GPA concerns Forum

[Eric8923]

While I was in the early stages of my 6 year Military service. We were encouraged to enroll in online college courses (would look good for our leaderships stats), well we were not exactly given time to spend towards these courses and I got an F for these 7 hours.

Fast forward a few years and I enroll at TTU. My first 3 semesters were rough to say the least. Several grade replacements littered with F's.

For the LSDAS GPA I am estimating 20 hours (7 hours from Troy) of Fs. And roughly 12 hours of Ds. There was also a semester where I withdrew from a 15 hour semester, but that is deemed as a non-punative withdrawal and from my understanding wont br added into my recalcualted GPA.


This is my first quality semester after a change in Major from mathematics to Economics. I will likely finish this 15 hour semester with a 3.72.

With a few planned summer semesters I am estimating completing another 72 hours of course work at TTU after this semester, before submitting my Law School Application.


My concern obviously is how much will those early stumbles impact my GPA in the eyes of Law School Admissions.

If I have a 3.5+ GPA over the last 87 completed hours of coursework and a quality LSAT score (will spend 12 months of prep), could that be enough to overcome those early 32 hours and non-punative withdrawal? I know schools don't exactly care about "trends", but would 87 hours be considered a "trend"?

The Goal is a T14 Law school. Cornell, Georgetown, UVA, and UT are my top 4.

I will also apply to some lower ranked schools. U of Washington, Houston, and likely SMU.

[AnMzungu]

You have yet to receive a Bachelor's degree, yes? If so, post your current LSAC GPA (not including this speculative semester). Use this: http://www.lawschoolpredictor.com/wp-co ... ulator.htm

I'm assuming it's pretty fucked. If you don't have your Bachelor's, you need to delay graduation as long as possible, take easy classes, bullshit online community college classes, etc. You're likely in a position that all that matters is getting your numbers up. Your "holistically-considered" transcript is already terrible, so just drag that baby up by any means necessary.

[KissMyAxe]

Vets do get some preference at most schools, when all else is equal. And schools do like to see trends, but not when it impacts the bottom line. They like to see you make a 3.2 first semester, and then straight As and finish with a 3.8. Unfortunately, your GPA is almost certainly destroyed at this point. I'd love it if you could use that calculator given to you, but even assuming you had 87 hours of a 4.0, you're still going to have a GPA below 3.0. That's tough to overcome.

I do not agree that you should delay graduation. I think that's a stupid idea. It's going to take like 8 extra semesters of awesome grades to pull you into decent territory, F's are really hard to deal with. It takes 7 A's to bring up one F to a 3.5. You're talking about like 6 F's (or 5 if hard sciences) plus 3-4 D's. Assuming you never had another grade below an A, you'd still need over 100 hours of A's to get a 3.1 GPA. You would incur far to much opportunity costs delaying graduation while you try to make your GPA respectable.

Ultimately, you do want to get your GPA as high as possible, you're also going to need to destroy the LSAT. The good news is, if you do that it's not over for you. Cornell is almost certainly not in the picture right now, and UVA is extremely unlikely (though possible), but GULC accepts people with sub-3.0s/170+ LSATs every year. UT does the same. As do all your other schools. If you do that, you will have options.

[Eric8923]

67 semester hours total for a 1.18 GPA. Its clear I have a large mountain to overcome.

I plan to take it semester by semester and work for a 4.0 from here on out.

[HarveySpecterr]

While I was in the early stages of my 6 year Military service. We were encouraged to enroll in online college courses (would look good for our leaderships stats), well we were not exactly given time to spend towards these courses and I got an F for these 7 hours.

Fast forward a few years and I enroll at TTU. My first 3 semesters were rough to say the least. Several grade replacements littered with F's.

For the LSDAS GPA I am estimating 20 hours (7 hours from Troy) of Fs. And roughly 12 hours of Ds. There was also a semester where I withdrew from a 15 hour semester, but that is deemed as a non-punative withdrawal and from my understanding wont br added into my recalcualted GPA.


This is my first quality semester after a change in Major from mathematics to Economics. I will likely finish this 15 hour semester with a 3.72.

With a few planned summer semesters I am estimating completing another 72 hours of course work at TTU after this semester, before submitting my Law School Application.


My concern obviously is how much will those early stumbles impact my GPA in the eyes of Law School Admissions.

If I have a 3.5+ GPA over the last 87 completed hours of coursework and a quality LSAT score (will spend 12 months of prep), could that be enough to overcome those early 32 hours and non-punative withdrawal? I know schools don't exactly care about "trends", but would 87 hours be considered a "trend"?

The Goal is a T14 Law school. Cornell, Georgetown, UVA, and UT are my top 4.

I will also apply to some lower ranked schools. U of Washington, Houston, and likely SMU.

I agree with the advice given by the previous two posters, and want to add that you should be thinking about how to write a dynamite addendum to explain this. Your military service (online courses that you didn't have time to complete) certainly differentiates your case from the typical wayward college student's, and you need to make sure you articulate that to them. Of course you'll need to blow the LSAT to smithereens, but you'll also need this addendum to address your unique situation in a clear and compelling way. Aside from the obvious things (e.g. error-free), it should be direct and honest and brief. Use the active voice. Delete any needless words. Have one or two professors who care about you read it and give comments. The GPA addendum is your chance to earn an exception and show your potential to be a great lawyer. You should really put some time and effort into making it strong.

[sadieshadow]

Will there be consideration for a STEM (mathematics) major? GPA in major is pulling down the rest. Will probably end with a 3.62 and LSAT > 170 hopefully based on practice tests . . .Highy selective but not IVY undergraduate school.

[Wipfelder]

67 semester hours total for a 1.18 GPA. Its clear I have a large mountain to overcome.

I plan to take it semester by semester and work for a 4.0 from here on out.

I know several vets, in several T-14 schools, with sub 3.0 GPA's, some well below that. Do what you can to bring that GPA up, then get like, a 175 on the LSAT. You'll get in somewhere with good job prospects, and it may be free or close to it.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Will there be consideration for a STEM (mathematics) major? GPA in major is pulling down the rest. Will probably end with a 3.62 and LSAT > 170 hopefully based on practice tests . . .Highy selective but not IVY undergraduate school.

This is a totally different situation from what the OP is facing. No, there won't be any particular consideration for a STEM major, but your GPA isn't even bad.