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Hello,

I have a 3.57 LSAC GPA and still in UG.....and have read that some people have over a 4.0 LSAC GPA because some colleges give a 4.33 for an A+ instead of a 4.0 for an A.

Does anyone know of any colleges where I could take some online courses in that offer a 4.33 for an A+ to boost my GPA up a bit given how much of a numbers game admissions is ?

your local community colleges and two-year extensions are the best places to start looking. You're not going to want to pay private/out of state tuition for online basket-weaving classes. Not worth it.

I don't, but I think this probably isn't a great strategy. A couple A+s won't make a meaningful dent on your GPA. You would have to take one or two full semesters of online classes -- and get all As or A+s -- in order to have a real improvement (.1-.2) in your GPA, all without your grades at your actual school suffering. This seems unlikely.

If you spent all that extra time studying for the LSAT the payoff would be a lot bigger, with a much lower chance of it backfiring on you.

It doesn't matter if the college gives a 4.33 as long as it gives an A+ grade. Just do some googling and try to find local colleges' grading scales.

ETA: Also note that even if A+ is on the official grading scale you might not get it because some professors / departments don't believe in giving A+s.

Agree with other posters that time and money is better spent studying for the LSAT. You'd have to invest a semester or two of classes--which is a lot of time--and pay tuition for those classes. If there are classes you are generally interested in, go for it, but to take a years worth of classes for a .1 GPA bump doesn't make sense IMO. I also think its better to spend your time and tuition dollars on classes where you will actually learn/be forced to think as opposed to just padding your GPA.

if you have the time and money and have the lsat score you need I don't see any problem in doing this. Probably going to be marginal rewards, but knock yourself out.

Like RZ said, the GPA that schools assign to their letter grades are irrelevant. If a school puts an A+ on your transcript, LSAC will count it as a 4.333 even if your school counts A-, A, and A+ all as 4.0

Any link to this if LSAC does give a 4.33 to an A+ grade even if the school only counts an A+ as a 4.0?

MattM wrote:Any link to this if LSAC does give a 4.33 to an A+ grade even if the school only counts an A+ as a 4.0?

It's on their website somewhere. Definitely true though.

So a 3.57 is not really enough to a splitter to justify this?

I may add a minor to get over the 3.6 hump but other than that I think I should be good as long as I crush the LSAT

I could see cases where it would be a wise choice to go this route....let's say a 3.25 candidate because with that GPA you need to have a killer LSAT and even that won't be enough at some schools because of GPA floors ( I don't think I'm in this category where I need to)

I could only really see myself going for a 4.333 in a class if it was through a local, public school/or community college ( even more preferable for a $ standpoint)

MattM wrote:Any link to this if LSAC does give a 4.33 to an A+ grade even if the school only counts an A+ as a 4.0?

You're missing the basic idea that LSAC uses its own grading scale so applicants are evaluated somewhat more fairly. It would be chaos if you had to compare gpas that were calculated on different systems (e.g., using 3.75 or 3.7 for A- instead of 3.66), and some schools use idiosyncratic grading systems without the usual letter grades, so LSAC imposes its own scale on everyone.

The A+ loophole is one of the school-specific differences that isn't caught by their attempt to standardize gpas.

RZ5646 wrote:

MattM wrote:Any link to this if LSAC does give a 4.33 to an A+ grade even if the school only counts an A+ as a 4.0?

You're missing the basic idea that LSAC uses its own grading scale so applicants are evaluated somewhat more fairly. It would be chaos if you had to compare gpas that were calculated on different systems (e.g., using 3.75 or 3.7 for A- instead of 3.66), and some schools use idiosyncratic grading systems without the usual letter grades, so LSAC imposes its own scale on everyone.

The A+ loophole is one of the school-specific differences that isn't caught by their attempt to standardize gpas.

This, LSAC will just look for the lowest common denominator when calculating their GPA. I would say their priority list (if all were provided by school) is % grade, letter grade, GPA (on a scale). so the 4.33 is the last thing they would look at. Which makes a lot of sense when you consider schools like mine that use a 9 point scale.

University of Pittsburgh uses A+ but many professors don't give them out because they don't believe in giving A+'s or don't even know that the A+ option is available.