Number of acceptable P/NP courses. Forum

JCDante · Post by **JCDante** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 3:14 pm

Is there such a thing? I've read a couple topics on this, and it just felt like a lot of guessing. But has anybody posted about being accepted within the T14 with a lot of P's, or conversely, that they might have been rejected from some schools precisely because of too many P's?

It seems to me that because law school is purely a GPA/LSAT numbers game (aside from the holistic Berkeley and Yale), P grades shouldn't affect one's chances. And I've noticed this on Berkeley's website, but it's pretty vague.

"Although you may take some courses P/NP, you should realize that the Credential Assembly Service (CAS) converts a NP to an "F" and calculates it into your GPA as a zero. The "P" is given no value and is not factored into the GPA. Therefore, if you are considering applying to law school, be selective when using the P/NP grading option. Whenever possible, choose courses that engage your interests and take them for letter grades."

Very vague. No precise number is mentioned. No hint to any specific number of P's penalizing someone in admissions.

I ask because I have 3 P's so far on my college record (plus one more, but it was for a 1-unit "for fun" class that you couldn't take for a letter grade anyway). I am considering to take one more class P/NP, but wondering if that might be seen as successive. The consensus on TLS seems to be that 2 to 3 classes are fine and no more, but that doesn't appear indicative of how admissions actually sees it.

If it means anything, those 3 P's were at a school with 15 week semesters, whereas this final P will be at a school with 10 week quarters. I am taking the class to satisfy a diversity requirement at my college. I will be finishing my third year at a highly ranked public university, and so far have a GPA in the lower 3.9s. My record so far is all A's, although one A- and one B. I also might want to take one or two more or those 1-unit, for fun courses in the future. Planning to take the October LSAT, and likely the December one too.