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this blogger says something that defies what I've read from the amalgamation of TLS wisdom

http://theyuppieattorney.blogspot.com/2 ... rt-ii.html

"an MBA, MS, or MA has gotten people into a good Law School with a bad undergraduate GPA"



For the record, my GPA (non LSDAS GPA) is 3.5x and my graduate MS degree is 3.9x (non LSDAS GPA). Assuming I score, 17x on LSAT, how much weight is given to the graduate GPA?

None

From what I have read in interviews with admissions committee members, it's not all that important. However a 3.5 is not terrible and getting a 170+ will help you get into splitter-friendly schools.

The blogger's reasoning seems flawed to me. The sentence, "an MBA, MS, or MA has gotten people into a good Law School with a bad undergraduate GPA", should probably be rewritten as, "an MBA, MS, or MA can get into a good Law School with a bad undergraduate GPA". Unless the blogger has some proof of the causal link, and also pins down the meaning of "good law school" and "bad undergraduate GPA", I don't see how this bucks the conventional wisdom that LSAT+UGPA are it.

Also, I think the implication that the UGPA is the single most important factor in LS admissions is crap. It flies in the face of the logic of having a standardized test: to level the playing field between professors, majors, and schools which all have different grading practices, and to provide to the reviewer a standard picture of how the applicant may perform.

But no matter what anyone here says, look at the numbers. Schools routinely reject people with good numbers, and admit people with poorer numbers. Subjective factors must play some role in this.

Are the undergraduate courses that are not counted toward an undergraduate degree (but counted as a prereq for grad school) considered in the LSDAS GPA?

joebloe wrote:The blogger's reasoning seems flawed to me. The sentence, "an MBA, MS, or MA has gotten people into a good Law School with a bad undergraduate GPA", should probably be rewritten as, "an MBA, MS, or MA can get into a good Law School with a bad undergraduate GPA". Unless the blogger has some proof of the causal link, and also pins down the meaning of "good law school" and "bad undergraduate GPA", I don't see how this bucks the conventional wisdom that LSAT+UGPA are it.

Also, I think the implication that the UGPA is the single most important factor in LS admissions is crap. It flies in the face of the logic of having a standardized test: to level the playing field between professors, majors, and schools which all have different grading practices, and to provide to the reviewer a standard picture of how the applicant may perform.

But no matter what anyone here says, look at the numbers. Schools routinely reject people with good numbers, and admit people with poorer numbers. Subjective factors must play some role in this.

MS is the degree, not the person.

HarlandBassett wrote:

joebloe wrote:The blogger's reasoning seems flawed to me. The sentence, "an MBA, MS, or MA has gotten people into a good Law School with a bad undergraduate GPA", should probably be rewritten as, "an MBA, MS, or MA can get into a good Law School with a bad undergraduate GPA". Unless the blogger has some proof of the causal link, and also pins down the meaning of "good law school" and "bad undergraduate GPA", I don't see how this bucks the conventional wisdom that LSAT+UGPA are it.

Also, I think the implication that the UGPA is the single most important factor in LS admissions is crap. It flies in the face of the logic of having a standardized test: to level the playing field between professors, majors, and schools which all have different grading practices, and to provide to the reviewer a standard picture of how the applicant may perform.

But no matter what anyone here says, look at the numbers. Schools routinely reject people with good numbers, and admit people with poorer numbers. Subjective factors must play some role in this.

MS is the degree, not the person.

Duh, Winning!

FWIW, I have a 3.9x grad, a 3.59 undergrad, and a 176 LSAT - so basically similar to the situation you're envisioning. My cycle's not done, but from everything I've heard and from my experiences thus far, I don't feel like my grad GPA is doing much to help me out. This is where I'm at so far:

In: NYU, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown
Hold: Columbia
Waitlisted: UVa (though they seem to be waitlisting just about everyone this year)
Still waiting on: Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Michigan, Penn, Cornell

So no rejections thus far, but no positive deviations from what would be predicted by LSP/the collective TLS wisdom. If anything, my results at UVa and Columbia are slightly worse than one might expect.

amorfati wrote:FWIW, I have a 3.9x grad, a 3.59 undergrad, and a 176 LSAT - so basically similar to the situation you're envisioning. My cycle's not done, but from everything I've heard and from my experiences thus far, I don't feel like my grad GPA is doing much to help me out. This is where I'm at so far:

In: NYU, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown
Hold: Columbia
Waitlisted: UVa (though they seem to be waitlisting just about everyone this year)
Still waiting on: Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Michigan, Penn, Cornell

So no rejections thus far, but no positive deviations from what would be predicted by LSP/the collective TLS wisdom. If anything, my results at UVa and Columbia are slightly worse than one might expect.

Thanks . NYU is my target.

HarlandBassett wrote:

joebloe wrote:The blogger's reasoning seems flawed to me. The sentence, "an MBA, MS, or MA has gotten people into a good Law School with a bad undergraduate GPA", should probably be rewritten as, "an MBA, MS, or MA can get into a good Law School with a bad undergraduate GPA". Unless the blogger has some proof of the causal link, and also pins down the meaning of "good law school" and "bad undergraduate GPA", I don't see how this bucks the conventional wisdom that LSAT+UGPA are it.

Also, I think the implication that the UGPA is the single most important factor in LS admissions is crap. It flies in the face of the logic of having a standardized test: to level the playing field between professors, majors, and schools which all have different grading practices, and to provide to the reviewer a standard picture of how the applicant may perform.

But no matter what anyone here says, look at the numbers. Schools routinely reject people with good numbers, and admit people with poorer numbers. Subjective factors must play some role in this.

MS is the degree, not the person.

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. My intent was to draw attention to the fact that the wording implied a causal link to the having of an MBA/MS/MA to getting into LS, rather than just indicating a correlation. Basic LR flaw.

Last cycle I had a ~3.8 grad school gpa and a 3.0 ugpa with a 175 lsat. There were schools outside the t30 that offered me no scholly money while offering it to kids with 3.5 ugpa and 160 lsats. I was rejected at Columbia, Chicago and UVA.