will doing poorly in a class affect my chances for USC law?

Well, I’ve had a very rough semester this year and here’s a little bit about this story.

I am a first semester sophomore and I was premed, until I realized how much I don’t enjoy it. I actually realized I really have to force myself to like, enjoy, and understand the STEM classes I was taking. It got so bad to the point where I dropped my human physiology course with a W, barely scraped by with a B- in chemistry, and I’m at risk of failing physics (I say at risk because, while I am really under prepared for this final simply because, for the life of me, i cannot understand this course, my professor is known to curve heavily). Also, i’ve been going through some emotional stuff and my grades slipped. This is a drastic change from my last year GPA, which came out to a 3.78 combined.

I’ve always been a political science major and I’ve always enjoyed it far more than any of the classes ive taken in high school and college. Thats why I realized I wanted to stop premedicine and do something in the realm of politics. I didnt want to finish my studies without going to professional school and I felt law school was best suited for me.

My dream is to go to USC law and move back to my home state of California. I know they have a very high average GPA. My question is, will doing kind of poorly in these classes poorly affect my chances, even if I am able to bring my GPA up?

nothing about my gpa in the future is guaranteed of course, but I have done fairly well (A’s) in my junior level political science courses that are known to be challenging. I just really, really want to get into USC law and this grade slump has me really worried.

thanks guys!

Law schools, including USC, care about your overall GPA as calculated by LSAC. One bad semester only hurts to the extent it brings down your total GPA. It doesn’t do anything else. If you bring your GPA back up in other semesters, no law school will care about the one bad semester,

As a sophomore newly interested in law school, I highly recommend getting some experience in a law office. There are usually DA/PD/Legal aid internships available for interested college students.