Too many pass/fail courses? Forum

[rerido05]

I'm an international student and my school grades on a 5.0 scale. (A and A+s have the same grade)

I had a total of 11 classes pass/fail (2 during covid-19 semester, 1 being a compulsory pass/fail course). The remainder (8) classes were during my first 3 semesters at college and were lower-level modules. Fortunately, I was able to pull up my GPA (going by the LSAC scale, it's ard 3.90) in my third and fourth years.

I would like to ask if this would hurt my chances at HYS/CCN? Would I still stand a chance?

[007sean]

Having 8 — what is essentially optional — P/F classes is an unusually high number. There is no doubt that this will raise red flags. What the overall picture looks like will depend on your test scores and other soft factors. I think you should certainly explain this, to the extent there is a cogent explanation other than you were protecting your GPA.

[nixy]

Do you know any applicant who was otherwise competitive for admission at a given school not getting accepted because of P/F grades?

[007sean]

You can never know why exactly an applicant does not get in. I reported what pre law adviser at elite school counsels. And it makes sense. Why not take almost all
classes P/F get three A’s , and report an A GPA ?

[nixy]

You can never know why exactly an applicant does not get in. I reported what pre law adviser at elite school counsels. And it makes sense. Why not take almost all
classes P/F get three A’s , and report an A GPA ?

Because many schools don't allow you to take that many P/Fs, and I'm pretty sure you have to have some minimum number of graded credits for the degree to count (barring schools that don't do grades at all. Like Brown).

But even if they did, well, that's a 4.0 that a law school can report to USNWR.

[rerido05]

thanks for the input. Yes, that's the maximum number of P/F courses my school allows. For context, I take ard 5 courses a semester so that's 11 ungraded courses against 33 graded courses (took a couple extra for the fun of it).

I suppose at any rate the P/F classes are a done deal for me so I will be focusing on other aspects of the application henceforth. Thanks though.

[CanadianWolf]

Your academic transcript needs to be viewed in the context of your LSAT score. If you have an LSAT score of 174 or above, the pass/fail courses take on a different appearance than if you have an LSAT score in the 160s or below.

Without substantial justification for taking 11 courses pass/fail, it makes an offer of admission to top 6 schools difficult, in my opinion.

[rerido05]

Thanks for the reply. Amongst other things, I only started to consider going to the U.S. for law school in my later undergraduate career so prior to that, I have to admit, I was pretty clueless about U.S. law schools and the impact pass/fail grades would have. It just wasn't something that I had heard of or considered.

The advice I got during undergraduate was actually to maximise the GPA and have letter grades for hard courses that are relevant to my career. (It's probably wise but not for the path I'm considering) I do wish I had considered going to law school earlier so I would have kept my grades as they were but that's not a possibility anymore.