<p>Hi, I'm an undergrad (class of 2011) and I was wondering what I should shoot for GPA-wise as a Mechanical Engineering major (obviously, I'll do the best that I can regardless), but a ballpark figure would still be nice.</p>
<p>... that depends on what you want to end up doing.</p>
<p>It depends on what kind of law you want to do, and where you want to go for Law School. Then we can talk about LSAT scores and GPA. Law School depends on a lot of things.</p>
<p>Let's assume that I want to go to a school whose program ranks in the top 20 and become a patent lawyer.</p>
<p>My general rule of thumb is that very strong applicants will be above the 75th percentile in both LSAT and GPA, and that you stand a pretty good chance as long as you're a little above the median at your target schools.</p>
<p>The 25-75 ranges for, say, UCLA and Vanderbilt are 3.44-3.8 and 3.49-3.88, respectively. So 3.5 is low; 3.7 is pretty good; 3.8 or 3.9 will be quite important.</p>
<p>Still, GPA doesn't really make up for a poor LSAT score, no matter how high it is -- while the reverse is (to a limited extent) true.</p>
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<p>Alternatively, take a look at the graph for UC Los Angeles, which is around the top-twenty threshold.</p>
<p>Graphs:</a> | LawSchoolNumbers.com</p>
<p>You can see that LSAT is very important to them, but with rare exceptions anything below 3.4 is at a severe disadvantage (their 25th percentile), while a 3.6 can still be okay as long as he's at about 165 (approximately their median LSAT). This perfectly confirms the rule of thumb above.</p>
<p>thank you!</p>