idea that his GPA was only low because his major was so hard. </p>
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I think a top 20 law school will look more at a 3.4 from a top 20 school than a 4.0 from bum**** state school.
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</p>
<p>Well, unless there's a difference in their LSAT scores.</p>
<p>Right, I was assuming say 3.4 from UChicago and a 168 and a 4.0 from northern illinois and a 168.</p>
<p>To be quite honest, with that LSAT, the northern illinois person would probably do better in the admissions game.</p>
<p>I have to agree with Sakky and ariesathena.</p>
<p>I started out in sciences, which my courses were curved to a 2.62. I switch to engineering, and the classes started getting curved to a 2.3 AGAINST SMARTER PEOPLE.</p>
<p>In the uncurved classes in engineering, you learn twice as much, harder material, and need a higher mark to get an A. I don't know why this is, but engineering does NOT like to give out a lot of A's. Humanities doesn't necessarily give out A's like candy, but there is definitely a large discrepancy, and arguing this is only making you look asinine.</p>
<p>LFK,</p>
<p>LSDAS doesn't convert numerical grades (such as a 91) to a normal grade (A-) to a GPA (3.667). What they do is take the normal grade and convert to a standardized GPA. </p>
<p>So Pitt's A+ will be calculated to be a 4.33 for the LSDAS purposes. LSDAS does say that you shouldn't be surprised if your GPA for them is different from your college GPA. Imagine a college that calculates grades on a A=4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.4, B = 3.1 scale. Someone with an A-/B+ average would have a 3.55 under that scale; however, LDSAS would recalculate it to be a 3.5.</p>
<p>you can calculate your gpa here
<a href="http://www.lawpad.com/gpa_calculator/%5B/url%5D">http://www.lawpad.com/gpa_calculator/</a></p>
<p>it goes in .3 increments including signs.</p>
<p>Thanks for the calculator sreis!</p>
<p>This one doesn't have the fancy URL, but people have found it useful, too.:D</p>
<p>thats not right. it doesnt go in .33 increments according to lsdas.</p>
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thats not right. it doesnt go in .33 increments according to lsdas.
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<p>Odd.</p>
<p>My GPA according to the calculator you provided is significantly higher than my calculations.</p>
<p>Should I be extremely happy or suspicious?</p>
<p>why be suspicious? just enter any number of credits in one grade only to see the number associated with it. </p>
<p>but anyway your gpa must be really high for you to be extremely happy. i saw a guy on law school numbers with a 4.14/175 waitlisted at Chicago, Georgetown, and UMich. and if youre aiming for the top, there are quite a few with high numbers (172+/4.0+) that get flat out rejected at Yale and Stanford.</p>
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if youre aiming for the top, there are quite a few with high numbers (172+/4.0+) that get flat out rejected at Yale and Stanford.
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<p>Yes, but all this depends on your expectations. If I have a 3.85 and a 175+, then I should have a good shot at HLS and as good a shot as almost anyone at SLS and YLS. YLS rejects half of the applicants in that range; however, if the graph on their admissions website is any indicator, the higher you go, the higher the chances you have.</p>
<p>I think this really is a big issue, especially considering the likely grade range for a typical applicant to a highly ranked law school. This student typically does work worthy of a mid-range A, plus or minus a few points. For this student, the A, A-, B+ system seems worst: have a bad class and get an A-, have a good class and get an A. There, the student ends up with something less than an A average. In the other two systems, the same student either gets all As, or gets A+s to offset the A-s and ends up with an A average. </p>
<p>I disagree with the notion that A+s are given too rarely to have an impact. It has been my experience, having studied engineering under all three grading scales, that one or two students get the top grade available, a few more get the next notch down, and the remainder fill out the bottom half of the bell curve. The pressure on the professors to allow the possibility of the top grade available is just too great. I expect this is true to the greatest extent in small, closely-nit departments where the top students have the well deserved respect of the professors.</p>
<p>With respect to the difficulty of engineering compared to other majors, I have one personal analogy and you can take it for what it is worth. My wife was a business major and I was an engineering major. She made all As and one B. I made several Bs and a few other grades I will not mention. I was fairly familiar with her course work and I can say with reasonable certainty that she did better than I would have. However, I can also say with reasonable certainty that there is no way that, with modest effort, I would have gotten less than a B in any of her classes. The same was not true of my engineering coursework, for me or for her. I fought, kicking and screaming for all of my engineering Bs, and I just could not make it in some cases. My point is, while Im sure making all As, all of the time, is difficult in any major, frequent Bs, Cs, and Ds are a reality for many hardworking and intelligent engineering students. The same does not appear to be true of many other majors.</p>
<p>In calculating the LDAS GPA, do they figure in numbers of credits?</p>