<p>Do the top law schools (i.e. Harvard) go by the LSAC's GPA or by the GPA given to you by your university?</p>
<p>On this scale, an A+ (98.0%+) is a 4.33, an A (93-97.0%) is a 4.0, A- (90-92.0%) is a 3.67, etc., etc.</p>
<p>All used LSAC GPA. So when you see median GPAs, they're LSAC ones. It keeps things (reasonably) normalized.</p>
<p>But remember that they don't adjust for percentages. Hypothetically, let's say you're a Duke student applying to HLS through the LSAC.</p>
<p>Duke professors give you letter grades however they want. If a 99% is an A to them, they give you an A. If it's an A+ to them, they give you an A+. That decision is up to your professor and LSAC does not mess with that.</p>
<p>However, once the letter grade has been assigned, LSAC will impose their own calculation on it to give you a GPA. So while Duke considers an A+ to be a 4.0, the LSAC will consider it to be a 4.33.</p>
<p>In other words, there are three steps.</p>
<p>1.) You earn a percentage in the class.
2.) Your professor assigns you a letter grade.
3.) Duke assigns that letter a numerical value.</p>
<p>The LSAC will only change step 3; they won't mess with step 2.</p>
<p>I apologize if this discussion was unnecessary, but I wanted to make clear that the OP's discussion of percentages would not be considered as part of the LSAC normalization scheme.</p>
<p>Thanks BDM, I get it now.</p>
<p>my school (nyu stern) does not give out A+ at all. so if i get an A i will get a 4.0 (the highest possible gpa). So the LSAC will then convert this to a 4.33 or a 3.67?</p>
<p>^No, an "A" is 4.</p>
<p>Yeah, my school doesn't have an A+ either, but we do have an A-... It kind of stinks... Will law school admissions consider the school's grading scales when judging applicants, or just look at GPA? Because it doesn's seem fair if, let's say a 3.8 student at a school with a grading scale like mine is compared to another student's 3.9 in a school with an A+, or just no plus/minus system at all.</p>
<p>The LSAC will inform law schools what the average GPA at your school is to help them make the comparison.</p>
<p>Correct me if I'm wrong, but my general impression is that law schools do not usually consider this information with any great weight.</p>
<p>Finally, while this is unfair, this is not an unfairness that is perpetrated by the LSAC. It would be vastly more unfair for them to make up grades to give you. (By, for example, assuming that 1/3 of your A's were actually A+'s.) Many of the corrections they could possibly make would have to implicitly assume something like this.</p>
<p>What would be wrong with simply treating all "A" and "A+" grades as a 4. This requires no assumptions and tends to level the playing field somewhat. This is the way schools that do not award "A+" grades treat what would otherwise be an "A+" grade.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I suspect law schools have, and use, a lot more information than they are given credit for?</p>
<p>What about schools that use A, AB, B, BC, etc. Is the AB an A- or B+?</p>
<p>Probably an A-, as that school doesn't give + for any letter grade.</p>
<p>Rather than speculate, try looking for the information:</p>
<p>
[quote]
This requires no assumptions
[/quote]
Actually, the underlying mathematical assumption is that the two candidates would have received an A+ at the same frequency.</p>
<p>In other words, if I get eight A's and two A+'s, and somebody else gets ten A's, if the LSAC treats us identically, then the LSAC is implicitly assuming that the other candidate would also have gotten 20% A+'s if only his school assigned them.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the LSAC loses information between candidates from similar-grading schools. Compare me (again, 8 A's and 2 A+'s) to a student from my own school (10 A's). We have performed differently, and for the LSAC to erase that discrepancy could be seen as unfair.</p>
<p>Any more unfair than, in effect, penalizing the student who may perform just as well as the A+ student, but whose schools does not award A+ grades.</p>
<p>Certainly the LSAC is making a tradeoff, and certainly it could go either way.</p>
<p>From how it seems to me, the LSAC would rather maintain distinctions -- some genuine, some false -- between students than flatten those distinctions -- again, some genuine, some false.</p>
<p>Beyond that, it may reflect an underlying philosophy that perpetuating an inequality (some schools don't give A+'s) is better than creating one (flattening the effect of the A+'s that were given).</p>
<p>Certainly I agree that there's a tradeoff.</p>
<p>Actually, to me the LSAC even engaging in the exercise accomplishes little, if anything, and potentially skews results given the variety of different grading systems used. For instance, until this year (if I remember correctly), the University of Georgia only awarded straight letter grades, no "+" or "-" grades. </p>
<p>In the long run, I expect the laws schools have access to whatever information they need to make whatever adjustments they want to.</p>
<p>As a matter of curiousity, in any given class at Duke, what % of the students would you expect to receive an A+?</p>
<p>The problem is that it varies quite a bit from professor to professor, department to department, etc.</p>
<p>I wouldn't even know where to start to generate such an average.</p>
<p>Maybe another question would be more appropriate. Is an "A+" a grade that is awarded at Duke on a regular basis, or is it generally granted only for truly exceptional work?</p>
<p>It's probably somewhere in between there. Some classes will routinely give out A+'s to the best student in the class, and perhaps a couple of others who are basically indistinguishable. This is probably more common in large, lecture based classes.</p>
<p>Smaller classes are more likely to be a little more picky. Generally you'd have to really impress a professor on exams, assignments, and in-class discussion in order to earn such a grade.</p>
<p>So while I don't think you have to be the best student a professor has ever seen to earn one, I also don't think every class every year gives out at least one.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response. About what I would have expected.</p>