Top Law Schools

Hello,

I'm an international and have earned a bachelor's outside of US/Canada.


For the drama of why I got a 2.8,

When we transfer universities, even the most prestigious schools don't care about GPA as long as I get the required amount of credit to apply. The extremely competitive transfer exam decides everything.

I took an online college course that gave me credits, and made a choice to not focus any on that, eventually getting presented a 1.8 GPA.

But I did manage to get accepted in one of the t10 here as a 3rd year , and got a 3.8 for the last two years of enrollment.

Never expected that 1.8 online course was gonna hold me back so bad.

People around me say I need to have at least a 178 to compensate for my GPA, but I really don't have confidence to get anything better than my current 175 , which even this was a lucky and miraculous result that I can't hope for again.


The question is

1. What are my chances of getting in a lower t14 law school?

2. Would there be a chance the schools consider my reason better than too much drinking at night?

Are you sure you're going to have a GPA reported in LSAC? Or will they assign an international rating? I don't think it'll make much of a difference, but you should figure out what you'll actually have going in.

But to answer your questions:

1. You have a shot; schools like UVA and Northwestern are known to be splitter-friendly.

2. No.

Second what Cav said; I would check whether LSAC will even give you a GPA, and your story isn't going to mitigate whatever weight they do assign your GPA, if any. I think a few lower T14 schools will admit you; you should also apply to some T20 schools to make sure you have options, because you are a splitter and your cycle will be unpredictable.

Retaking off a 175 is risky, but it depends how much time you have to prepare and how intensely you feel like working to get a higher score.

This is one of those relatively rare instances where I don't see any benefit to retaking the LSAT. I can't see a school treating OP differently with a 2.8/177 or even a 2.8/180 vs. a 2.8/175. If OP had a 170, I could see the benefit to trying to squeeze a few more points out of the test; but they already have a 175. I'd leave the LSAT where it is. (And congrats and kudos to OP on the terrific score!)

(I also echo cav's point: Unless OP attended college in the U.S. or Canada, their GPA will not be reported as a number by LSAC, and will correspondingly matter less in the law school admissions context, which benefits OP.)

ryazyle wrote:I took an online college course that gave me credits, and made a choice to not focus any on that, eventually getting presented a 1.8 GPA.

I'd note, though, that doing badly in a class because you didn't care about it, or didn't think it would matter, isn't in any way "better" than doing badly because you did "too much drinking at night". In some ways, it's actually worse, because with the drinking, you might have had factors like peer pressure or alcoholism at play. But doing badly because you intentionally chose to do badly - there's no mitigating that.