Chemistry major Forum

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Turkishking

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Chemistry major

Post by Turkishking » Wed Dec 19, 2018 1:16 am

I am a chemistry major, finishing up the remainder of my chem courses in Fall of 2019. I attend a grande deflating university. I have a 3.3. I do not know anything about law schools, nor do I have any internships with anything associated with politics.

I have
1) 400 hours of hospital volunteering
2) President of 1 clubs
3) 1 year mentoring at risk youth
4) Biology TA
5) Ambassador leader at the hospital

Should I even consider law school? Is my GPA a red flag?

Thanks

QContinuum

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Re: Chemistry major

Post by QContinuum » Wed Dec 19, 2018 12:45 pm

Turkishking wrote:Should I even consider law school?
You should consider law school if and only if you have a burning desire to practice law. If you do have such a desire, your 3.3 won't foreclose you from attending law school - including a T13 - provided you do well on the LSAT, which is entirely possible with enough effort and preparation.

Your softs seem to suggest that, at least at one point, you were targeting med school. What happened?

Bingo_Bongo

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Re: Chemistry major

Post by Bingo_Bongo » Wed Dec 19, 2018 3:52 pm

I believe LSAC actually compiles an academic summary that lets schools know the average GPA at your school and even assigns you a class rank (even if your undergrad doesn't rank). LSAC receives just about every law school applicant's transcripts, so they know what schools inflate/deflate grades. I don't know the specifics about this, I've only heard about it second hand, but maybe somebody else on here can elaborate.

But either way a 3.3 doesn't put you out of the running for most schools. A 3.3 isn't necessarily bad, and LSAT scores tend to be the weightiest admissions factor. Study for the LSAT, get a good score, and top schools are definitely within your reach.

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UVA2B

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Re: Chemistry major

Post by UVA2B » Wed Dec 19, 2018 4:04 pm

Bingo_Bongo wrote:I believe LSAC actually compiles an academic summary that lets schools know the average GPA at your school and even assigns you a class rank (even if your undergrad doesn't rank). LSAC receives just about every law school applicant's transcripts, so they know what schools inflate/deflate grades. I don't know the specifics about this, I've only heard about it second hand, but maybe somebody else on here can elaborate.

But either way a 3.3 doesn't put you out of the running for most schools. A 3.3 isn't necessarily bad, and LSAT scores tend to be the weightiest admissions factor. Study for the LSAT, get a good score, and top schools are definitely within your reach.
This is kind of true, but not quite. LSAC will provide an academic summary of those who have applied to law school from your UG in recent history (pretty sure it's the last 5 years unless that has changed recently), so the best you're getting is a subset of the population that may or may not reflect the overall grading trends of the university as a whole. That doesn't mean it won't reflect some amount of grade inflation/deflation, but context is important in understanding it, and further, it is given less weight because it's not a report of the student body as a whole. It's possible a 3.4 is actually a really strong candidate from a school because LSAC has compiled an average GPA from that school of 3.1. But it's also possible that 3.1 does not completely accurately reflect what the average GPA of that university is, depending on the number of law school applicants it has had and the types of students from those universities who apply to law school. That's not to say there will be some drastic error where only underperforming or over performing students exclusively apply to law school, but it does suggest the academic summary report is of somewhat limited value to an ADCOM who is reading it to provide context for that particular applicant.

I agree that a 3.3 isn't a maker/killer for most schools with the right LSAT, but I think the context that an academic summary provides is of pretty limited value in changing the perception of that GPA when compared to other applicants with better GPAs.

QContinuum

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Re: Chemistry major

Post by QContinuum » Wed Dec 19, 2018 4:41 pm

Bingo_Bongo wrote:But either way a 3.3 doesn't put you out of the running for most schools. A 3.3 isn't necessarily bad, and LSAT scores tend to be the weightiest admissions factor. Study for the LSAT, get a good score, and top schools are definitely within your reach.
To be entirely accurate, it's not so much that LSAT scores are the "weightiest admissions factor," but more that they are about equally as important as GPA. Thus, a low GPA can be compensated for with a high LSAT, and vice versa. The reason TLS emphasizes LSAT score is because, unlike GPA, it's easy to improve one's LSAT score significantly. Schools only look at one's highest LSAT, so having, say, a 157 on the record isn't going to hold someone back if they later retake and get a 175.

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Turkishking

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Re: Chemistry major

Post by Turkishking » Thu Dec 20, 2018 5:02 pm

QContinuum wrote:
Turkishking wrote:Should I even consider law school?
You should consider law school if and only if you have a burning desire to practice law. If you do have such a desire, your 3.3 won't foreclose you from attending law school - including a T13 - provided you do well on the LSAT, which is entirely possible with enough effort and preparation.

Your softs seem to suggest that, at least at one point, you were targeting med school. What happened?
I had a 3.9 freshman year. As years progressed, my GPA dipped. I still have burning desire for medical schools, but I am stressed out that my GPA is not competitive anymore. I also don't know if I want to do a post-bacc program.

I don't know what to do

Npret

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Re: Chemistry major

Post by Npret » Thu Dec 20, 2018 5:50 pm

Turkishking wrote:
QContinuum wrote:
Turkishking wrote:Should I even consider law school?
You should consider law school if and only if you have a burning desire to practice law. If you do have such a desire, your 3.3 won't foreclose you from attending law school - including a T13 - provided you do well on the LSAT, which is entirely possible with enough effort and preparation.

Your softs seem to suggest that, at least at one point, you were targeting med school. What happened?
I had a 3.9 freshman year. As years progressed, my GPA dipped. I still have burning desire for medical schools, but I am stressed out that my GPA is not competitive anymore. I also don't know if I want to do a post-bacc program.

I don't know what to do
Don’t go to law school. If you want medicine and don’t go for it, you will regret it. Go for medicine first and if you fail, then think about something else.

Law and medicine are two completely different careers, different value in work, different friends, different everything. Stick with your first passion until it becomes impossible.

QContinuum

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Re: Chemistry major

Post by QContinuum » Fri Dec 21, 2018 1:16 am

Npret wrote:
Turkishking wrote:I had a 3.9 freshman year. As years progressed, my GPA dipped. I still have burning desire for medical schools, but I am stressed out that my GPA is not competitive anymore. I also don't know if I want to do a post-bacc program.

I don't know what to do
Don’t go to law school. If you want medicine and don’t go for it, you will regret it. Go for medicine first and if you fail, then think about something else.

Law and medicine are two completely different careers, different value in work, different friends, different everything. Stick with your first passion until it becomes impossible.
Yes - law and medicine are by no means interchangeable. They're extremely different. You want to be a doctor. You don't want to be a lawyer. Don't go to law school.

The good thing about medicine is that you don't need to attend a top med school to do very well as a doctor. You aren't going to be getting into Harvard Medical School with a 3.3, but if you do well enough on the MCAT, you can probably still get into a medical school. It's not hopeless. Don't give up on yourself!

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