Significance of Undergrad grades Forum

[daleearnhardt123]

Any current/former clerks know how their judge weights undergrad grades? I'm thinking something in the bottom 10% of your class for a T10. Is it a fringe consideration? If a student is clearly one of the judge's better candidates based on LawGPA and recs, will the ugrad GPA play a role?
Thanks in advance.

[A. Nony Mouse]

As with everything to do with clerkships: it depends. Many judges don't even ask for UG transcripts. Those who do may or may not care about UG grades, but it's impossible to generalize about calculations and weighting of different factors. The judges I clerked for didn't ask for UG transcripts and I never heard them mention UG grades. But there are probably other judges who feel differently.

[MistakenGenius]

Post removed.

[Anonymous User]

My judge asks for them and looks at them- they are not the most important factor, but he/she views poor undergrad grades as a sign of laziness and they can get you dinged. A 3.78 with a bunch of Ws probably will not hurt you, but a 3.0 will.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Yeah, I'm not sure how a 3.78 would be a problem! (But then I went to a LS where most of us had UGPAs below that.)

[Anonymous User]

For my judge, good UG grades can perhaps help a little, but bad grades won't hurt. For example, if someone graduated from an Ivy summa cum laude in some difficult field of study, that's impressive. But if someone had a 3.2 from a more run-of-the-mill UG and then destroyed law school, the UG grades won't matter. What really matters is, of course, law school grades. An applicant's UG record is, at most, a tiebreaker for us.

[Anonymous User]

I will be clerking for a feeder judge soon who asks for an undergraduate transcript in applications. I have the law school grades you'd expect, but only around a 3.5 from a respectable undergrad. It didn't come up at the interview and evidently didn't trouble the judge.

[Anonymous User]

I will be clerking for a feeder judge soon who asks for an undergraduate transcript in applications. I have the law school grades you'd expect, but only around a 3.5 from a respectable undergrad. It didn't come up at the interview and evidently didn't trouble the judge.

Which feeder?

[Anonymous User]

I will be clerking for a feeder judge soon who asks for an undergraduate transcript in applications. I have the law school grades you'd expect, but only around a 3.5 from a respectable undergrad. It didn't come up at the interview and evidently didn't trouble the judge.

I had the exact same experience. Clerking for a feeder and 3.5 in a very easy major in undergrad.

[elipad]

I will be clerking for a feeder judge soon who asks for an undergraduate transcript in applications. I have the law school grades you'd expect, but only around a 3.5 from a respectable undergrad. It didn't come up at the interview and evidently didn't trouble the judge.

I had the exact same experience. Clerking for a feeder and 3.5 in a very easy major in undergrad.

Ditto to all of this. I was quite nervous about this when I applied last year because I had a 3.5 UGPA from a decent school. I was terrified this would automatically ding me. For the most part, judges that I interviewed with didn't even bring it up. The few that did mostly commented on specific classes I took or wanted to know more about certain courses that the judge/clerk was interested in talking about (i.e. just a conversation piece). Only once did it potentially seem to be an issue-- the judge made a comment regarding how much higher my law school grades were than my undergrad ones. I had prepared an answer, which made him laugh, and that was the end of the discussion. Got an offer.

[Anonymous User]

I realize this is lower than the range of grades being discussed here, but I had a 2.x in UG. Top of my class at a T25. One COA judge rejected me post interview solely because of my UG grades. He apparently hadn't noticed them before the interview (or during the interview), because he called me the day after and said "hey, what's the deal with these crappy grades?" I answered honestly that I didn't have my shit together in college (put a little more artfully), and he said "no dice."

One other COA judge brought them up in the interview and expressed concern; didn't get that one, but not sure if that was the reason.

I've started to die a little inside every time an OSCAR posting requests UG grades. I'm sure most of them just check the box because, hey, why not, but I'm sure I'll lose out on interviews just because of how horrendous my transcript is, even if they wouldn't usually care.

[Tangerine Gleam]

I will be clerking for a feeder judge soon who asks for an undergraduate transcript in applications. I have the law school grades you'd expect, but only around a 3.5 from a respectable undergrad. It didn't come up at the interview and evidently didn't trouble the judge.

Which feeder?

Pretty sure I've never seen anyone (even posting anon) disclose their judge's name on TLS before.

[Anonymous User]

Sub 3.0 in undergrad (albeit from a well-respected school not known for outrageous grade inflation - however, easy major), within top 5 students in my T30 school. Got CoA clerkship and never came up in interviews with clerks or judge, though they requested the transcript. I applied to nearly every CoA judge in the country and got three total interviews - I'm sure the grades were an auto-ding some places, but I also think I did pretty well for my numbers (school-wise).

I think TCR in this - as in almost all clerkship app questions - is if you have any imperfection on your resume you really need to apply everywhere. If the rest of your application is as strong as you can make it, you should be able to succeed somewhere.

To other sub 3.0 poster above who was dinged because of grades - sorry that sucks. Keep your head up and keep churning out applications.

[Anonymous User]

To other sub 3.0 poster above who was dinged because of grades - sorry that sucks. Keep your head up and keep churning out applications.

Necro bump--I'm now reapplying as an alumnus, and I just landed my first COA interview (and the judge asked for my UG transcript). We'll see if my horrendous UG performance continues to haunt me as I near 30 years old.

[Anonymous User]

Every judge is different, but in our chambers undergrad GPA isn't as important as the range of classes that the applicant took. We would rather see an applicant with imperfect grades across a range of subjects than somebody who seems to have taken rocks for jocks and such. It's also one of the least important factors in the application.

[Anonymous User]

Every judge is different, but in our chambers undergrad GPA isn't as important as the range of classes that the applicant took. We would rather see an applicant with imperfect grades across a range of subjects than somebody who seems to have taken rocks for jocks and such. It's also one of the least important factors in the application.

That's comforting, thanks. I'm hoping the fact that I've been given this interview means the judge is willing to look past it.