Mid-senior year transcript Forum

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powerfail

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Mid-senior year transcript

Post by powerfail » Fri Jun 07, 2019 11:32 am

Next year will be my last year of college. I plan to take the LSAT this summer and then apply to law schools as soon as the applications open in fall. This means the college transcript that I send to LSAC will include grades up to this spring.

If you apply in September/October, is it routine for schools to ask you to send them an updated transcript with fall grades finalized in December? I remember applying to college and having my school send a "midyear report" in January with first-semester senior year grades. Does the same thing happen for law school admissions?

I'm not specifically planning to get "senioritis" and do poorly next year, but I'm a bit worried because some of the toughest courses in my major (computer science) happen during senior year and it may be harder to get good grades than it has thus far.

Bingo_Bongo

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Re: Mid-senior year transcript

Post by Bingo_Bongo » Sat Jun 08, 2019 6:14 pm

The school will want your final transcripts after you graduate to have on file, just to verify that you indeed graduated from undergrad (since it's an ABA requirement), but the only grades they consider for admissions are the grades that are available to them at the time they make their decision (obviously). Early decisions are made before fall grades usually post, so they won't have access to those from anyone.

I don't think I've ever heard of a school rescinding an offer for mediocre senior year grades. It's usually not that big of a deal, since the vast majority of applicant GPAs won't change all that much from just two semesters after six semesters of grades are already on a transcript weighing everything down.

The same thing applies once you get to law school. Your 1L grades matter the most. If you get a job at OCI summer of 1L year, your 2L and 3L grades won't matter much after that point. And firms won't rescind offers because of subsequent bad grades after they've already hired you. That's a question you see over and over on here.

powerfail

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Re: Mid-senior year transcript

Post by powerfail » Wed Jun 12, 2019 12:54 am

Thanks for the response!

I'm not worried about an offer being rescinded (my GPA would probably have to tank significantly for that to happen, and I'll make sure it doesn't). I'm more worried about going from slightly above median to slightly below median, or from slightly above 75th percentile to slightly below 75th percentile.

I understand your point that two semesters won't matter much when most of the GPA is already set in stone, and I don't expect my GPA to change drastically. But, looking at lawschoolnumbers.com, it seems that relatively small changes (like 0.1 or even 0.05) in GPA, which could easily happen over a semester or two, affect admission chances significantly.

Suppose I apply to a bunch of law schools in, say, October. I know that some schools will give me decisions by winter break, and in that case, my fall grades haven't even been determined yet, so there's no way they can affect the outcome.

But if a school doesn't give me a decision by winter break, and instead waits until Feb/March/April, are you sure that they won't ask for fall grades, given that they'll be determined by that point?

I just looked at this webpage:
https://www.lsac.org/applying-law-schoo ... ol-reports

It mentions that LSAC will send law schools an updated report if "LSAC receives an updated transcript." Does LSAC not receive an updated transcript at the time my college finalizes fall grades (which happens in January)?

The Lsat Airbender

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Re: Mid-senior year transcript

Post by The Lsat Airbender » Wed Jun 12, 2019 5:43 pm

powerfail wrote:I'm not worried about an offer being rescinded (my GPA would probably have to tank significantly for that to happen, and I'll make sure it doesn't). I'm more worried about going from slightly above median to slightly below median, or from slightly above 75th percentile to slightly below 75th percentile.
Barely matters.

GPA is always a moving target for admissions committees because the hundreths scale is so granular; it's not practical or useful to clamp onto a particular target number they way schools will draw a firm LSAT line at (say) 169.

If a school's median is 3.82, and you slip from 3.83 to 3.80—obviously that's undesirable, but it's not like you're crossing the Rubicon either. You're still basically median.

edit: saw that you're worried about maybe slipping a full tenth of a point. That's more likely to be a problem if word reaches the adcomm before they've made a final decision but I assume you'd have to get straight Bs or something to do that much damage.

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