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Hey everyone, forgive me if I am being redundant.

I will be getting my MS this fall -- and just returned from living in Paris for a while. My undergraduate GPA was less than desirable -- I graduated cum laude. I basically BSed my 4 years of undergrad and come out with nominal grades and two degrees.

Realistically, how does have a M.S. help me, if at all?

Thanks in advance!

I know someone who's in a similar situation, but they graduated early and are under a football scholarship and did it for the hell of it.

I know a a lot of practicing lawyers, and they've all told me that it's pretty much irrelevant. Unless that graduate degree was related to some professional work that you've done (i.e. accounting and MPA, finance and MBA) and you want to pursue a degree in that area, and as a result, you want to practice law in a related field, then there isn't much utility in it.

Employers are almost exclusively concerned with things related to law school (save for professional work experience), so your best bet is to focus for that.

Personally, I think my friend's doing it because he missed this year applications and didn't have time to study for LSATs.

If I were you, I'd worry about getting the best LSAT score you can get because with a good GPA and LSAT as a URM, you're in line for good $$$.

El Principe wrote:I know someone who's in a similar situation, but they graduated early and are under a football scholarship and did it for the hell of it.

I know a a lot of practicing lawyers, and they've all told me that it's pretty much irrelevant. Unless that graduate degree was related to some professional work that you've done (i.e. accounting and MPA, finance and MBA) and you want to pursue a degree in that area, and as a result, you want to practice law in a related field, then there isn't much utility in it.

Employers are almost exclusively concerned with things related to law school (save for professional work experience), so your best bet is to focus for that.

Personally, I think my friend's doing it because he missed this year applications and didn't have time to study for LSATs.

If I were you, I'd worry about getting the best LSAT score you can get because with a good GPA and LSAT as a URM, you're in line for good $$$.

That sounds about right. Unfortunately, I am almost done my MS, I should have clarified. I graduate in December. Its related to some type of professional work, most of my classmates were practicing attorneys.

Thanks El Principle!

Generally speaking, for law school admissions, a grad degree really doesn't matter - it only comes into play when you're being compared with a candidate who has the same numbers that you have; there, the grad degree should give you a little edge over a grad-degree-less person (depending on their softs), but it won't count as any kind of LSAT/GPA boost. I'm not a URM so I don't know whether that makes any difference, but I would think URM status on its own will be the crucial thing, not the grad degree. (Grad GPAs, for instance, don't count toward the USNWR rankings, so schools don't care and a brilliant grad GPA can't make up for a less brilliant UG GPA.)

Once you're in law school, like El Principe said, it can be helpful for getting jobs if it's relevant to an area of law in which you want to practice. For instance, if you want to do IP law, a technical/scientific background is extremely valuable. But otherwise it probably won't mean much.

Gotcha, thanks A. Nony Mouse!

I'm an URM with a Masters Degree (3.8 in my masters program) and an LSAC-calculated sub-3.0 GPA.

Overall, I don't believe it really helped me out in getting accepted to schools. However, i think it was a major factor in getting me waitlisted to schools where I typically would have been straight up rejected based on my ugrad GPA and LSAT.

SouthernSoul wrote:I'm an URM with a Masters Degree (3.8 in my masters program) and an LSAC-calculated sub-3.0 GPA.

Overall, I don't believe it really helped me out in getting accepted to schools. However, i think it was a major factor in getting me waitlisted to schools where I typically would have been straight up rejected based on my ugrad GPA and LSAT.

Thats good enough for me! Thanks!