Self-study
I was just wondering, when law schools (specifically in USA), calculate GPA, do they just look at the letter grades and convert that using that LSAC scale and ignore the percentages? And if so doesn't that give an advantage to schools where an A+ is a 90% instead of the high 90s?
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Hi there,
Law schools rely on LSAC to calculate a standardized LSAC GPA based on your undergraduate transcript. You'll submit your transcript to LSAC using their Credential Assembly Service. If your college provides letter grades on the transcript, then LSAC just looks at those letter grades and assigns a number between 0 and 4.33 to the individual class grade (from 0 for F to 4.33 for A+). They do not take the percentage into account unless that is how grades are reported on the official transcript. LSAC then takes an average of those numbers to arrive at your LSAC GPA, which is included in the CAS report that all your law schools will receive.
You can read more about LSAC's GPA calculation and even see how it corresponds to your college's grading system here.
Unfortunately, you're right that this system gives an advantage to students at schools that award A+'s or that have lower thresholds to earning an A+, especially compared to students at schools that do not award A+'s at all. Though law schools do place significant weight on the LSAC GPA itself, they will also look at other data that are included in the CAS report, including the percentage of students from your specific university with similar grades, and they'll look closely at your transcript to get a fuller sense of your academic achievements.
@RobertCarlson Does the LSAC GPA only really change if you 1- Have transfer grades & 2- Did bad on a class / failed a class and had to retake it?
@RobertCarlson What if the transcript shows the percentage with an accompanying letter grade, will they just use the letter grade?
@Catpop Speaking from the admissions standpoint, the only times that someone's "degree GPA" (ie, the final GPA on the transcript from their degree granting school) and their LSAC GPA are different are:
People who transferred
People who retook a class (LSAC only counts the first grade, while a lot of undergrad schools may allow for you to erase the first grade and just take the second)
People who took dual enrollment classes in high school
There are a few other minor matters that can skew things (like LSAC sometimes has a funky conversion for schools on the quarter system) but those are the biggies!
@Jha1ak_111 It depends on who's the "we" that you're talking about!
LSAC does NOT take into account the curve of a class. They just look at the grade. That's the only thing that they take into account when producing the GPA that gets factored into a law school's median.
As an admissions officer, I look at your grades and I also take into account the curve. If I see that you got a B+ but you were still in the top 10% of the class, I interpret that as "I guess that's a pretty rough grade curve." While I can't change your grade or your GPA, I do take that context into account when evaluating matters.