<p>Hi, I'm a high school senior. I know I'm certainly too young to be thinking about law school admission, but I have a question.</p>
<p>If GPA is SO important to law schools, do they take into account where you were for undergrad? I mean, a 4.0 from (not to pick on anyone, just drawing contrast) the University of Montana is vastly different from a 3.0 at Brown. So, do T-14 law schools take into account if I went to Brown and had a 3.0 versus someone who went to the University of Montana and had a 4.0? (Assume we have the same LSAT.)</p>
<p>In short, I'm afraid that I will attend the undergrad university that I absolutely adore (UChicago for me), but the grading won't allow me to attend my dream law school.</p>
<p>Yes, it does depend. If you go to UChicago, your GPA will get anywhere from a .01 to a .5 GPA boost, regardless of your major. The amount of the boost depends on what your GPA is. Anything 3.0 or below will get a .5 boost. From 3.0 up, the boost becomes exponentially smaller. For example, if your GPA is 3.5, you will only get a .3 boost (to 3.8). If your GPA is 3.9, you will only get a 0.04 boost (to 3.94). And so on and so forth. However, if you get at least a 3.5, which shouldn’t be too difficult, you will have a sound GPA for any law school. So don’t sweat it. Attend UChicago and chill out. :)</p>
<p>I’ve never heard anything like this. An adjustment from a 3.5 to a 3.8 is beyond credibility. There might be a small adjustment, but it would almost never be anything larger than 0.1.</p>
<p>The good news is that the school-to-school differences (outside of MIT) usually aren’t that large anyway. Top-law-school caliber students are usually able to handle most programs about equally.</p>
<p>Okay so…
Where am I then?
I consider myself a smart kid (33 ACT, high GPA at a really good day school in a large metropolitan area), but a 3.8, which is what I’ve heard is a competitive GPA for law school, seems really unrealistic at a place like UChicago, Georgetown, or Tufts. So what’s a guy to do? Should I just accept the fact, even though I’m not even in college yet, that Yale Law is out of reach completely? Same for Harvard, NYU, Columbia, and Georgetown? Am I just fooling myself?</p>
<p>You don’t need a 3.8 for NYU, Columbia, or Georgetown. Many more kids are excluded by the LSAT than by GPA.</p>
<p>In any case, there’s no sense trying to figure out what your GPA is going to be. Give it a shot and see what happens. My graduating class at Duke had about 15% of kids graduating with a 3.8+, so that’s by no means impossible.</p>
<p>I keep telling myself it’s too early, but the reality is I DO need to be thinking about Law School because admissions are so competitive. I don’t want my soul purpose of undergraduate study to be about getting into Law School, but it is certainly something that I have to consider throughout my undergraduate education. </p>
<p>I have no idea which LS I want to go to right now. Maybe my tastes will change. Right now I’d prefer a smaller student body (Yale, Columbia), but I also don’t want to be in the middle of a city (so there goes NYU). </p>
<p>I guess I just want an answer to this: considering that a lot of the applicants to top Law Schools are also from top undergrad universities, do the Law School admissions people regard GPAs from top undergrad universities as higher than those from less prestigious universities?</p>
<p>Columbia’s not that small. It’s generally considered one of the “larger” ones. But that’s a side issue.</p>
<p>I suspect that law schools do upweight GPAs from top schools – a little.</p>
<p>I mean, the answer is: do your best to keep a high GPA. Work hard; pick a major that you’re good at; find a good study group. There’s a difference between keeping it in mind versus worrying about it.</p>
<p>Seriously, don’t worry about it. (For the record, as proven in a previous thread, UChicago is not particularly grade-deflated. It USED to be, but no longer is. Somehow UChicago students haven’t gotten that memo. I’m not knocking the school; it’s a fine one. Post #2 is wholly untrue.)</p>