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Hello everyone, I just had a quick question about the significance of the graduation date for undergraduate school in terms of law school applications. This has been eating away at me so much the past couple of days that I made an account just to ask this question.

I was originally supposed to graduate from my college last May, however, they said I neglected to fill out one of the required forms and although I attended the ceremony and was expecting my degree in the mail in August, it never came. It was annoying, but my fault, so oh well. So I applied again for the fall.

Although I was initially approved for graduation, a last-minute review of my transcript by the college revealed that I apparently didn't have the 120 required credits...I had 119. I was sent a rejection letter in the beginning of December, really hampering any last minute attempts at satiating the one credit. My department head refused to sign off on the credit or opt for a progam where I perform a certain task to recieve the one credit. I scheduled a last minute CLEP exam but now they say the score report won't be in until after the holidays.

So now that my pointless story is over I just wanted to know this. In applying for law schools this year after I get my December LSAT score, will having the extra year of "schooling" and a graduation date of May 2014 affect my chances at all of getting into law schools? By the time I apply for law schools, the credits obtained from the CLEP exam should already be in my transcript, thus showing the required credits, I just won't have my physical degree until May.

I was curious if I should simply explain the situation in my resume or some other part of the application process, or just leave it alone and apply regardless. Any answers would be greatly appreciated.

I'll leave it to more knowledgeable users to decide if you need to attach an addenda explain it (I lean towards not unless you can make it much more clear and concise than you have here).


That said, it will have little to no impact on admissions.

An addendum seems appropriate here. It looks like your transcripts will be normal up until the spring but then you'll randomly have one CLEP credit in a year of no classes with a graduation date a year late. I doubt it's going to hurt you, but I wouldn't let adcoms see the gap and imagine for themselves what happened because you didn't tell them. I agree with philly though that you'll need to explain it more cleanly in an addendum.

Addendum. But it probably shouldn't be more than 3-4 sentences.

Thanks a lot for the replies to my question guys, it's put my mind at ease. Now I can enjoy the holidays without worrying as much.