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I am a US permanent resident (with foreign citizenship) who did UG in my home country followed by master's in US. I have lived and worked in US for more than a decade.

Will I be seen as an international (from diversity point of view) or a urm? Registering on lsac.org or CAS for transcript translation asks me to specify whether I want my ethnicity to be reported to LSs. Does reporting ethnicity help internationals and can I change this option from what I filled in during registration of account at lsac.org?

Reading from some posts on this forum, it seems transcript evaluation for foreign UG sometimes produces unexpected results. My ug, a foreign institution that is listed on the CAS foreign ug list, grades on a tougher curve than the US institutes.

Is there any way I can find out in advance the manner in which CAS will handle my UG transcript and thus the evaluation it would provide should I have it sent?

thank you.

You will not be seen as a URM. You will not get the URM bump that people talk about in these forums. Law schools do like diversity, but that will only help you a very little.

You should report your ethnicity, but schools will work it out anyway.

The most important difference between domestic applicants and international students is that international students are not given GPAs by LSAC. Instead, their transcripts are given one of four evaluations (superior; above average; average; below average). Yale, Stanford, and Harvard generally only consider "superior" evaluations, but an "above average" should be fine for the rest of the top 14 schools.

Without a GPA, though, your LSAT score will be even more important than it would be for US applicants (and it's very important to them), and BY FAR the most important part of your application. Since your UG degree was so long ago, it will be given less weight than it would be for someone who graduated recently, and I strongly suspect that your MA grades wil be given some weight, since they are more recent, and the best indication of how you will perform at a US university.

jmjm wrote:Is there any way I can find out in advance the manner in which CAS will handle my UG transcript and thus the evaluation it would provide should I have it sent?

No. The evaluation depends on a large number of factors, and a degree of randomness. The only way to know is to send your transcript.

Also, schools will like that you are a permanent resident, since it means that you have access to student loan money.

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jmjm wrote:Is there any usual gpa cutoff for which people of certain countries or certain majors (engineering, for example) get "superior" classification? Does one have to pay for CAS for transcript evaluation?

It depends entirely on the country, and with a handful of exceptions (e.g. the U.K.), the sample size on this board is too small to help much

Yes, you need to pay for a transcript evaluation (at least, for any decent school)