Hey guys,

I promise i'm normally not an idiot but today I feel like one. One of my schools transcripts just hit LSAC and I'm trying to get an idea of what my LSAC GPA is. The other transcript is just from my dual enrollment years, so it's only two grades. But I can't seem to find out where to find my actual LSAC GPA. Do I need to wait until both transcripts are in for LSAC to calculate?

Thanks in advance!

I attended the San Francisco LSAC Forum yesterday with a lot of questions regarding my status as a splitter. It was EXTREMELY helpful to talk to the school directly and to ask them how to approach my situation. It gave me both a boost in confidence, and a strategy for each individual school.

Each school repeated the typical "we have a holistic approach" mantra but then followed it up with some advice on how to show them you are a different candidate than your record might suggest.

A couple of examples;

U.C. Irvine - While they have to consider grades, they will break it down by year and history. For example; I had bad grades in 2008-2010. This was almost a decade ago, and since then I have considerable experience in the military and work force as well as a 4.0 form my undergrad college. They will draw a red line on my application to note this distinct change. Their suggestion? SEND MORE LETTERS OF REC. For someone like me, with work experience, he said it would be invaluable to receive 3-4 letters of recommendation. One from each aspect of my life (work/school/military) in order to show work ethic and to show I'm not the person I use to be. I wouldn't have known to do something like this without attending the LSAC Forum.

University of Virginia - Told me to focus on my work experience. The grades were so long ago that if I focus my application on work experience they would probably get a better idea of who I am today. This will help them to "excuse" my past discrepancies because they can see a notable change in who I am. She even gave me her contact info to reach out to her if I have more questions about this. They said while my LSAT is low (163) to submit the application, retake the LSAT, and then have them look everything over. She said I sounded like an interesting candidate and wishes all the best for me.

I am SUPER pumped to go to law school after talking to the 10 or so schools at the LSAC forum. It really helped to break down the wall between me and these schools. It helped me to understand that these people are humans, and they won't devalue you for past mistakes, if you give them a good reason to value you now.

Please, do yourself a favor if you are a splitter, and try to get to one of these forums!!!

I just finished writing my personal statement. While it is about an event that changed my life, and the way I see hard situations, I feel like I was not able to communicate that through the story. There are too many details that I feel need to be included, which leaves me with no room for "what I learned" type stuff.

Is anyone either willing to read my PS and help me incorporate that stuff, or have suggestions on how to give details of the event while saying I learned XYZ?

Basically I want to convey the messages of;

I've learned that you shouldn't judge people by their actions alone

I learned to deal with stressful situations in constructive ways

I learned the value of working with other people and relying on others

Edit: It is also a very rough draft still and a bit too long in its current state.

Does anyone have a decent indicator of how much your everything else factors into your apps? I'd have a 3.64 gpa after this semester, with some experiences like campaigns, interning for a district court judge for four months recently, being an Eagle Scout, other Scouting experiences (16 years now), and chairing/leading a strong nonprofit in my community for almost a year

Hi 7sage community!

It's the night before the Los Angeles LSAC Forum and I'm a bit nervous. Have any of you attended these forums before? I'm what I hope to be a splitter (low gpa, high lsat), so I assume the networking might come in handy.

I'm just not sure what to even ask them, though. When you approach the table, do you introduce yourself and briefly talk about yourself? Do you jump right into questions?

Do you have any ideas for questions, aside from ones geared toward the school's programs?

Let me know. Thanks, so much.

I recently emailed back a forth with the admissions office at UofM, and I thought the correspondence might be useful for those of us retesting in December.

Tldr; Apply as soon as you can, if you improve your score they will reevaluate you for both admittance and scholarships.

Me:

My question is about the process of applying now and then potentially updating my application if I do in fact raise my LSAT score. I would like to apply as early as possible both for admission and to put myself in the best possible position for scholarships. Is there any disadvantage to applying and then updating vs simply waiting to submit any materials until my application is complete?

UofM:

Thanks for your e-mail and your interest in Michigan Law. I would encourage you to submit your application as soon as you can. If you submit your completed application before the December LSAT scores are released, because you have a score from a previous administration, we would consider your application to be complete and we would begin to process your application and place it into our queue for our reviewers. It's possible that our reviewers could be ready to consider your file before a December score became available. If our reviewers were inclined to admit you, then they would do so without waiting. If they were considering a negative decision, then they would know to wait for your December score before finalizing that decision.

Me:

I do have one follow-up question. When would scholarship allocation be decided? At the same time as admittance/denial, or later? Would this follow a similar system of being evaluated initially based on my score on record and then adjusted later if my December score becomes relevant?

UofM:

All our admitted students are automatically considered for merit-based scholarships, and yes, this does typically occur a bit after the admissions decision is made (scholarship decisions generally start rolling out in January while admissions decisions have typically started coming out earlier than that). We do also have a mechanism to consider any updated LSAT scores for scholarship decisions, even if we made a previous determination.

Sorry for the curt title, not enough room for politely asking for advice :P

Anyways

I emailed her a month ago, and she only responded now. Furthermore, she said she could only write one after January.

I already got two LORs from other professors so I don't exactly need it. That being said, I'd still like to have it just in case. How should I respond?

