Rising Grade Trend - Compensating??

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>Okay, so I'll be applying to law schools in September and have my eye on schools mostly from 10-25 (GTown, UCLA, UVA, Notre Dame, BC, BU - in some order of preference). I have two questions. The first is about my gpa vs. my rising trend of grades by semester. From first semester freshman year to last semester senior year, these were my semester gpa's -- 3.01, 2.95, 3.07, 3.42, 3.53, 3.66, 3.66, 3.61. I'm wondering if the increasing trend will compensate at all for the fact that my overall ugpa is only a 3.38. </p>

<p>My second question is about the (lack of) correlation between my ugpa and my lsat score, which was a 170. When I was applying to undergrad I had a similar situation (1480 sat, but not in the top 25% of my class) and was told that it would hurt my application, in that admissions people would take that to mean a lack of effort in class. Will law schools view my ugpa and lsat's the same way, or will they just be happy that my lsat score is at the top or higher than their range?</p>

2

<p>An upward trend is going to help you (it's better to have gpas in the order that you do than to have them in the reverse order or to have all 3.38s). But the school is still going to have to report your overall GPA to US News and it will count towards their averages (and 3.38 is pretty low for some of these schools, especially the top 14 ones), so the trend will probably only help a little. </p>

<p>Luckily, your LSAT score will probably help a fair amount. I don't think the lack of correlation between GPA and LSAT score will matter too much. If you were in a major or college known for grade deflation or if you submit an addendum with a good reason for your intially low grades (family crisis, illness, a major you later switched out of) then the lack of correlation probably won't matter at all.</p>