Self-study
how does the lsac gpa work? do they have their own scale? for example, my college doesnt award A+s. also, does dual enrollment from high school also count in the lsac gpa?
when law schools report their average accepted applicant's gpas, it's the lsac one, right, not the undergraduate?
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9 comments
Chiming in from the admissions perspective, @ktacklesthelsat!
First things first, you can read LSAC's complete policy here regarding grade summarization. But here are the key details:
All courses taken towards your first bachelors degree count towards your LSAC GPA. For most applicants, that just means "classes I took in college." But it does also include dual enrollment classes. Please note that this policy DOES NOT include the cousin of dual enrollment classes - AP/IB classes. Why? Because receiving college credit for an AP/IB class isn't dependent on your course grade. It's dependent on your results from the AP/IB test. I know we're splitting hairs here, but that's how it goes.
LSAC uses a standard 4.0 scale (an A is a 4.0, an A- is a 3.66, a B+ is a 3.33, etc).
An exception is that they provide a 4.33 conversion for A+s. This is because there are some colleges (maybe 25%-33%) that give A+ grades.
When law schools report their median GPA (not their average - I just want to be sure we're being specific!), it's the LSAC GPA.
And why does LSAC even do this all in the first place? It's partly to provide standardization across the board (up in Canada for example, there's no standardization in reporting GPAs for incoming law classes; some schools report the entire GPA, some take out the lowest 15 credit hours and then recalculate the GPA, some only take the best 60 credit hours, etc). It's also partly because some law schools circa 2008-2010 fudged their stats for their incoming classes. After that happened, all statistical reporting ran through LSAC for verification. It was a fun time!
@JacobBaska Is there a place we can see what our LSAC GPA is?
@JacobBaska Hi! Do you know if the LSAC considers study abroad grades if it was pass/fail at college?
@KathrynLewis - I tried to post this a minute ago but I'm not sure it went through! Trying it again!
Full disclosure - I've never manually accessed this page since it's on the applicants' side of the LSAC website rather than the admissions officers' side.
Log on to LSAC and then click on "Credentials and CAS" on the top.
There should be a link about seeing/viewing your transcript status.
On the next page, you should then see a link for your Academic or CAS Summary.
On that page, you'll then see your "Cumulative" GPA. That's it! That's your LSAC GPA.
@ky999 - Study abroad grades only get factored into your LSAC GPA if both credit hours AND American-style grades (eg, A, B, C, D, F) are on your transcript. If courses were Pass / Fail, this should not affect your LSAC GPA.
@JacobBaska Makes sense, thank you! Then I suppose that if an undergraduate institution does not accept dual enrollment credit to count for your bachelor's degree, then it won't count towards your LSAC GPA?
@ktacklesthelsat - Technically speaking, LSAC treats the dual enrollment classes as college classes (because that's the point of dual enrollment classes, right? that they're counting for both high school and college credit at the same time). So it shouldn't matter if your degree granting school takes the credits. Rather, it matters that you took the dual enrollment classes in the first place.
@JacobBaska perfect, I wasn’t sure if it was the cumulative or not. Thank you for the reply.
I don't know about the dual enrollment (most high school college credits i.e. AP/IB are not counted towards your LSAC GPA) but the LSAC GPA is scaled to their own metric (what courses get counted or not counted is on their website!).
My college also doesn't award A+s, and from what I've seen online, there isn't much that we can do. That's why some students have 4.2/4.33 GPAs, and some students could have 3.9/4.0 GPAs (both excellent GPAs). Unfortunately the student with a higher GPA will be recorded as such, even though it doesn't necessarily mean that a 4.2 GPA student is a better candidate than 3.9 GPA student. However, I believe that admissions are notified about whether the school awards A+s or not, and they are generally aware of this discrepancy.
Law schools will receive the CAS report from LSAC which has your scaled GPA, but I'm pretty sure that they also receive the original transcript from your school, which will have all of the information about the dual enrollment from high school and your undergraduate GPA.