<p>I don't want this thread to sound apologetic, but I do have some questions about GPA.
This semester, I'm a freshman (pretty concerned one, too) and took challenging courses. I thought I could handle them, but I guess it was just my ego talking. I go to a good liberal arts school (top ten) and enrolled in three honors classes (out of four). My GPA will be around a 2.8
I'm regretting my course choices because if I had taken a lower level math course -- I took honors multi-variable calc, though I'm a poli sci major -- dropped down a few levels in foreign lang, and hadn't taken the honors section of political science, I could easily have pulled off a great GPA. But I didn't.. and I'm wondering if I'll suffer now because of it.
Thanks guys</p>
<p>For the most part, law schools don't care and they often don't even know about the difficulty of the classes you take. This does not work in your favor, but the good news is your status of mid-year freshman; you have sufficient time to raise your GPA.</p>
<p>yellowburst,</p>
<p>One of the best $50 you will ever spend will be on the purchase on the following 2 books;</p>
<p>How to Get into the Top Law Schools by Richard Montauk (which is a very comprehensive book over 500) that discusses the process from beginning to end. Chapter 8 discusses your academic credentials here is an excerpt:</p>
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[quote]
To interpret GPA, we take into account the trend of grades, the quality of the curriculum followed, followed by the school, when the applicant attended-both because grades have inflated over time and because grades matter less if you went 8 years ago, since you have done other things recently</p>
<p>-Andy Cornblatt, Georgetown</p>
<p>If you major in a hard science or in business, be sure to take a few classes that involve a lot of writing, as well as some that involve reading and interpreting text.
-Megan A. Barrett, Yale</p>
<p>Whatever the major, there should be variety, including some vlearly demanding analytical courses. Thus, I'm glad to see a sociology major who has taken some tough statistics courses.....I examine the undergraduate transcript very closely. I look at what the applicant has undertaken in his or her major and I look at what they've done outside of their major.
- Faye Deal, Stanford </p>
<p>We want diversity. We have so many applicants who do the "right" things (majoring in political science, history or english, taking a semester or a year abroad doing a politcal internship), all which are perfectly fine but to stand out you need to do something different, such as taking courses outside of your area of interest. We want to see that you have challenged your self over 4 years, and you have taken courses that require substantial writing, research and analysis-the skills necessary to succeed in law school
-Derek Meeker, Penn
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</p>
<p>the other book I recommend is Anna Ivey's Guide to Law School Admissions. It is a quick read, but has a lot of useful information.</p>
<p>Anna Ivey (former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School) also has a blog. This is her advice to Freshmen/Sophmores.</p>
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</p>
<p>6 Tips for College Freshmen and Sophomores</p>
<p>As I was traveling last week (giving talks at George Washington University in D.C. and New York University), I was reminded of some of the fundamentals that many people learn only in hindsight, if at all. The most frequent coulda-shoulda-woulda I hear wherever I give a talk is "I wish someone had told me how much my grades would matter!" Sometimes it seems so obvious to me from a distance -- why else are you in school? -- but the message bears repeating. While I was on the road, I put together these tips for people just starting their college careers, when they still have time to avoid common mistakes.</p>
<p>1. Let Your Major Pick You</p>
<p>A lot of college students ask me what majors will look best on paper when it comes time to apply for a job or to graduate school. At this point in your college education, you really have no business committing to a career yet. You should be exploring – different classes, different internships and part-time jobs, different activities, different professors. Take a wide variety of classes, even if variety is not mandated by your school’s graduation requirements, and you’ll figure out pretty quickly which ones you’re passionate about. You're better off using internships to explore careers and specializing in particular professional skills in graduate school. (I remember trying to sign up for an accounting class as a sophomore at Columbia and the professor refusing to let me in for that very reason.) College, particularly the earlier years, is the time and the place to be learning more broadly how to think. The professional skills can and should come later, either in graduate school or on the job.</p>
