Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying? Forum

(Applications Advice, Letters of Recommendation . . . )
Post Reply
booknerd

New
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2017 11:39 am

Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?

Post by booknerd » Sat Jun 02, 2018 8:36 am

I just finished my sophomore year of undergrad and my GPA is a dismal 3.37. I calculated it, and I can probably only get my GPA up to like 3.45 by the time I'm applying to law schools. I've talked to practicing attorneys and they say that it is very important for one's law career to go to a top 10-14 law school. Would I have any chance at getting in? I have not taken the LSAT yet, but I do plan to study for it extremely hard if I have a chance at getting in with my GPA. I'm not sure if law schools would care about this, but I am a black male and this will be my second year doing a writing intensive political research internship at a top university and I will probably do the internship again next summer. Do I stand any chance of getting into a good law school or should I just not bother to take the LSAT and apply?

Justtrying2help

Bronze
Posts: 116
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2016 3:57 pm

Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?

Post by Justtrying2help » Sat Jun 02, 2018 2:05 pm

A black male with a 3.5+ gpa and a 160+ lsat has a legitimate shot at most if not all of the t-14 schools. Give yourself the best chance to accomplish your goals. Take easy college classes and enroll in a lsat prep class like 7sage. Internships are cool for experience but give you very little to no benefit in the admissions process. If you can't score roughly a 160 on the lsat (+ or - a couple of points), then you'll have an uphill fight with your gpa to crack the t-14.

chad2

New
Posts: 28
Joined: Mon May 21, 2018 1:36 pm

Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?

Post by chad2 » Sat Jun 02, 2018 10:42 pm

Justtrying2help wrote:A black male with a 3.5+ gpa and a 160+ lsat has a legitimate shot at most if not all of the t-14 schools. Give yourself the best chance to accomplish your goals. Take easy college classes and enroll in a lsat prep class like 7sage. Internships are cool for experience but give you very little to no benefit in the admissions process. If you can't score roughly a 160 on the lsat (+ or - a couple of points), then you'll have an uphill fight with your gpa to crack the t-14.
Frankly speaking I would expect a 160 and 3.5 to maaaaybe get you into a lower T14, but I would honestly say he should strive for 170+ if at all feasible. With a score like that and a ~3.5 GPA I'd expect you to have some success at at least a few of the T14. Could be misremembering the LSAT medians as being higher than they are for some of the lower T14, though.

ExperssioUnius

Bronze
Posts: 101
Joined: Sat Jan 06, 2018 12:04 am

Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?

Post by ExperssioUnius » Sat Jun 02, 2018 11:00 pm

You probably will need a bit more than a 160 to have a seriously competitive application for T-14. With a 160, a school might give you an offer but I wouldn't count on it. A 165-170 with a 3.45-3.55 will give you a strong chance at landing a T-14 school.

That said, what is the cause of your low GPA? Getting into a T-14 law school, especially one at the bottom end of the T-14. is only part of the path to big law. Put another way, if your 3.37 GPA is indicative of your of exam taking skills and how you will perform in law school, getting into a school like NW/Duke/Cornell/Georgetown may not result in the career you are looking for if you end up in the bottom 25% of your class.

Wipfelder

Silver
Posts: 778
Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2014 3:26 am

Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?

Post by Wipfelder » Sat Jun 02, 2018 11:08 pm

ExperssioUnius wrote:You probably will need a bit more than a 160 to have a seriously competitive application for T-14. With a 160, a school might give you an offer but I wouldn't count on it. A 165-170 with a 3.45-3.55 will give you a strong chance at landing a T-14 school.

That said, what is the cause of your low GPA? Getting into a T-14 law school, especially one at the bottom end of the T-14. is only part of the path to big law. Put another way, if your 3.37 GPA is indicative of your of exam taking skills and how you will perform in law school, getting into a school like NW/Duke/Cornell/Georgetown may not result in the career you are looking for if you end up in the bottom 25% of your class.
WTF is wrong with you?

Want to continue reading?

Register now to search topics and post comments!

Absolutely FREE!


sparkytrainer

Silver
Posts: 807
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2015 12:32 am

Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?

Post by sparkytrainer » Sat Jun 02, 2018 11:25 pm

Wipfelder wrote:
ExperssioUnius wrote:You probably will need a bit more than a 160 to have a seriously competitive application for T-14. With a 160, a school might give you an offer but I wouldn't count on it. A 165-170 with a 3.45-3.55 will give you a strong chance at landing a T-14 school.

That said, what is the cause of your low GPA? Getting into a T-14 law school, especially one at the bottom end of the T-14. is only part of the path to big law. Put another way, if your 3.37 GPA is indicative of your of exam taking skills and how you will perform in law school, getting into a school like NW/Duke/Cornell/Georgetown may not result in the career you are looking for if you end up in the bottom 25% of your class.
WTF is wrong with you?
Hes a troll. He gives objectively bad advice everywhere. For instance, Duke has the second highest percentage of biglaw and fed clerkships in the country, only a few hundredths of a percentage point behind Columbia. 85% of Duke gets biglaw or fed clerkships. A bottom 25% AA Male at Duke will easily get biglaw. Maybe not in a super competitive city, but certainly NY.

historyminor

New
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2007 9:38 pm

Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?

Post by historyminor » Fri Jun 15, 2018 1:23 pm

If it's important to you to go to law school, I'd do the following:

(1) Don't apply until after your senior year, which will give you more time to increase your GPA. The brother of a good friend of mine took my advice to wait an additional year to improve his numbers, and got into a top-5 where he's been pretty successful.
(2) Try to do a summer internship at a law firm - even a small firm in your hometown - to get an idea of whether you're really interested in doing what attorneys do.
(3) Use your year after college to apply to law school, but to also try out something else that you might want to do. At the end of that year, you'll have a better sense of whether it's a good idea to go to law school, or to pursue another dream for a while. Alternatively, you could work as a legal assistant or a paralegal for a year, and if you really hate it, then you'll know not to go to law school.

You can always go to law school later, but once you're there and you have the debt, you can't go back and redo the time before law school.

Want to continue reading?

Register for access!

Did I mention it was FREE ?


Post Reply

Return to “Law School Admissions Forum”