Post
by 88rabbits » Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:01 am
I'm an international applicant this year who completed undergrad in a commonwealth country (but not the UK), so i know a little about this. LSAC will take your grades of all your classes, even if they don't count in your institution/country. But as an international applicant, you will not receive a LSAC GPA. Instead, LSAC generates a report for international transcripts where they will place the overall quality of your transcript within one of 4 categories (Superior, above average, average, below average). They will also give you a "grade average", which for me was a letter grade of your transcript (for instance, if by there calculation you have an average of 'B' through a your courses, this will be marked with just a letter 'B'). Depending on whether your institution publishes class ranks or other GPA figures on their official transcripts, these might also be included in the LSAC report (my institution didn't so these were all left blank.)
Basically, you will NOT be given an LSAC GPA, and a lot of it will depend on the quality of your transcript as determined by LSAC. There is NO way around this, and they will count whatever courses they want (which means they will count ALL of your undergrad courses). Also be aware that your degree should be equivalent to a 4 year undergrad in the US (some commonwealth countries have 3 year undergrads).
LSAC will send this report with a copy of your transcript to the law schools which you apply to. But I dont know whether the law schools actually go through your transcript closely. I'm pretty sure many law schools will primarily work off the report generated by LSAC though. The thing is, with no LSAC GPA, this could either help or hurt you. If you have a really super duper high GPA, you still just get grouped in with everyone else in "Superior". But basically, as with US undergrad students, maintain a high GPA, get a high LSAT, have some significant softs... ESPECIALLY for Stanford.
Anyways, good luck. If you need any help, this is a good place for it. Also, PM me if you want more details on my application process/details