Failed Out: Help! Forum

[Jonathan888]

I failed out of law school and missed the cut-off to continue by .003 GPA points. I passed all my courses. Ideally, I would like to transfer my credits to another school and save the year of my life and the $45,000 I spent. Is there anyone out there who has had heard of retaining your law school credits after failing out?

[rinkrat19]

You failed out...with passing grades? How does that even work?

I know plenty of non-top-ranked schools revoke scholarships if you don't make an unreasonably high GPA, but I've never heard of failing out with passing grades.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I suppose it's possible that he's at a school where the bottom [whatever] percent get cut, regardless of what that GPA actually is. But between the suggestion of a spring start and that harsh a failure rate, I suspect it's a not a school that's going to open a lot of doors.

OP, I think you will find that most schools require transfers to be in good standing with the school they want to transfer from, rather than just to have passed (and it depends what you mean by "passing" - if you mean "didn't get an F," Ds commonly don't earn academic credit).

[rcharter1978]

I failed out of law school and missed the cut-off to continue by .003 GPA points. I passed all my courses. Ideally, I would like to transfer my credits to another school and save the year of my life and the $45,000 I spent. Is there anyone out there who has had heard of retaining your law school credits after failing out?

Are you sure this is a final FINAL decision on the part of the school? Have you made a call to someone to see if you can work it out? Maybe you can do some sort of remedial course in the Spring/Summer. Perhaps you can commit to working with someone to raise up your grades/quality of work. You wasted a year of your life, so is this your second year, or your first? $45,000 sounds like at least a full year + a semester. Try talking to your school first and see if they are a little bendable on the matter since you were so close.

[TheSpanishMain]

But between the suggestion of a spring start and that harsh a failure rate, I suspect it's a not a school that's going to open a lot of doors.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. OP, what school was this? If you were going into a lot of debt at a TTTT, you may need to rethink things at the ground floor.

[BVest]

I failed out of law school and missed the cut-off to continue by .003 GPA points. I passed all my courses. Ideally, I would like to transfer my credits to another school and save the year of my life and the $45,000 I spent. Is there anyone out there who has had heard of retaining your law school credits after failing out?

Are you sure this is a final FINAL decision on the part of the school? Have you made a call to someone to see if you can work it out? Maybe you can do some sort of remedial course in the Spring/Summer. Perhaps you can commit to working with someone to raise up your grades/quality of work. You wasted a year of your life, so is this your second year, or your first? $45,000 sounds like at least a full year + a semester. Try talking to your school first and see if they are a little bendable on the matter since you were so close.

Here's the thing: Even if it's not a final decision and there's some appeal process, OP is not going to be able to keep any scholarship he previously had, which doesn't sound like much if he spent $45k. Even the most generous no-stip scholarship typically requires good academic standing (and, as an aside to Nony's point, I can't imagine there's a single law school that takes transfers who are not in good academic standing at their prior school). As a result, even if OP is able to get back in at the previous school, it will be at full freight, which for a TTTT is not worth it for anyone, especially someone who has absolutely zero chance of even sniffing the top of his TTTT class.

To the OP: Take this as a sign. Go out and do good work that is not law school for a while. If you still want to come back to law school in a few years (which I don't recommend; it doesn't sound like you've got the chops for it, but I'm willing to share advice on how to do it anyway because I suspect you're unlikely to listen to the advice not to return), retake the LSAT and try to get a good scholarship somewhere that isn't such a raging dumpster fire that they severely enforce such a hard grade cutoff (which usually serves the purpose of trying to maintain their bar passage rate so that they don't lose ABA accreditation). Use your experience and what you learn from it as part of your next PS even.

There will be a fair (even large) number of schools that will autoding you for having completed the first year, albeit semi-unsuccessfully, but there will be a few who do not. You'll probably have to cast a wide net to find those.

Yes, you spent $45,000 and a year of your life on this school, but any options you have to continue your current trajectory is just going to cost you an additional $90k (plus lost opportunity costs) and 2 more years of your life with no actual job prospects. Take the opportunity to reset and start over.

[rcharter1978]

I failed out of law school and missed the cut-off to continue by .003 GPA points. I passed all my courses. Ideally, I would like to transfer my credits to another school and save the year of my life and the $45,000 I spent. Is there anyone out there who has had heard of retaining your law school credits after failing out?

Are you sure this is a final FINAL decision on the part of the school? Have you made a call to someone to see if you can work it out? Maybe you can do some sort of remedial course in the Spring/Summer. Perhaps you can commit to working with someone to raise up your grades/quality of work. You wasted a year of your life, so is this your second year, or your first? $45,000 sounds like at least a full year + a semester. Try talking to your school first and see if they are a little bendable on the matter since you were so close.

Here's the thing: Even if it's not a final decision and there's some appeal process, OP is not going to be able to keep any scholarship he previously had, which doesn't sound like much if he spent $45k. Even the most generous no-stip scholarship typically requires good academic standing (and, as an aside to Nony's point, I can't imagine there's a single law school that takes transfers who are not in good academic standing at their prior school). As a result, even if OP is able to get back in at the previous school, it will be at full freight, which for a TTTT is not worth it for anyone, especially someone who has absolutely zero chance of even sniffing the top of his TTTT class.

To the OP: Take this as a sign. Go out and do good work that is not law school for a while. If you still want to come back to law school in a few years (which I don't recommend; it doesn't sound like you've got the chops for it, but I'm willing to share advice on how to do it anyway because I suspect you're unlikely to listen to the advice not to return), retake the LSAT and try to get a good scholarship somewhere that isn't such a raging dumpster fire that they severely enforce such a hard grade cutoff (which usually serves the purpose of trying to maintain their bar passage rate so that they don't lose ABA accreditation). Use your experience and what you learn from it as part of your next PS even.

There will be a fair (even large) number of schools that will autoding you for having completed the first year, albeit semi-unsuccessfully, but there will be a few who do not. You'll probably have to cast a wide net to find those.

Yes, you spent $45,000 and a year of your life on this school, but any options you have to continue your current trajectory is just going to cost you an additional $90k (plus lost opportunity costs) and 2 more years of your life with no actual job prospects. Take the opportunity to reset and start over.

I see your point, but maybe he has some legal job/opportunity lined up. And I would think that this would be OP's third semester, so he is sort of halfway there. Its true he will never hit top of the class, and at this point, maybe not even the middle of the class. And, I would think that even if he takes the LSAT and reapplies he will need to re-take everything, and like you said law schools will have a hard time accepting that he was basically kicked out. And I suspect the LSAT and undergrad grades may not have been the strongest to begin with, so it may not be as easy for OP to get as stellar an LSAT score as he/she would need to overcome those obstacles.

But, I totally see your point and its logical.

[PeanutsNJam]

I suppose it's possible that he's at a school where the bottom [whatever] percent get cut

That should be illegal.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I suppose it's possible that he's at a school where the bottom [whatever] percent get cut

That should be illegal.

Schools that let in basically everyone just weed them out after admission rather than before. The circle of life, balancing of the force, yadda yadda.

[BVest]

www.top-law-schools.com.org