Got a D in a course Forum

[A. Nony Mouse]

I must just know very different professors from you, then.

Edit: or all the students were bad at people. But in particular it was the spewing law school that the OP should avoid.

[ihenry]

To be fair, OP would almost definitely pull up the grade if they approached the professor before grades were submitted. Doing extra work would be most useful before grades come out. At the current stage, it could be hard to tell. There's still chance, though.

[TrunksFan1]

Alright, so let's just assume the D can't be removed and I'm stuck with it then. Any more takes on how it could affect legal employment? I'm interviewing for a couple of positions soon, so I'm afraid it could come up and bite me in the bud. Additionally I have a couple of WXs scattered throughout my history. Overall GPA is a 3.54 now, knocked down from a 3.6. I mistakenly typed it in as a 3.53 (not that it will make much of a difference).

[Clearly]

Its not likely going to impact legal employment at all, any more than any other bad grade at least. Are your employers even requesting transcripts?

[Dcc617]

Alright, so let's just assume the D can't be removed and I'm stuck with it then. Any more takes on how it could affect legal employment? I'm interviewing for a couple of positions soon, so I'm afraid it could come up and bite me in the bud. Additionally I have a couple of WXs scattered throughout my history. Overall GPA is a 3.54 now, knocked down from a 3.6. I mistakenly typed it in as a 3.53 (not that it will make much of a difference).

Are you asking if a D in a random undergrad class will impact your legal career after law school? Because that seems like a silly question to me. How old are you?

[banjo]

Any more takes on how it could affect legal employment? I'm interviewing for a couple of positions soon, so I'm afraid it could come up and bite me in the bud.

You're in undergrad right? Do you mean for paralegal-type positions? I'm actually not sure how those work, but it's more likely to get noticed if it's a recent grade on the transcript they're actually reviewing.

Down the line, no problem.

[lymenheimer]

Any more takes on how it could affect legal employment? I'm interviewing for a couple of positions soon, so I'm afraid it could come up and bite me in the bud.

Yea. If you're not careful, that D could get you in the butt. There's not much you can do at this point, just take it lying down.

[jbagelboy]

Any more takes on how it could affect legal employment? I'm interviewing for a couple of positions soon, so I'm afraid it could come up and bite me in the bud.

Yea. If you're not careful, that D could get you in the butt. There's not much you can do at this point, just take it lying down.

On a roll

[jbagelboy]

Did you save a copy of your transcript pre-D? If so, one thing you could do for jobs next year is blast out your resume and undergrad transcript before that D showed up to every job on hour school's hiring website, every employer that's come to campus and left a card, or even just random websites for jobs you want. It's possible they won't ask you to update your transcript and s lot of people don't get grades back until january anyway.

As for law school, yea it's not good, but taking more time off will distance you from a mediocre GPA. Kill the lsat and next semester & you can still get some juicy T14 scholarships.

[totesTheGoat]

Getting a D is an auto-ding. You literally cannot even get consideration for a T1 school or a legal position if you have a D. The computer that receives the applications simply filters your application out and deletes it.

*slides undergrad transcript with F on it under the rug*

[TrunksFan1]

Yes, I meant for legal employment in the interim, not after law school. Exactly, paralegal type positions. Some ask for a transcript some haven't, but then again some have only a 3.3 Gpa requirement, so I exceed that at least.

[TrunksFan1]

the other thing that has been irking me is that I neatly fell into NYU's 25th % Gpa wise, which left everything up to the LSAT, and this knocked me down a notch. Like I said, I can probably get back into the 3.6 range next semester, but we shall see what we see I guess

[landshoes]

Go to your dean of students (or similar) with proof, on paper, of your family situation. Ask to have the grade changed to an incomplete, ask how to approach it with the professor. Approach the professor. Have a decent-to-good essay for that class ready to go. Say you loved the class and just fell down because of the family issue. DO NOT say you need the grade for law school. Make it about your personal desire to finish this excellent learning opportunity, and your respect for the effort that the professor put into the classwork s/he assigned.

Then ask if your grading scale can be changed to Pass / Fail so the prof doesn't have to put any effort into grading your essay, s/he just has to pass you.

To me, what looks bad about this isn't so much the D. It's the lack of communication with the prof/dean of students.

Assuming you don't get it changed (which is bad) then it might affect you, yes. Obsessing about that is going to do absolutely nothing for you. Thinking about something that you refuse to try to change, or can't change, is a huge waste of your time.

