<p>Hello, I am a rising senior at an Ivy with a 3.89 GPA and 175 LSAT with great extracurriculars.
I want to apply to the top law schools like HLS, SLS, etc. but I have one problem.
When I was in high school- college summer, I signed up for 2 online courses at a community college. However, my schedule didn't work out and I decided to drop them. I missed the drop deadline so I got 2 Fs.
I didn't get credit or anything for those classes but I still have to submit them.
Are those 2 Fs going to kill my chances at law school?
Also, should I try to retake those classes? Even if I retake them, those Fs will remain on my transcript...
Any advice is greatly appreciated :D</p>
<p>There is no confusion. ALL college courses will be used for calculating your LSAC GPA. Period. So the fact that you have a 3.89 is irrelevant. Recalc with the addition of the two F’s. You can write an addendum to your LS app, but it won’t carry much weight. Law schools have to report your cumulative GPA to the public bodies, so the addendum is barely a minor plus factor/excuse (if you had scheduling issues, how could you miss the drop deadline, is what I would ask if I was an adcom.)</p>
<p>Retaking is a waste for the reasons that you note, unless the juco will do a complete grade replacement – which not likely given the time lapse.</p>
<p>For advice: include the two F’s and re-calculate your GPA at the end of senior semester, assuming all A’s, and then calculate it at the end of senior year again, assuming all A’s. If there is a significant improvement, which can raise you up to Stanford’s or Harvard’s medians, you might wait a year and apply next fall.</p>
<p>Advice #2: with a Wharton degree, you should be able to find a job somewhat easily. Take a year or two off, and then apply.</p>
<p>By my very rough calculations, those two Fs will reduce your GPA to about a 3.60. If you apply after your senior year, assuming that your GPA is the same throughout your senior year that it is now, you’ll have about a 3.67. That’s still on the low side for HLS and Stanford, but (a) it’s way better than a 3.6, and (b) it puts you in very solid shape for Columbia, Chicago, and NYU. </p>
<p>If you can possibly talk the community college into changing the Fs into Ws or Incompletes, do so. That’s your best chance. But LSAC is very clear that you must submit ALL of your transcripts, so those summer grades will be calculated into your LSAC GPA: [Requesting</a> Transcripts](<a href=“http://lsac.org/jd/applying-to-law-school/cas/requesting-transcripts]Requesting”>Requesting Transcripts | The Law School Admission Council)</p>
<p>The other advantage of applying as an older student is that “However, my schedule didn’t work out and I decided to drop them. I missed the drop deadline so I got 2 Fs,” sets off all sorts of lawyer alarms. Law is a very time-sensitive, paperwork-intensive profession, and missing a deadline is a great way to get sued for malpractise. (“I know that I had twenty days to file an answer, but I missed the deadline!”) Work for a year or two, get a good recommendation from your employer, and show law schools that you are capable of being a lawyer.</p>
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<p>There is some irony there.</p>
<p>How so, cartera?</p>
<p>I don’t see any indication that law schools care whether they turn out people capable of practicing law or not. They certainly don’t do much by way of preparation.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree, but I also see a difference between the admissions committees and the academic administration. Those two Fs would be a bigger issue when applying to law school than applying to business or medical school, IMHO, simply because lawyers need to meet deadlines.</p>
<p>And I don’t disagree - or at least - I don’t know if the law schools care that something indicates a problem with deadlines. I just would find it amusing if they did choose to care about that.</p>
<p>Do you actually have to report the community college grades? Is there any way they would know about the courses / your time at that school if you just…don’t add it as an institution on LSAC.org?</p>
<p>^^well sure, you could always lie (which might demonstrate to adcoms that “you are capable of being a lawyer”. :D</p>
<p>(On your app, you sign a doc that you are being truthful and that you have included all coursework.)</p>
<p>Hmm…okay, wasn’t aware of those certification statements and LSAC’s policy. Seems kind of silly…all undergraduate coursework, even going back to high school. I would sincerely hope that law schools would not consider two pre-undergraduate community college courses as a reason not to extend you an offer of admission. </p>
<p>I would do as ariestathena suggests and try to get in touch with the community college. Who knows if they’ll budge on it, but it’s worth a try, right?</p>
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<p>Dems da rules, and have been for a long time.</p>
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<p>Law schools care primarily about GPA+LSAT, and a 3.6 (however calculated) is borderline auto reject for the unhooked applying to HYS.</p>
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This is when I point out that the end game is NOT getting into law school; it is becoming a lawyer. If that somehow surfaced on a character and fitness background check, you would be in huge trouble - and you would have already spent two hundred thousand dollars and three years of your life on law school.</p>
