Freshmen Mistakes

I was a Creative Writing major my freshman year, I decided to go Political Science/Pre-Law with 2 minors from then on. I have every intention on going to law school after I get my undergrad. However, I made some freshman mistakes and skipped class a lot my spring semester…and it shows. I dropped a class with a W and had a D in another class. Both classes are not relevant to my current major. That spring semester was still left with a 3.0 overall, but I imagine a W and a D combined make it rough. And on top of that, I am deciding to drop another class this semester. This class also isn’t relevant to my major, I’ll be left with a second W on my transcript. How badly will this hurt my chances of getting into good law schools? I hope to attend a law school outside of my home region (the Midwest). I should also note that my extracurricular involvement is excellent.

I would advise you to drop one minor. Coursework tends to get more difficult the higher level the classes are and if you’re aiming for law school then GPA is one of the most important factors. An additional minor is not worth Ws and Ds. Does your school allow you to retake a certain amount of Withdrawn courses and replace them with a grade letter? It’s worth checking if you aren’t sure. If your school does this then I would advise re-taking the W courses and replacing them with letter grades.

With a 3.0 will you still be able to get into a law school out of state? Yes. But talk with some lawyers and the most common advice you’ll get (besides advice not to go into law) will be that if you don’t go to a fairly good law school then it will be hard to get a job. And definitely avoid non-ABA accredited, for-profit schools which tend to leave students unable to pass the bar, unable to get a job, and in crippling debt.