170 LSAT Bad Undergrad Coursework Forum

[KF18]

Curious how likely my chances are of getting into a good law school. The one's I'm planning on applying to for fall 2018 are Berkeley, UPenn, UCLA, Gould, BC, GW.

LSAT practice tests are hovering around 169/170 and have pretty much plateaued
GPA is 3.48 HOWEVER, I went to an unranked private university, so not good (but free), and the way they calculate GPA is if you retake a class you got an F in the new grade replaces the F, so although my GPA looks ok my transcript is extremely volatile. Essentially, each term I either got straight As or withdrew from every course or got straight Fs. Only in my last 3 semesters did it even out and I got straight As for all of them. so volatile transcript from a bad school.

I am planning on submitting a grades addendum. Here's the deal simply: I started going to therapy for severe prolonged child sexual abuse and physical abuse, was diagnosed with ptsd and depression and started treatment. A couple months later my mood and grades stabilized and I started succeeding consistently.

However, because I waited so long and only had a year and half of consistency, I'm afraid law schools will judge my stamina as very low and not accept me. So basically I chose schools where my LSAT was about the 75th percentile mark or higher while my GPA was more like the 25th percentile or lower for some of them (in range for a couple). I'm just not sure if I should lower my expectations or if I can count on my LSAT to carry me, or is there something else I can do to be more appealing.

Any advice much appreciated

[cavalier1138]

You need to have an actual LSAT and an actual LSAC GPA for anyone to give you something remotely resembling a decent answer.

[guynourmin]

you should figure out what your LSDAS GPA is. from what you've described, it's probably a lot lower than a 3.48. You also need to actually take the LSAT, and then you can just enter everything into mylsn and get your answer!

[goldenbear2020]

LSAC calculates your GPA using all letter grades that appear on your transcript, regardless of how your UG counts them. So for classes that you got an F and then another grade, both letter grades will be counted in the GPA (as if they were separate classes). So your LSAC GPA is most likely much lower than 3.48 (and possibly below a 3.0 with many F's).