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Hi everyone! I am not your usual under-represented student. I am white (gasp!) but I am a child orphaned who grew up with a single, poor, alcoholic mother. I went a very prestigious public school but because of lack of prep got a 2.7 my first year, gradually increasing until i earned a total 3.4 GPA. I have an MA and have worked in humanitarian work abroad for two years. Because of the LSAC fee waiver I have applied to most T20 and have gotten into GW so far. What do you think my chances are for getting into Boalt, Georgetown, Columbia, Michigan, etc?

lsat score....

You're not really in the right forum. While you would bring diversity to a law school class, you're not an underrepresented minority in the way that this term is used in law school admissions, where it applies to African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans. Your background may help you outperform your numbers slightly, but it won't give you the kind of URM "bump" talked about here. And like Nova suggests, no one can comment on your chances anywhere without your LSAT score.

LSAT: 165. @A. Nony unfortunately there are no such categories for orphans and foster children so this is as close as we get? Thanks for everyone's help!

Right, so you can just ask in the general "what are my chances" forum, which is where I'm moving this.

Well, it does seem like OP has outperformed her numbers with the GW acceptance, although I'm not sure exactly how / what is in it for the law school.

Total Litigator wrote:Well, it does seem like OP has outperformed her numbers with the GW acceptance, although I'm not sure exactly how / what is in it for the law school.

Meh. Median LSAT and 25th GPA isn't that big of a stretch right?

2BJD2017 wrote:LSAT: 165. @A. Nony unfortunately there are no such categories for orphans and foster children so this is as close as we get? Thanks for everyone's help!

Because orphans and foster children don't qualify as URMs. It gives you an interesting life story and potentially a good personal statement, but you're not "under represented" in the normal sense.

Honestly, go to mylsn.info and plug in your statistics. Your background may help a little, but it's not going to equal a higher GPA or LSAT. And I don't think you have a shot at T14 with those numbers, sorry to say. (Law school admissions is highly numbers-driven & much less holistic than UG admissions.)

Fiero85 wrote:

Total Litigator wrote:Well, it does seem like OP has outperformed her numbers with the GW acceptance, although I'm not sure exactly how / what is in it for the law school.

Meh. Median LSAT and 25th GPA isn't that big of a stretch right?

Oh yeah, I didn't realize GW dropped to 165 last cycle. Yeah, that's not too big of a stretch. The master's degree probably helped, since they like to brag about that kind of thing.