2.7 UGPA 5+ years ago, 4.0 Masters GPA and a URM
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2019 8:21 pm
Hi all, and thanks in advance for your help.
I am a Mexican-American, second generation as my grandparents were both immigrants, making me a URM. I went to UC Santa Cruz and started off as a Biology major with a focus on medical school requirements before I had accepted that I just wan't med school material. At the end of my Junior year I had this revelation, and after having not performed well in a few of my hard science course, and switched my major to psychology which I finished in less than 2 years. Because of my low performance in the biology major I ended up with a less than stellar GPA and instead of figuring it out right after I got my BA and going to grad school I figured I was stuck with entering the workforce. While there I performed well in my first job progressing through the management training program and entering management in roughly one years time leading the region in sales numbers and YoY growth in my branch. I ended up taking another job which lasted 3 months due to a closure of our office during a merger and then subsequently went into tech consulting where I consistently led my team in employee metric scales. In this lat position I had gotten more involved in community based work, and worked on a presidential campaign in a volunteer capacity where I realized my passion and decided to go back to school for Policy and Politics to leverage my better performance into a law school admittance. I realize the masters GPA isn't weighted at all for admissions but I still felt it helped to show maturation and ability greater than my UGPA would show.
I ended up getting into a top 75 ranked Master of Public Policy (or politics I am still deciding) at Claremont Graduate University and will be finishing my degree up spring of 2020, allowing me to start my JD program in Fall 2020. I have not taken the LSAT so that is one question I have, what score should I be looking to get to get into a better program that sets me up for the future? Ultimately I would really like to get into joint JD/PhD programs with the emphasis on either Politics or Policy and Law. I realize I am in an uphill battle due to a lost battle with immaturity and social prospects that I put ahead of school in undergrad and appreciate the help. Oh, I also will be working on research for voting rights access in native american populations in AZ, which is going to most likely be research used in court cases in the state which I know would help in my application process. I also have multiple contacts high up in presidential campaigns for 2020 that I will be working on too.
So to recap, what should I be targeting as a URM for the LSAT? And realistically, what schools should I be expecting to apply to once I begin the process this fall with the LSAT scores uncovered in question 1?
Thanks.
I am a Mexican-American, second generation as my grandparents were both immigrants, making me a URM. I went to UC Santa Cruz and started off as a Biology major with a focus on medical school requirements before I had accepted that I just wan't med school material. At the end of my Junior year I had this revelation, and after having not performed well in a few of my hard science course, and switched my major to psychology which I finished in less than 2 years. Because of my low performance in the biology major I ended up with a less than stellar GPA and instead of figuring it out right after I got my BA and going to grad school I figured I was stuck with entering the workforce. While there I performed well in my first job progressing through the management training program and entering management in roughly one years time leading the region in sales numbers and YoY growth in my branch. I ended up taking another job which lasted 3 months due to a closure of our office during a merger and then subsequently went into tech consulting where I consistently led my team in employee metric scales. In this lat position I had gotten more involved in community based work, and worked on a presidential campaign in a volunteer capacity where I realized my passion and decided to go back to school for Policy and Politics to leverage my better performance into a law school admittance. I realize the masters GPA isn't weighted at all for admissions but I still felt it helped to show maturation and ability greater than my UGPA would show.
I ended up getting into a top 75 ranked Master of Public Policy (or politics I am still deciding) at Claremont Graduate University and will be finishing my degree up spring of 2020, allowing me to start my JD program in Fall 2020. I have not taken the LSAT so that is one question I have, what score should I be looking to get to get into a better program that sets me up for the future? Ultimately I would really like to get into joint JD/PhD programs with the emphasis on either Politics or Policy and Law. I realize I am in an uphill battle due to a lost battle with immaturity and social prospects that I put ahead of school in undergrad and appreciate the help. Oh, I also will be working on research for voting rights access in native american populations in AZ, which is going to most likely be research used in court cases in the state which I know would help in my application process. I also have multiple contacts high up in presidential campaigns for 2020 that I will be working on too.
So to recap, what should I be targeting as a URM for the LSAT? And realistically, what schools should I be expecting to apply to once I begin the process this fall with the LSAT scores uncovered in question 1?
Thanks.