Does my international grades hurt me--Foreign Trans Question Forum

[chrisbforever]

I lived on the island of Barbados in the Caribbean for my whole life and attended community college there. My major back then was Computer Science and being a fresh faced youth straight out of high school, I did not take it serious and my grades were really bad. I did about 44 credits of schooling and ended up with a low 2.x GPA.

I moved to the United States at the age of 21, worked for a year and transferred my credits to an American university. I did 3 years of University with a Political Science major and a History minor and did much better as it is something I genuinely enjoyed, my GPA upon graduating this past December is 3.4. I am a much more serious student now and dream about going to law school, however, I am afraid that my old grades from community college overseas is going to come back to haunt me. Can someone tell me how my community college grades are going to factor into my law school application. Do they make it into one lumped GPA or would they consider the overseas GPA and American GPA two separate entities.

Furthermore, won't the overseas credits be looked "down" upon in a sense because it is not an American school so the quality of the work accomplished overseas can't be judged fairly? I'm hoping that my grades overseas does not profoundly hurt me with being accepted into law school.

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

[baboon309]

I lived on the island of Barbados in the Caribbean for my whole life and attended community college there. My major back then was Computer Science and being a fresh faced youth straight out of high school, I did not take it serious and my grades were really bad. I did about 44 credits of schooling and ended up with a low 2.x GPA.

I moved to the United States at the age of 21, worked for a year and transferred my credits to an American university. I did 3 years of University with a Political Science major and a History minor and did much better as it is something I genuinely enjoyed, my GPA upon graduating this past December is 3.4. I am a much more serious student now and dream about going to law school, however, I am afraid that my old grades from community college overseas is going to come back to haunt me. Can someone tell me how my community college grades are going to factor into my law school application. Do they make it into one lumped GPA or would they consider the overseas GPA and American GPA two separate entities.

Furthermore, won't the overseas credits be looked "down" upon in a sense because it is not an American school so the quality of the work accomplished overseas can't be judged fairly? I'm hoping that my grades overseas does not profoundly hurt me with being accepted into law school.

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

Separate gpa

[iShotFirst]

Pretty much the same experience here except my first UG was in Canada. Since you say you transfered your credits to your American UG, that means that yes, those credits will come back and affect your GPA. What happened to me is I sent them my transcript from my US undergrad, I didnt even think of the Canadian one (I was there several years before I went to my American UG). Unfortunately, since I transfered in credits, it says on my American UG transcript the name of the Canadian school, at which point they put a note on my LSAC account of unacknowledged transcript. I had to send in my Canadian transcript and my GPA dropped like a stone.

It sucks, but unless it doesnt mention transfer credits on your UG transcript, you will HAVE to submit your transcript from Barbados. If you never transfered the credits you would be ok (I wish I would have known that!) but as you already transfered them, its too late. Just have to accept it. I would just send in your American transcript and see if they ask for the other one at first though.

[chrisbforever]

That's interesting, I was thinking they treat the Canadian schools more like American schools rather than overseas? Do you think that's why your Canadian GPA was factored in?

[iShotFirst]

Hmmmm that might be possible but as far as I know any credits you use to get your Bachelors degree need to be counted into your GPA. I thought I was ok because they are all listed as PASS on my transcript, but it turns out they want the grades hah. Wish I would have known that, I wouldnt have transfered all of them.

What we really need is someone that transfered credits from an international place that is more "international" than Canada to tell us their experience.

[chrisbforever]

I don't know if someone can help clarify..thanks.

[Haribo]

Pretty much the same experience here except my first UG was in Canada. Since you say you transfered your credits to your American UG, that means that yes, those credits will come back and affect your GPA. What happened to me is I sent them my transcript from my US undergrad, I didnt even think of the Canadian one (I was there several years before I went to my American UG). Unfortunately, since I transfered in credits, it says on my American UG transcript the name of the Canadian school, at which point they put a note on my LSAC account of unacknowledged transcript. I had to send in my Canadian transcript and my GPA dropped like a stone.

It sucks, but unless it doesnt mention transfer credits on your UG transcript, you will HAVE to submit your transcript from Barbados. If you never transfered the credits you would be ok (I wish I would have known that!) but as you already transfered them, its too late. Just have to accept it. I would just send in your American transcript and see if they ask for the other one at first though.

Even if it DOESN'T mention those transfer credits on your undergrad transcript, you would still need to submit to LSAC all of your undergrad grades - whether taken in high school, out of the country, etc etc etc. Unless you feel like taking a risk and possibly failing the character and fitness portion of the bar exam.

To the OP, because your transcripts are international, they might not count towards your final GPA. Usually this occurs if the grading systems are vastly different, and they aren't able to convert it to a 4.0 scale. Canadian schools (while the curve sometimes varies from a typical American curve) are normally easy to fit onto a 4.0 scale and thus will usually count towards your GPA. Some European and Asian scales are quite different and LSAC often doesn't assign a GPA to transcripts from these countries.

Given your description it sounds like, yes, your transcript will probably be included with your undergrad GPA and hurt you. The only way to be certain is to submit the transcripts to LSAC (and yes, you MUST SUBMIT them to LSAC) and see what they do with them.

[chrisbforever]

I hope they put them as two separate GPA's for the sake of me getting into a decent law school.

[chrisbforever]

Quick bump, a few more replies would help. Thanks.

[chrisbforever]

bump

[baboon309]

I lived on the island of Barbados in the Caribbean for my whole life and attended community college there. My major back then was Computer Science and being a fresh faced youth straight out of high school, I did not take it serious and my grades were really bad. I did about 44 credits of schooling and ended up with a low 2.x GPA.

I moved to the United States at the age of 21, worked for a year and transferred my credits to an American university. I did 3 years of University with a Political Science major and a History minor and did much better as it is something I genuinely enjoyed, my GPA upon graduating this past December is 3.4. I am a much more serious student now and dream about going to law school, however, I am afraid that my old grades from community college overseas is going to come back to haunt me. Can someone tell me how my community college grades are going to factor into my law school application. Do they make it into one lumped GPA or would they consider the overseas GPA and American GPA two separate entities.

Furthermore, won't the overseas credits be looked "down" upon in a sense because it is not an American school so the quality of the work accomplished overseas can't be judged fairly? I'm hoping that my grades overseas does not profoundly hurt me with being accepted into law school.

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

If you did more than a year outside of the states, then u have to send in your transcript.
However, the only gpa that will show on your LSDAS is the one you obtained in the US only.
Most ppl here dont know a shit about this process, if you wanna know anything, just PM me