<p>I'm at a community college and Law School is something that I might look towards in the future. I have a low gpa, about 3.4 due to bad grades early on in my academic career. I have the chance to stay another year at my community college to raise it to maybe a 3.75 maybe. Do you think i should stay to try or should i just move on and transfer? Any real advice offered with thought or experience is appreciated</p>
<p>Never ever ever ever go to a law school with the sole intent of transferring. You’ll definitely be miserable, and there’s no guarantee that your transfer will succeed, which basically leaves you with the option of paying a ton of $$ for 3 years at a bad school or dropping out.</p>
<p>Talking to people who have gone through the process, I heard that there’s a large % of hard working students in lower ranked law schools looking to transfer, and first year professors could have very arbitrary grading policies. That combined with the lack of courses to distinguish yourself means that you may not be able to achieve the necessary class rank no matter how hard you work.</p>
<p>I think eptar is asking about transferring to finish his undergrad at a better school - not transferring mid-JD.</p>
<p>Law schools care a lot about numbers, but community colleges don’t look so good on transcripts - I would transfer to a better school as soon as you can.</p>
<p>wouldnt the gpa boost from 3.4 to 3.7 help my odds in the long run if i continue to get good grades after i transfer? i dont know? what do you guys think?</p>
<p>I would suggest you focus not only on getting into law school but also preparing yourself to do well in law school. If all of your law school classmates went to difficult undergraduate programs and did well, how well would your community college experience affect your ability to compete? If your current academic program isn’t rigorous enough to prepare you to compete in law school, then I would suggest you transfer to some school that will give you an adequate test of your skills.</p>
<p>i thought law school admissions rely heavily on gpa, so i thought boosting up my gpa will help in the long run because when i transfer i believe my gpa will be the same but say i stay another year it could help my overall gpa, yes or no, or do law schools now focus on the lsat. Looking at this: [2009</a> Raw Data Law School Rankings : Lowest GPA (Descending)](<a href=“2020 Law School Rankings - Median LSAT Score (High to Low)”>2020 Law School Rankings - Lowest GPA (High to Low)) you can see that even the lowest gpa to get in a good school is 3.5</p>
<p>^ razorsharp. This is a huge concern for me. Hopefully by transferring to UCLA (accepted), at the very least, I will be provided with an adequate test of my actual academic ability.</p>
<p>eptar32: no one seems to have addressed one of your central concerns: your GPA’s effect on your law school acceptance. Bottom line is law schools do put your GPA and LSAT scores into a formula and determine your suitability for admission based, at least initially, on only those two numbers. (Although LSAT is generally weighted more heavily.) I think boosting your GPA as much as you can before you transfer is a great idea. I had terrible grades for the first two years of college and very good grades the last two years. Those first two years’ grades came back to haunt me because the law school admissions service takes into account ALL your college and community college grades. My advice: try and boost your GPA as much as possible.</p>
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<p>Keep in mind that when you transfer to your 4 year school, there is a residency requirement that you must obtain in order to get a degree from that school. Make sure you know what this requirement is. If you stay another year, you may end up graduating in 5 years from a program that takes 4 years and the extra year unless you have a very compelling reason may not help your cause in the law school process.</p>
<p>Even though law school is all about LSAT and GPA, don’t play the admissions officers cheap; they also look at the depth and breath of courses that you have taken. A transcript full of fluff courses just to have a higher gpa, is not necessarily going to help you get into a higher ranked school.</p>
<p>I would suggest purchasing 2 books:</p>
<p>Anna Ivey - THe Ivey guide to law school admissions
Richard Montauk- How to get in a top law school</p>
<p>The Montauk book the book is approximately 500 pages and gives a very comprehensive overview of the college process and discusses applications, essays, LSATs, majors, etc</p>
<p>Chapter 8 of his book discusses Making the Most of Your Credentials, Montauk states:</p>
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<p>thanks for the opinions and sources</p>
<p>any more opinions or thoughts on this?</p>
<p>Good grades are necessary but not sufficient, and in some cases a 3.4 is good enough anyway. Bottom line is any one-year improvement will get mostly erased if you do poorly at UCLA, and won’t have helped you much if you do well at UCLA.</p>