Question on how GPA for law school admissions is computed for a transfer student

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>Please allow me to explain my odd forum title.</p>

<p>I will be transferring into Cornell University as a Junior come this fall. I have been notified that my Cornell GPA will have absolutely nothing to do with the grades I obtained at my previous school. In other words, I will start off as a Junior with a clean slate, at least as far as my Cornell GPA is concerned. </p>

<p>So, if I apply to law school at the end of my Junior year, the GPA on my application will only be based off of 2 semesters of work. Will prospective law schools only look at my Cornell GPA when considering my application, or will they independently look at the grades I received from my previous institution as well? It seems like they wouldn't admit somebody only based off of 1 year of work, but I honestly am not sure. </p>

<p>Will I be looked at as a less competitive applicant to a T14 school because I spent 2 years of my time at a lesser ranked institution where it is easier to get good grades? </p>

2

<p>Law schools look at your compiled LSDAS report to determine your GPA. LSDAS includes every college-level grade you obtained prior to receiving your Bachelor’s degree. So grades from both schools will go into the report, and so will, for example, any community college courses you took while still in high school. Law schools will only care what the LSDAS GPA turns out to be, not where you got it.</p>

3

<p>I figured, but couldn’t seem to find any confirmation online. Thanks!</p>

4

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<p>That is almost always true. The new school is not going to disadvantage its current students by taking high GPA transfers. (I don’t know of any school that combines GPA from another school.)</p>

5

<p>I understand that; I just didn’t know if law schools had a specific way of “weighing” the grades that I received from the two institutions differently, especially since Cornell is known for grade deflation. Thank you both for the information.</p>

6

<p>the details are available on lsac’s site. Good luck. Cornell is a wonderful school. (And not to worry – they give out plenty of A’s. Heck, Big Red even awards A+'s which count for 4.3 in LSAC conversion.)</p>

<p><a href=“Transcript Summarization | The Law School Admission Council”>http://www.lsac.org/aboutlsac/policies/transcript-summarization&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;