<p>I will be graduating from Cal State Long Beach in Spring 2015. My cumulative GPA is 3.95. Due to a series of injuries(4 torn ACLs from my junior year of high school through my freshman year of college) and potential in baseball, I attended a community college for my first 3 semesters of college. I then transferred to CSULB (the only affordable school I could transfer to for the spring semester) where I got a 4.0 in my only semester. I will be graduating in 3 years and am worried that my GPA may not be very impressive to admissions because the bulk of it came from a JC (and CSULB isn't particularly impressive). I should get 165-168 on my LSAT and hope to attend a top 25 law school. Would it benefit me to wait until I get my Fall 2014 grades and submit my applications in December? Any help is appreciated.</p>
<p>anything about a 3.9 is golden it doesn’t matter where you earned those grades. But please, please don’t waste that GPA on the 25th-ranked law school. After graduation, study your butt off for the LSAT. Clear 170+ and many in the T14 will throw big money at you. </p>
<p>Prosper.</p>
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<p>Like bluebayou said, don’t waste an amazing GPA. Get 170+ and blanket the T14.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help; I plan to submit my applications in October.</p>
<p>Honestly, I would recommend anybody take a year off of college at least and work for a law firm before applying. You may find, seeing what the lawyers go through, that you don’t want to be a lawyer at all. When you consider the opportunity cost of going to law school, the debt incurred (could be hundreds of K before you graduate) the lack of jobs, the low pay except for the chosen few who work big law, and the number of sociopaths in the profession . . . you may find that it is not what you want at all. </p>
<p>If you do get 168-170, then the T14 I would then recommend most is Boalt Hall…</p>
<p>Having only one semester of grades from a 4 year college available to admissions committees will hurt you in admissions. I am NOT saying that you can’t get into a top law school because you went to a CC. I AM saying that you’re likely to have better results if you have 3 semesters of grades at your 4 year school to submit rather than just one semester. </p>
<p>I do not think though that delaying your app from October to December will help much.</p>
<p>Do a search; this question has been asked and answered on this forum before. </p>
<p>@jonri: Admissions won’t care where he got his UGPA, just what it is. US News doesn’t rank based on where law students got their credits. </p>
<p>I didn’t say that they care where he got his credits. I did say that, IMO–and it’s only iMO–anecdotal info indicates that having only one semester of grades from a 4 year school can hurt. There have been previous examples of this on this board. There are old threads on this topic. Even if he’d gone to a 4 year school from the outset, applying with only 2 years of grades seems to hurt. Going through school in 3 years and taking a year off, so you can submit 3 years of grades, seems to yield better results than applying after 2 while you are in your third year. </p>
<p>Haven’t seen anything on the forum that is exactly the same as my situation, but the forums on college confidential and top law schools seem to indicate that UG institution is of minimal importance. However, some people,such as jonri, do find weak UG schools as detrimental. It seems like even if it would be a bit of a problem, it could be mostly/completely offset by a strong LSAT score and that the potential benefit of waiting until December would be outweighed by, what I understand is a fact, that law schools are more picky about who they accept because of limited amount of available spots at that time of year.</p>