[PoopyPants]

I must just know very different professors from you, then.

Edit: or all the students were bad at people. But in particular it was the spewing law school that the OP should avoid.

It just depends. I've had both happen. I took two courses online while on deployment. I had to take my finals at a laundromat in Singapore. Needless to say, the Internet connection was so bad that I couldn't complete the finals (they were in MatLab). One professor offered to let me retake it, put in a complaint to MatLab (which got the system changed), and then changed my grade anyway when I couldn't retake (we got tasked with a special op that put us out of communication for over a week, after grades were due). The other professor basically said "sucks to be you." Luckily, I had an A in that course anyway.

[salander]

It just depends. I've had both happen. I took two courses online while on deployment. I had to take my finals at a laundromat in Singapore. Needless to say, the Internet connection was so bad that I couldn't complete the finals (they were in MatLab). One professor offered to let me retake it, put in a complaint to MatLab (which got the system changed), and then changed my grade anyway when I couldn't retake (we got tasked with a special op that put us out of communication for over a week, after grades were due). The other professor basically said "sucks to be you." Luckily, I had an A in that course anyway.

Do you think the other professor basically said "sucks to be you" because you already had an A in that class?

[PoopyPants]

It just depends. I've had both happen. I took two courses online while on deployment. I had to take my finals at a laundromat in Singapore. Needless to say, the Internet connection was so bad that I couldn't complete the finals (they were in MatLab). One professor offered to let me retake it, put in a complaint to MatLab (which got the system changed), and then changed my grade anyway when I couldn't retake (we got tasked with a special op that put us out of communication for over a week, after grades were due). The other professor basically said "sucks to be you." Luckily, I had an A in that course anyway.

Do you think the other professor basically said "sucks to be you" because you already had an A in that class?

Possibly, but he didn't say as much. My grade only went down to a B+ in the other course.

[ihenry]

It just depends. I've had both happen. I took two courses online while on deployment. I had to take my finals at a laundromat in Singapore. Needless to say, the Internet connection was so bad that I couldn't complete the finals (they were in MatLab). One professor offered to let me retake it, put in a complaint to MatLab (which got the system changed), and then changed my grade anyway when I couldn't retake (we got tasked with a special op that put us out of communication for over a week, after grades were due). The other professor basically said "sucks to be you." Luckily, I had an A in that course anyway.

Do you think the other professor basically said "sucks to be you" because you already had an A in that class?

Possibly, but he didn't say as much. My grade only went down to a B+ in the other course.

I do believe some profs will verbally decline you but secretly they'd do the adjustment. I once neglected the notice that we had to limit our answers to two pages per question and anything beyond that will be left unread -- I saw this half a second before turning in the exam. I went far over that, including unimportant introductions, huge blanks between subquestions, etc. I emailed the prof immediately and he said no, out of "fairness" for others. Turned out that I got an A-, and if the prof truly stood by his words I'd be thankful for a B.

[PoopyPants]

It just depends. I've had both happen. I took two courses online while on deployment. I had to take my finals at a laundromat in Singapore. Needless to say, the Internet connection was so bad that I couldn't complete the finals (they were in MatLab). One professor offered to let me retake it, put in a complaint to MatLab (which got the system changed), and then changed my grade anyway when I couldn't retake (we got tasked with a special op that put us out of communication for over a week, after grades were due). The other professor basically said "sucks to be you." Luckily, I had an A in that course anyway.

Do you think the other professor basically said "sucks to be you" because you already had an A in that class?

Possibly, but he didn't say as much. My grade only went down to a B+ in the other course.

I do believe some profs will verbally decline you but secretly they'd do the adjustment. I once neglected the notice that we had to limit our answers to two pages per question and anything beyond that will be left unread -- I saw this half a second before turning in the exam. I went far over that, including unimportant introductions, huge blanks between subquestions, etc. I emailed the prof immediately and he said no, out of "fairness" for others. Turned out that I got an A-, and if the prof truly stood by his words I'd be thankful for a B.

To be clear, the prof who said "tough shit" didn't do anything, but he didn't really have to. The prof who helped me out a lot said he would.

ETA: I have nothing against the prof. I actually enjoyed the course, and he was always reasonable about the course (since I was taking it on deployment, there were times where I had to turn assignments in late, which he totally understood and didn't dock me any points--I have had professors who couldn't care less about deployments, etc).