<p>Mmm…okay @bluebayou, the second part I disagree with. Every law school admissions officer I’ve talked to, as well as the prelaw advisor at my school, has mentioned the emphasis law school admissions place on the undergraduate transcript itself, from the degree-granting institution. On the CAS report, they’ll be able to see the GPA that that institution gave (3.89) and how it compares to other students at that school, in addition to the “cumulative GPA” from all undergraduate institutions. They’ll also be able to gauge the difficulty of coursework from the transcript (for example, from if the applicant took mostly intro courses vs. higher level).</p>
<p>You know, UPennWharton2014, if the community college won’t change your grades to W’s, you might consider writing a short (2-3 sentence) addendum describing the situation.</p>
<p>Anyway, the part that I especially disagree with is the phrase “borderline auto reject.” Most law school admissions officers seem to care much more about LSAT than GPA because of the ambiguity of the latter figure in terms of strength of program, difficulty of coursework and major, etc. A 175 LSAT is extraordinary and while it might not guarantee admission, it makes for a very strong application, regardless of GPA and soft factors. </p>
<p>The majority of top law schools assert that their approach to application review is holistic which, by definition, means there are no metrics or systematic numeric cut-offs. Obviously you don’t see the top schools taking many candidates who have below say, a 3.4-3.5, but it absolutely does happen.</p>
<p>@ariesathena Yes, yes. As I’ve established, I had not read the specifics of LSAC’s policy when I posed that question. Before reading it, the idea of their requiring students to submit pre-college transcripts struck me as counterintuitive to their purposes, my reasoning being that if law school admissions officers purport to not caring much about graduate school GPAs, that they wouldn’t particularly care about high school summer college courses either.</p>
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<p>The former lied and the latter is ignorant. The data doesn’t lie. LSAT and GPA make up 95% of your admission. You can spend some time on [Law</a> School Numbers](<a href=“Recently Updated J.D. Profiles | Law School Numbers”>http://lawschoolnumbers.com/) looking at the trends and how little undergrad name or major matter. Sure, they’ll see all that other stuff, just like they see that silly little essay you have to write at the end of the LSAT. It goes in the trash along with all the other stuff they demand but don’t care about. </p>
<p>Law school admissions are actually very simple: US News ranks law schools partly by GPA and LSAT and not all that other stuff. Students decide where to attend (read: spend tuition dollars) determined largely by US News. Therefore, law schools care about GPA and LSAT and nothing else really. There are a couple exceptions like Yale, but that’s only because Yale can already grab the 175s and 3.9s. The reason they care about all undergrad but not grad GPA is that US News cares about all undergrad but not grad GPA. Further, all that talk about being holistic has to do with [url=<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger]this[/url”>Grutter v. Bollinger - Wikipedia]this[/url</a>], not because they actually care about your letters of rec from your undergrad professor.</p>
<p>As for Harvard, you can plug in the numbers [url=<a href=“http://www.lawschoolpredictor.com/wp-content/uploads/Law-School-Predictor-Full-Time-Programs.htm]yourself[/url”>http://www.lawschoolpredictor.com/wp-content/uploads/Law-School-Predictor-Full-Time-Programs.htm]yourself[/url</a>]. The 175 will get him a look, but the 3.6 is low for them and they have other 175s to choose from.</p>
<p>^^</p>
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<p>Of course that is true. (It is also true for undergrad admissions.) But what you did not ask (or they didn’t tell you), is that they have admitted almost zero 3.6 GPAs from unhooked applicants in the last decade. The point is that HYS DOES look at your transcript, and immediately reject 99.9% of those unhooked below a 3.7. The extremely rare acceptance is a D1 athlete, a a Fulbright Scholar, a published author, etc. </p>
<p>Rankings matter to law schools, and GPA’s actually count for more ranking points than does LSAT. (Actually, LSAT counts for more points, but the LSAT used by USNews is banded – and unpublished by USNews, whereas GPA is a firm cutoff, so LS can get more bang for their buck by focusing on hard GPA numbers.)</p>
<p>For a LS to overlook two F’s, which brings down THEIR statistics, an applicant would have to offer something else VERY large to compensate.</p>
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<p>Yale is transparent with its numbers, and publishes matrix of LSAT-GPA. Look it up but don’t forget the hooked applicants.</p>
<p>Hint: last year, Yale had ~1600 apps with GPA <3.75, and YLS accepted 33 of them (2%); zero with GPA below a 3.5.</p>
<p>IF you really do have those credentials from a top Ivy (Penn Wharton judging from your user name), dude, DON’T go to law school. Leverage your degree and high GPA to get a job in finance or consulting. </p>
<p>90% of people at top law schools don’t impress me at all. They had high GPA’s in college, but mostly they were poli sci or English lit majors from 2nd/ 3rd tier state schools who only came to law school because they couldn’t get a job after college. I have much more respect for people with 3.0 GPA in engineering from MIT or Cornell.</p>
<p>If you strike out on any legit jobs and really have to resort to going to a law school, then just apply and see what happens. My guess is you will get some decent money from lower T-14. I would take big scholly money from a lower ranked Top 10 law school over HYS sticker price anyways. No law school is worth 250-300k in debt, even Yale.</p>
<p>Apply early in the T14 and youll be fine. You will go somewhere with $$$.</p>