MA in Legal and Ethical Studies Forum

[zhughes31583]

First, a little background. I graduated from the University of Maryland in 2008 with a degree in History and a minor in Rhetoric with an average 3.0 GPA. Not sure if I wanted to go to law school (or if I could get in) after graduation, I decided to forego the LSAT and go to graduate school instead and try to obtain a Master's Degree in Legal and Ethical Studies from the University of Baltimore. I figured that this course of action would help me decide. I currently have a year left in my graduate program and I really like what I am doing. I currently have a 3.8 GPA and I took the LSAT and got a 166. My question is, would the 3.0 UGPA hurt me enough to prevent me from getting in to Top 15-50 level school, or will the Master's degree and the decent LSAT score sort of offset the low GPA?

TIA
Zachary

[Danteshek]

Your grad gpa is irrelevant. You still should be able to get into a top 50 school.

[sumus romani]

Your 3.0 will lose a bit of importance the further you get from undergrad, but it won't ever become insignificant for the application process. Having said that, the 3.0 will hurt you quite a bit if you apply next year (I guess that you would be a few years out of undergrad). But this does not mean that you will not be able to get into a 35-50 ranked school, provided that you have an actual LSAT of 166. But why not prepare more for a later LSAT and try to improve? After all, the job prospects from most of 35-50 are terrible. Why not shoot higher?

[TTH]

With a 166, you'll get into some decent schools (UMD-B being one of them). Drop out of your grad program unless it's free.