Sorry I'm late to the party. Someone must have shot down the raven bringing the message to my keep in West-Texas-oros.stego wrote:SPerez wrote:call-in
As for OP, I don't think starting over is completely out of the question. Every year we get a few applicants that have flunked out of law school previously. It's definitely going to be a hurdle to overcome in your essay or addendum, though. All the stuff we look at is to try and predict if you'll make it in law school. When we see an applicant who has done poorly/flunked out of law school already, even having above median numbers might not be enough because, hey, whatever their numbers were that didn't translate to performance in the classroom. Your benefit will be that you can point to (hopefully) better-to-very good performance in the second semester. You might even try to secure a letter of recommendation now while memories are fresh, even if you won't apply for a few years. (The letters will just stay on file in your LSAC account.)
In your case, it sounds like you certainly had multiple issues that I think people would find "believable" that they would have hurt your grades. AdComs will certainly be understanding of life events that impact performance. How you write it will be important. I've read a few of these that after a while you're just like, man, this guy's either the unluckiest guy in the world or he's being a drama queen.
Let go of all that stuff about your scholarship. Why you didn't make the grade had nothing to do with any of the things you mentioned. Personally, I think all the things you mentioned are largely rumor and myth. I don't think there's any such thing as section stacking. What I think DOES happen is in schools where 75%-100% of students get scholarships, yeah, most of the people in EVERY section have scholarships. It's been several years that schools have to report the number of students who lose their scholarships so it's easy to find a school where large numbers of people lose their scholarships. (I suspect it actually caused a lot of schools to change their policies to remove their grade stips altogether.)
Maybe it happened before that, but I think it's more a case of stories starting with "Well, "everyone" I know.." - read: my 3 friends - "that had a scholarship was in that section." A few years ago a student here at Tech went to the Dean because their "survey" of students showed that their section had all the big scholarship students and was therefore unfairly more difficult than the other sections. I do the sections here, and I responded with the actual stats showing the median LSAT/GPAs for all the sections were virtually identical and, further, that two of the other 3 sections actually had more scholarship recipients and higher average scholarship amounts than theirs. It may sound like I'm just siding with "management" on this, but I am 99% certain that no professor was told to grade your section harder than the others.
I will say, though, that I think any school who has a GPA requirement for scholarship renewal should include where that falls on their grading curve in the same sentence (or at the very least in any attached rules and regs). That's just my personal opinion.
Don't take the GMAT until you research JD/MBA programs at schools you want to apply. If I'm not mistaken, most programs will accept your LSAT in lieu of the GMAT.
Finally, I will close with some advice for the lurkers or anyone else who might struggle their first semester or, more importantly, might have a friend that struggles. DON'T WAIT TO ASK FOR HELP! Seriously, talk to someone. Dean of students, your favorite professor, the admissions office, career services, anyone. Every year we have people that do horrible their first semester or year, and it's only when we have their academic probation or dismissal meetings we find out they had all sorts of bad things going on in their lives. At that point, it's too late. So for example, in your case, if things were that bad and it looked like your grades were going to suck, I probably would have counseled you on withdrawing and taking a Leave of Absence. Sure, it would still have been a semester of money down the drain, but you wouldn't have had any grades on your transcripts. You could have started again next fall with a clean slate or opted to withdraw like you did, only after having time to think about things once you got your health back, settled your financial situation, etc.
Dean Perez
