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I took 17 credits this summer in order to boost my GPA as much as possible. I 4.0ed all of them and now because of a terrible freshman year I am at a 3.45. Will law schools see my fall grades? I haven't looked into the whole LSAC thing yet so i'm not sure how it works. Can I submit further grades to them after my initial submission?
I'm graduating early and this fall will be my final semester.

Thanks!

Yes, you send your most recent transcript at the time you apply and then you send it again if your transcript gets updated during the admissions process

Depends on when during the cycle you apply. But you can definitely send them an updated transcript if you're still under review when those grades go final.

I'm in the same boat: took summer courses to boost GPA, and also want my fall grades to show before LSAC calculates my GPA.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is going to happen. My college doesn't release fall grades until the end of January (!!!) and I want to submit all of my applications by mid-October. I think that means doing the CAS thing by mid-October (but someone correct me if I'm wrong)...

I have called LSAC several times with questions like this, and I keep getting different answers, so at this point I'm trusting random posts on online forums over calling LSAC

to echo what was said above, any school that does not do rolling admissions will wait until they have your more recent transcripts. So depending on what your target schools are, this is either an important consideration or not something worth worrying about. Most T14s wouldn't evaluate you before January unless you were not close enough to medians.

If you're that worried about it you can send admissions offices an email, with your LSAC # asking them to hold on reviewing your file until they receive your fall grades, since you are expecting a significant change in your GPA. Just keep it brief.