<p>2. Follow the Professors</p>
<p>Find out who the best teachers are and load up on those classes. The best teachers could lecture every day on the history of Brazilian trade unions and you’d still be fascinated and learn how to think. A site like RateMyProfessors.com has its limitations (easy grading does not equal good teaching, and I don't find their "hotness" ratings particularly relevant: "McDreamy Hot!! Great teacher! Take any class he teaches! Easy grader and easy on the eyes"), but it’s just one more resource to help you find the best ones. (And if you want to see that shoe on the other foot, check out RateYourStudents.Blogspot.com.) Start cultivating relationships with your professors – be engaged in class and talk to them during office hours. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Aside from the academic benefits, you’ll need them for graduate school recommendations in just a few years, and sometimes they have useful industry contacts as well.</p>
<p>3. Do Your Own Career Research</p>
<p>Many professors and college administrators (including folks at the career center) haven’t spent much time outside of academia, so don’t treat them as your only resources as you explore careers and line up internships or other job opportunities. Make every summer in college a strategic part of your post-graduation career planning – many employers make permanent offers to their summer interns. After you graduate from college, it will be much harder to try a job or industry on for size without taking a hit to your resume and looking like a flaky job-hopper, so take advantage of those summers. I know that many internships don't pay, but as someone who temped and (badly) waitressed her way through college, I would advise you to get a paying job on the evenings and weekends if that's necessary to finance your internships.</p>
<p>4. Be Smart About Your Financial Future</p>
<p>Most people borrow for college, and for every dollar you spend now, you’ll be paying up to two in the future, depending on how long it takes you to pay back your loans. Check out financial planning calculators -- FinAid.org has good ones -- to figure out how much money you need to be making after graduation to make your monthly loan payments. Save your credit cards for emergencies, and don’t fall for those seductive credit card pitches on campus. Get in the habit of tracking your spending (check out Moneypants.com) – it’s a habit that will serve you well for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>5. Classes Come First</p>
<p>If you ever have to choose between grades and extracurricular activities, save your grades. If you can swing both, then knock yourself out, but don’t forget the primary reason you’re in college: your coursework. As a former graduate school admissions officer, I heard a lot of people excuse their lousy or so-so transcripts by pointing out how “well-rounded” their activities were outside of class, or how "passionate" they were about Activity X. Instead, their transcripts just proved to me that they had misplaced their priorities. Do I even need to add that Thursday-through-Sunday drinking is even less of an excuse? (Yes, people have tried the “rich social life” story plenty of times.) College is not an excuse to live like a fall-down drunk for four years. If you find you have trouble getting through the week until your next party, you've got big, big problems that you need to fix.</p>
<p>6. If You Lose Your Bearings, Take a Breather</p>
<p>Sometimes life will get in the way of your best intentions. You won’t be able to go back and do college over again, so make sure you can give school your undivided attention while you’re there. If external circumstances make that impossible (a recurring or serious illness, grave family difficulties, needing to work more than 20 hours per week), explore dropping down to part-time or taking a semester or even a year off to get a handle on whatever that problem is. Most students in these situations try to push through the crisis, and their transcripts end up looking like train wrecks. They’ll have to explain and make excuses for their grades for a long time to come. You’re much better off showing people a transcript with great grades and having to explain why you needed to take time out in the middle.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.iveyfiles.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.iveyfiles.com/</a></p>
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<p>Yeesh, that's a great post sybbie!:)</p>
<p>hey thanks, sybbie! that's good info
i got my transcript and i ended up with a 3.083, which isn't great, but at least it wasn't a 2.8.
