Non business major student taking pass/fail, an undergraduate business law course or foreign language courses, how is it viewed from an admission prospective of a top 12 law school or a top 30 law school? The underlying reason for taking classes pass/fail is to protect a near perfect GPA to avoid getting an A- or possibly lower.
How many courses are pass/fail for this applicant ?
More importantly, what is the applicant’s LSAT score ?
Student is just a junior in college trying to avoid getting an A- to protect a near perfect GPA. No pass/fall courses taken yet and no LSAT score since no LSAT taken yet.
Just contemplating and law school admission’s view and the effect of taking classes pass/fail, especially in business law.
Law school admissions probably won’t care about a single class taken pass/fail. However, taking several classes pass/fail might raise some red flags, especially if you are gunning for top schools.
The reality is that one’s LSAT score is the most important admissions factor considered by the most competitive law schools–and by almost all law schools.
Taking a few courses pass / fail should not hurt an otherwise competitive applicant, but may be a distinguishing factor between applicants with identical LSAT scores & undergraduate GPAs.
Why would an aspiring lawyer worry about getting an A- in a business law class?
I’m missing something here.
OP: FYI Undergraduate Business Law courses have very little in common with actual law school courses.
@blossom , an A = 4.0; an A- =3.7. For a person striving for a near 4.0; say 3.9+, an A- grade with the 3.7 weight, especially if getting a few A-'s, can cause a significant drop in GPA (but not below 3.7 assuming there are no grades less than an A-). I know in reality, a high LSAT score is still a very important component in determining admission to a top tier law school. Thank you.
My question was not about the arithmetic (which I understand). It was why would someone who is purportedly interested in being a lawyer worry about doing well in an undergraduate course dealing with the law???
The person was just worried about getting an A- since the class grading is curved. As a previous poster posted, undergraduate business law course has little in common with law school courses. My feeling is that if the class deals with law, the person should take the class for a grade rather than pass/no pass. He was also thinking of pass/no pass on a foreign language course (his has a tougher language professor this semester) which is his minor. He decided pass/no pass on the business law for now and will re-evaluate after the midterm to decide whether to change it back to a grade.
A handful of classes taken P/F over four years probably won’t even get noticed. More importantly, individual classes are all but ignored, unless it has a low grade, such as a
C, in which case the Adcom may look to see what that C was all about. ‘Oh, applicant got a C+ in Organic Chem or Physical Chemical Engineering – yeah, I understand.’
OTOH, taking a P instead of a A- is kinda silly IMO. Over four years, the extra 0.3 is barely a rounding error.
I agree that taking a pass/no pass over an A- is kind of silly. I was trying to convince him to take the class for a grade since he thinks he can at least get an A-. There are students who use this strategy or graduate a semester or quarter early to “protect” the high GPA in order to get into a top 5 law school.
Taking P/F to avoid an A- seems a bit silly, especially if it’s in a law class for someone who wants to be a lawyer. Admissions likely won’t care, though, if that’s your primary concern.