Second B.A. Forum

[Tower5]

Hi guys,

I went to high school in the U.S. and moved to non-English speaking country to earn my first B.A. I moved back to the U.S. and went to a non-ABA law school. I was there for two years as a part time las student. I did not complete my degree nor the 1L requirement (since the school is a non-ABA, I believe that the requirement is different from other ABA schools). I withdrew from the program because I had family emergencies, got married, relocated with my spouse, and had to go through religious process, some other unexpected family and personal things. I went through a lot.

After that, I decided to pursue a second B.A. from local college in midwest. I graduated with 3.8/4.0 and earned some national fellowship. After almost seven years from withdrawing the non-ABA law program, I found my passion and interest in studying law. I discovered this through my second B.A. courses. I reconsidered very carefully about taking LSAT and going to law school. I finally took LSAT and scored 171 and 175.

However, I am not sure how the law school admission committee will consider my application since it is unique and off traditional applicant's track. There might be some bias toward mature and non-traditional applicants? I am 33. I do not see any of entering class profile sharing similar with my circumstances.

I would greatly appreciate any advice and/or criticism you might be able to give me.

[cavalier1138]

Your second BA will not count for your LSAC GPA, which will likely be a rating based on whatever your foreign GPA converts to in the LSAC system. If you performed poorly in that first BA program, that may have a negative impact on your chances, but a 175 would normally give you a great shot at some top schools.

I say "normally," because the rest of your history is likely to cause some serious problems with your application. The fact that the school wasn't an ABA law school is probably going to help prevent any of those credits from carrying over. But the fact that you failed out is going to be a big issue. Normally, age and experience are helpful, but usually that experience is work experience, not getting a second undergraduate degree and dropping out of a bad program. You're definitely going to need to write an addendum to address all that.

As an additional note, your post reads like English is your second language. It's mostly fine, but there are some odd turns of phrase. That's something you'll need to address for your application, because if your PS reads like you might have trouble with fluent writing, it's going to add another red flag.

[nixy]

TBF, the OP says they withdrew from the non-ABA school, not that they failed out. Although it's true that only your first BA will count for rankings, doing well on your second BA will help show that you've put your earlier issues behind you. So I suspect you'll do pretty well .

[cavalier1138]

TBF, the OP says they withdrew from the non-ABA school, not that they failed out.

True. I may have read a little too much between the lines there. If the withdrawal was voluntary and OP's grades were ok, I think the fact that it wasn't ABA-accredited may actually work in his favor (no chance of courses being counted for credit, etc.).