Strategy for mitigating sub-3.0 gpa Forum

[osgiliath]

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[Traynor Brah]

The best way to mitigate a really bad undergraduate GPA is to pick a career path where your undergraduate GPA isn't one of the fundamental determinants of your chances to succeed.

Law is not one of those career paths. All is not lost if you can still crush the LSAT, but school is going to be just expensive as hell.

[KMart]

Gaining some work experience and distancing yourself from the GPA, time wise, will help. Other than that you need to really do well on the LSAT.

[CardozoLaw09]

This is just what I would do so feel free to ignore my suggestion completely, but for your LORs, I would try to get at least one from a professor of a class that you did really well in instead of getting them both from supervisors.

[Wildcard]

...

[Traynor Brah]

175+ LSAT, go where you can. Then work your ass off as an L1 and transfer to a better school, hopefully where you'd have gone if you had a better UG GPA.

[Mack.Hambleton]

175+ LSAT, go where you can. Then work your ass off as an L1 and transfer to a better school, hopefully where you'd have gone if you had a better UG GPA.

you're a bad poster and should feel bad

[KMart]

175+ LSAT, go where you can. Then work your ass off as an L1 and transfer to a better school, hopefully where you'd have gone if you had a better UG GPA.

Do not listen to this, OP or anyone in the future. Do not go to a law school you do not feel comfortable graduating from.

[Wildcard]

Well OK then

[Clearly]

Do NOT have your LORs bring up how bad your GPA is. Have you actually through that through?

[ChemEng1642]

Strategy for Mitigating low GPA

1) Kill the LSAT - like really kill it. Try to get a 175+ if possible

2) Get some work experience - to separate yourself from your grades and to get something else that will make you look like a better candidate. Looks like you're already doing this. I will note though that a lot of schools require (or strongly prefer) academic LORs if you're 1-2 years out of school, so either get some good academic LORs or keep working for a few more years so it is reasonable for you to only get LORs from supervisors

3) This one isn't a strategy but the award thing is really only a line on your resume, unless you want to put it in your personal statement. You can describe it there but don't actually attach the award...

[Traynor Brah]

Well OK then

please do more reading and less posting for about a year K thanks

[Wildcard]

Well OK then

please do more reading and less posting for about a year K thanks

Well if you don't mind enlightening me more quickly... what's the big deal with transferring schools? Obviously you wouldn't even start out anywhere you wouldn't be ok with graduating at if it doesn't work, but isn't it still something you can do to get to a better school you can't get to as a 1L?

[Clearly]

Well OK then

please do more reading and less posting for about a year K thanks

Well if you don't mind enlightening me more quickly... what's the big deal with transferring schools? Obviously you wouldn't even start out anywhere you wouldn't be ok with graduating at if it doesn't work, but isn't it still something you can do to get to a better school you can't get to as a L1?

[Clearly]

Well OK then

please do more reading and less posting for about a year K thanks

Well if you don't mind enlightening me more quickly... what's the big deal with transferring schools? Obviously you wouldn't even start out anywhere you wouldn't be ok with graduating at if it doesn't work, but isn't it still something you can do to get to a better school you can't get to as a L1?

He's quite right though. We're talking about peoples lives here, try not to give advice if you don't know whats going on, someone might actually listen to you.

Very few people get the chance to transfer. To go anywhere worth going you're going to need to be top 10%, which statisticians tell me means you have roughly a 90% chance of failure. When you're playing with hundreds of thousands in non-discharge debt, those are really dumb odds to take.

[landshoes]

That strategy sucks because

--It depends on luck:

you could get the flu; have a stacked section; have a parent die; get the one prof who curves like an asshole; or any number of things that make your grades unreflective of your relative knowledge of the material and skill at taking exams


--it depends on you being good at law school exams

your history in school, frankly, sucks, and you might just not be great at school or sufficiently motivated to work hard and do well; you might be bad specifically at law school exams; you might figure them out but not early enough to get the grades you need to transfer


--it depends on you being willing to pay full price at your target school

two years of full tuition and living expenses is at least $120k (easily, that is a low estimate for a low COL area, if you're talking columbia? LOL) and paying that back sucks tremendously.


Then, depending on what you want to do:


--biglaw and similar hiring depends on your grades at your original school and your resume being good enough to impress someone at your target school's OCI

hiring partners don't have any record of your grades at your new school--your resume is all your original school. so the hiring boost depends on you having done so well at your original school that you can impress the type of employers who wouldn't have already hired you from your original school. or else you're throwing away $120k+ or more for nothing. oops



--PI hiring might, might make this justifiable if (and this is a big if) you transfer to a school where they have a decent LRAP, but if you don't and you took out a ton of loans at a school with a shitty LRAP? oops

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Whenever I see someone who sucks at school but who is great at their job start considering law school, I fucking die inside. LAW SCHOOL IS can be GOOD FOR PEOPLE WHO SUCK AT THEIR JOBS / HAVE SHIT JOBS WITH NO POTENTIAL / CAN'T GET A JOB. If you already have a job you like, are good at, are winning AWARDS at, supervisors who like you, and you're contributing meaningfully to the world, why the fuck would you throw all that away for a small chance you'll do pretty okay as a lawyer? Go get an MBA or something if you absolutely must, but law? Just no.