<p>I'm a junior at HYP and I'm running into a dilemma with one of my classes. Keep in mind that I have about a 3.3 GPA (3.7 since the beginning of Soph year).</p>
<p>In one of my classes this semester I might get a B or B- as a final grade. I only know that from the two papers I've done, which aren't worth a ton of my grade, but now I have this final paper coming up worth 50% of my overall grade. I'm a bit concerned that I won't do much better on it than I have on the first two papers.</p>
<p>I really don't want to compromise my upward trend--especially since my other 4 grades this semester will hopefully be in the A/A- range--so I'm considering withdrawing from the class. At my school W is a neutral mark that doesn't affect your GPA, and just shows up next to the name of the course you withdrew from on your transcript. I'd like to go to a good law school and I've heard that it's very numbers driven. E.g. if you have a certain GPA and a certain LSAT score you can basically write your ticket (or your rejection letter) to certain top schools. </p>
<p>My question is whether anyone thinks that it's worth it to take the W and withdraw or whether it's better to get a B/B- (B+ is probably the best case scenario, assuming I aced the final paper). I'm reluctant to drop the class at this point since, apart from the final paper, I've done all the work for the class. The class is also within my major (not a required course), which probably makes it look worse than if I'd had this problem with Physical Chemistry or some other class that has no relationship to my law school candidacy. I also don't want to have to take 5 classes during a semester next year to make up for having dropped a class this semester.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I was doing some number crunching and a B or B- really would bring down my semester GPA. Since I'm trying to work this upward trend angle, even if I got A/A- in my other four classes, I think that this could be a big problem (especially considering that I've already given up some ground on the GPA because of a bad freshman year). It seems like A/A- grades in my other classes for this semester and the corresponding semester GPA, would look much better than 4 A/A- 1 B/B- and a lower GPA.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Should I withdraw, stay in, or does it not matter?</p>