Native American Female
161 LSAT, considering retake in December
My LSDAS GPA is 2.6, mostly due to a horrendous first 3 years of school when I was sick very often and misdiagnosed several times. Stayed in school during that time primarily because needed to be able to remain on parents insurance which required me to maintain full-time student status. In 2005, finally got an accurate diagnosis, withdrew from school to work and found job with insurance benefits back near hometown. Took five years off to focus on getting healthy and worked full-time on various campaigns and for the DNC during that time. Went back after 5 year absence and graduated with 3.93 GPA from my graduating institution and have a 4.0 in my current masters program (yes I know masters counts for basically nothing)
Obviously I have a HUGE upward trend in GPA and have clearly made a 180 from initial grades but does anyone if I put enough distance between old and new GPA that schools are going to look at the new GPA a little more? Should I postpone applying by 1 year and try to improve my score significantly since I know that with finals in my grad program coming up I can't really put in the time required to get a good 5-7 point boost.
I'm in Missouri and would like to practice law eventually in and around here so I'm not looking at wanting a T14 to get Big Law after school or anything even in that realm. Would like to go into public interest law and have looked at some schools around the midwest such as:
Mizzou
St Louis U.
WUSTL (would be TOP, REACH school)
Arkansas
Oklahoma
UMKC
Kansas
I have an LSAC full fee waiver so because of that I have fee waivers to nearly all of these. Any recommendation on realistically where I might have a shot or additions to this list of schools that I should make? Just no clue how schools will look at my stupid GPA!!! Thanks in advance!
