Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying? Forum
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Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?
I just finished my sophomore year of undergrad and my GPA is a dismal 3.37. I calculated it, and I can probably only get my GPA up to like 3.45 by the time I'm applying to law schools. I've talked to practicing attorneys and they say that it is very important for one's law career to go to a top 10-14 law school. Would I have any chance at getting in? I have not taken the LSAT yet, but I do plan to study for it extremely hard if I have a chance at getting in with my GPA. I'm not sure if law schools would care about this, but I am a black male and this will be my second year doing a writing intensive political research internship at a top university and I will probably do the internship again next summer. Do I stand any chance of getting into a good law school or should I just not bother to take the LSAT and apply?
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Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?
A black male with a 3.5+ gpa and a 160+ lsat has a legitimate shot at most if not all of the t-14 schools. Give yourself the best chance to accomplish your goals. Take easy college classes and enroll in a lsat prep class like 7sage. Internships are cool for experience but give you very little to no benefit in the admissions process. If you can't score roughly a 160 on the lsat (+ or - a couple of points), then you'll have an uphill fight with your gpa to crack the t-14.
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Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?
Frankly speaking I would expect a 160 and 3.5 to maaaaybe get you into a lower T14, but I would honestly say he should strive for 170+ if at all feasible. With a score like that and a ~3.5 GPA I'd expect you to have some success at at least a few of the T14. Could be misremembering the LSAT medians as being higher than they are for some of the lower T14, though.Justtrying2help wrote:A black male with a 3.5+ gpa and a 160+ lsat has a legitimate shot at most if not all of the t-14 schools. Give yourself the best chance to accomplish your goals. Take easy college classes and enroll in a lsat prep class like 7sage. Internships are cool for experience but give you very little to no benefit in the admissions process. If you can't score roughly a 160 on the lsat (+ or - a couple of points), then you'll have an uphill fight with your gpa to crack the t-14.
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Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?
You probably will need a bit more than a 160 to have a seriously competitive application for T-14. With a 160, a school might give you an offer but I wouldn't count on it. A 165-170 with a 3.45-3.55 will give you a strong chance at landing a T-14 school.
That said, what is the cause of your low GPA? Getting into a T-14 law school, especially one at the bottom end of the T-14. is only part of the path to big law. Put another way, if your 3.37 GPA is indicative of your of exam taking skills and how you will perform in law school, getting into a school like NW/Duke/Cornell/Georgetown may not result in the career you are looking for if you end up in the bottom 25% of your class.
That said, what is the cause of your low GPA? Getting into a T-14 law school, especially one at the bottom end of the T-14. is only part of the path to big law. Put another way, if your 3.37 GPA is indicative of your of exam taking skills and how you will perform in law school, getting into a school like NW/Duke/Cornell/Georgetown may not result in the career you are looking for if you end up in the bottom 25% of your class.
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Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?
WTF is wrong with you?ExperssioUnius wrote:You probably will need a bit more than a 160 to have a seriously competitive application for T-14. With a 160, a school might give you an offer but I wouldn't count on it. A 165-170 with a 3.45-3.55 will give you a strong chance at landing a T-14 school.
That said, what is the cause of your low GPA? Getting into a T-14 law school, especially one at the bottom end of the T-14. is only part of the path to big law. Put another way, if your 3.37 GPA is indicative of your of exam taking skills and how you will perform in law school, getting into a school like NW/Duke/Cornell/Georgetown may not result in the career you are looking for if you end up in the bottom 25% of your class.
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Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?
Hes a troll. He gives objectively bad advice everywhere. For instance, Duke has the second highest percentage of biglaw and fed clerkships in the country, only a few hundredths of a percentage point behind Columbia. 85% of Duke gets biglaw or fed clerkships. A bottom 25% AA Male at Duke will easily get biglaw. Maybe not in a super competitive city, but certainly NY.Wipfelder wrote:WTF is wrong with you?ExperssioUnius wrote:You probably will need a bit more than a 160 to have a seriously competitive application for T-14. With a 160, a school might give you an offer but I wouldn't count on it. A 165-170 with a 3.45-3.55 will give you a strong chance at landing a T-14 school.
That said, what is the cause of your low GPA? Getting into a T-14 law school, especially one at the bottom end of the T-14. is only part of the path to big law. Put another way, if your 3.37 GPA is indicative of your of exam taking skills and how you will perform in law school, getting into a school like NW/Duke/Cornell/Georgetown may not result in the career you are looking for if you end up in the bottom 25% of your class.
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Re: Is my GPA too low for law school? Should I not bother applying?
If it's important to you to go to law school, I'd do the following:
(1) Don't apply until after your senior year, which will give you more time to increase your GPA. The brother of a good friend of mine took my advice to wait an additional year to improve his numbers, and got into a top-5 where he's been pretty successful.
(2) Try to do a summer internship at a law firm - even a small firm in your hometown - to get an idea of whether you're really interested in doing what attorneys do.
(3) Use your year after college to apply to law school, but to also try out something else that you might want to do. At the end of that year, you'll have a better sense of whether it's a good idea to go to law school, or to pursue another dream for a while. Alternatively, you could work as a legal assistant or a paralegal for a year, and if you really hate it, then you'll know not to go to law school.
You can always go to law school later, but once you're there and you have the debt, you can't go back and redo the time before law school.
(1) Don't apply until after your senior year, which will give you more time to increase your GPA. The brother of a good friend of mine took my advice to wait an additional year to improve his numbers, and got into a top-5 where he's been pretty successful.
(2) Try to do a summer internship at a law firm - even a small firm in your hometown - to get an idea of whether you're really interested in doing what attorneys do.
(3) Use your year after college to apply to law school, but to also try out something else that you might want to do. At the end of that year, you'll have a better sense of whether it's a good idea to go to law school, or to pursue another dream for a while. Alternatively, you could work as a legal assistant or a paralegal for a year, and if you really hate it, then you'll know not to go to law school.
You can always go to law school later, but once you're there and you have the debt, you can't go back and redo the time before law school.