Blaze, are you sure that law schools don't take into account the types of classes i take? it seems ridiculous that I struggled to get a B- in calc three honors, when i could have spent half the effort in calc one or two and aced it (i got a five in calc bc and a 780 SAT I math score, so calc 1 or 2 would have been fairly easy). surely, a B in advanced spanish looks better than an A in intro spanish? or a B+ in honors gov than an A- in intro gov?</p>
<p>Ideally, one should be rewarded for taking a challenging course load. Unfortunately, law schools largely ignore the level of difficulty of your course load and focus on that one number called GPA. They are numbers driven, and they strive for a high ranking in US News. </p>
<p>A good example is a comparison between an applicant with a 170 LSAT and a 3.7 GPA in a fluffy major and an applicant with a 170 LSAT and a 3.3 in a difficult major. The applicant with the 3.7 GPA is in much better shape, even though he/she may have gotten a 3.3 or worse had he/she taken a difficult major.</p>
<p>Imagine being a law school admissions counselor and having to find some objective way to assess each and every course that each and every university in the country had to offer. It'd be impossible to do in a reasonable, fair manner. What would you do, control for SAT score and then assess GPA? Take surveys to see how much time they took? Assume that engineering classes are easier than computer science, or vice-versa? What would you do about the politically-correct ethnic studies departments, which are considered easier, since penalizing them would open you up to charges of discrimination?</p>
<p>I can see where one might argue, "Well, they should try and improve at least a little." But it'd be an impossible task to do even reasonably well, and putting in all that work to be accused of a biased process -- well, better to do no work and preside over an incomplete one.</p>
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magine being a law school admissions counselor and having to find some objective way to assess each and every course that each and every university in the country had to offer.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Still, there are some programs that are reputed for their difficulty or ease. Admissions officers at top law schools know about these programs. Social studies at Harvard is an example that Anna Ivey cites as being fluffy in terms of grading, and it is a program that top schools know about.</p>
<p>..is one of the few selective majors at Harvard. Its grads do quite well. I only know a few--most of whom have gone to either Yale or Harvard Law. They've done very well there too.</p>
<p>Yes, top law schools know about it ..in a good way. The median earned gpa tends to be high because the bottom half the class can't major in social studies. (And, for the record, neither I nor my favorite law student were social studies majors at Harvard.)</p>
<p>Again, though, let's say H's SS progam is known to be fluffy. Do you penalize them? What about all the fluffy, unfamous programs out there? Do you punish Harvard for being well-known? Etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Imagine being a law school admissions counselor and having to find some objective way to assess each and every course that each and every university in the country had to offer. It'd be impossible to do in a reasonable, fair manner. What would you do, control for SAT score and then assess GPA? Take surveys to see how much time they took? Assume that engineering classes are easier than computer science, or vice-versa? What would you do about the politically-correct ethnic studies departments, which are considered easier, since penalizing them would open you up to charges of discrimination?</p>
<p>I can see where one might argue, "Well, they should try and improve at least a little." But it'd be an impossible task to do even reasonably well, and putting in all that work to be accused of a biased process -- well, better to do no work and preside over an incomplete one.
[/quote]
This is relatively easy to do. Just say a GPA in Engineering is worth .2 over a normal GPA. You could make it exceedingly complicated if you wanted to compare classes, professors, schools, etc. However, the simple fact of the matter is that Math/Physics/Engineering is pretty tough and the absolute minimum they should be awarded GPA wise is .2. If the school has bad results after 1-2 years with this technique they can simply adjust this additive to be smaller (or greater). This is a very simplistic system and I'm sure they do similar things for differences in schools.</p>
<p>Why .2? What about MIT vs. Harvard engineering? What about unknown majors? What about the implicit penalty for classes in ethnic studies, the politically correct darling of many legal types? What about the de facto bias that will occur against women and minorities, who are fewer in those fields?</p>
<p>You just can't do those things without having the evidence to back them. You can't arbitrarily set cutoffs like this without getting criticized -- yes, unfairly, but what are you going to do -- from the litiginous (sp?) types who pay attention to the admissions process.</p>
<p>And, moreover, this will affect your all-important (sarcasm) US News ranking, since you'll be doing something other than taking the numerically strongest class available to you.</p>
<p>The .2 is arbitrary. It could be .1 or .3 or .5 or 1.0. Whatever the school eventually decides. If this GPA boost doesn't help improve student quality then they can eliminate it easily.</p>
<p>Why can't any school simply do this on a whim? They aren't gonna get sued. GPA differentiation via major is certainly less inflammatory than AA, and virtually all schools do that. </p>
<p>You are making problems out of very small issues. Unknown majors? Is it a technical major? If yes, give it a boost. If not, don't. MIT vs. Harvard engineering? Give them the same boost. Admission policies have inherent unknowns, trying to eliminate them will be futile.</p>
<p>And all schools routinely do stuff to not take the numerically strongest classes available. AA, etc.</p>