I am a senior at an "average" college, and I have a 3.99 GPA. I am a transfer student, so my combined GPA is a 3.8. I am aiming for a 170 on the LSAT, but I wouldn't be surprised if I wound up closer to a 165. Anyway, I am concerned that I won't get into schools that look for decently high LSAT scores unless I score well above the median score... like maybe I will need the 75th percentile score to get in without scholarship. I'm just wondering if anyone else has had this issue or if anyone has any thoughts on it.

Hey guys,

How long does it normally take for you guys to have your transcripts uploaded to LSAC? I had my school send my transcript on 10/17 and it's yet to hit LSAC. Help a stressed-food-posioned-yet-still-at-work girl out lol

Victoria

How individualized/tailored should the reference letters be? I already feel bad enough that my references took the time and effort out of their busy schedules to write one general reference letter for me...

So someone told me that we are required to fill out FAFSA for law school. Does anyone know if this is true and if so by when are we suppose to do this? before or after the application.

My essay is about how I overcame insecure instincts that tried to keep me from a volunteering experience. The experience ended up being worthwhile and made me a more confident person.

Here's an issue that an editor friend brought up. While I described the experience of insecurity in what I felt was enough detail (e.g., "I'm such an awkward person, I thought."), my friend said that it didn't constitute a compelling internal obstacle. She suggested that I add an explanation for why I was so insecure.

While I can certainly understand her reasoning, my issue is that my experience with insecurity was more like personality trait, like shyness. It's really difficult to explain. In any case, I think showing how I got over this internal personality issue is more important than why it existed in the first place.

So what do y'all think?

Hey I was just wondering for those schools that say they want their personal statement to be two pages, would they hold it against you if you went a paragraph or two over the two pages?

I am the worlds most boring individual.

https://media.giphy.com/media/Dbo31UlQgVIdO/giphy.gif

So...how did you guys decided what to write about? The obvious choice for me is to write about the military, but that feels like such a cop out. I've tried to brainstorm other, more interesting ideas, but I'm basically the king of boring town. How did you get the juices flowing?

Hi all,

Do we really not need to address why we want to attend law school for schools that don't specifically ask for an answer in their PS prompt? It doesn't neatly fit into my PS, but one of my recommenders strongly suggested I include it.

Thanks!

I've gathered that unless there are extremely extenuating circumstances, it's better not to write an actual addendum for a change in GPA or a particularly bad semester. My question: will a significantly upward GPA trend, or high GPA within-majors, automatically be noticed/sifted out by admissions committees when they look at my transcript, or is it worth noting that in a line on the resume (I'd just put something like GPA last two years: 3.8; in-major GPA: 3.85 on the same line as my undergraduate education) or somewhere similarly small?

So I need to write an addendum for two separate issues it would seem.

The first issue is I need to explain my GPA. I had really bad grades, a long break, and then a 4.0 GPA. This leaves me with a cumulative GPA of 2.7 which I feel I need to explain.

The second issue is that it seems schools would like an addendum that details how I will be a recipient of the Yellow Ribbon Program (tuition coverage program for vets).

Would you write two separate addenda for this or combine it into one?

I have three LORs (all from professors) and I'm confident in two of them. The third I'm sure is good but I imagine it's not as good as the other two. Should I still assign all three, or just the two?

Two questions in this one:

I know that professional letters are acceptable as long as you've been out of school for some time. I graduated in 2015 and have been working at a large, well-known company since then. I think that my manager could provide a strong rec letter accounting for my time since graduation. I have one strong academic reference, but the other professors I plan on asking for rec letters don't know me as well as my manager does. Given my situation, what would carry more weight for a law school---a strong second letter from a manager or a second letter from a professor whose class I did well/participated in, but who doesn't know me as well?

I was a TA for a semester in college, but being a TA was technically counted as a class. I had to learn all of the material that I was teaching on top of participating in weekly meetings with the course professor and the other TA's. In these meetings, we learned how to teach classes made sure we understood the material for the week. We were also graded. If I ask this professor for a reference, would it count as academic?

When you attach an addendum to an application, it asks you to describe it. Should you just write "Character and Fitness Addendum" for example or should you include your LSAC number? Similarly, when you save the file with the addendum what should you title it as?

I had a friend who told me that everyone has something interesting to say about themselves, and for a long time I wasn't a big believer in that. I thought that I could never think of a good personal statement because my life was too normal and boring, but I whipped one up and after ps swapping with a lot of people the past two days, I definitely feel a lot more inspired so I wanted to pass that on to anyone who was feeling the way I did.

I didn't think my statement was anything special, but I've gotten pretty positive feedback which has given me more confidence, and everyone's I've read has also been great! Even if the writing isn't 100% there yet, every single topic that I've read about has been super unique and so different from my own point of view, and now I really do believe that everyone has something they could write about to make a great personal statement. So good luck!! And feel free to let me know if you want to ps swap :)

Hey All,

My law school applications require me to specify how many hours I worked per job, and I also want to mention that in my addendum as well. I cannot remember exactly how many hours I worked for one particular job. I remember that it fluctuated (It started off somewhere in the ballpark of 8-12 hours a week and then it increased later as I needed to make more money. It could have been anywhere from 15 to 25 hours...I don't remember). I left this job around 4 years ago and I've had a good amount of jobs since. Is anyone else having trouble remembering these details? How should I address this?

Thanks!

I worked 35+ hours while finishing up community college and then 15+ hours while full time at university. Went from unpaid intern to paid receptionist to legal assistant and received a raise.

Two days ago I began studying for the lsat. I have never opened a book on the test or had any kind of previous experience with it. I just wanted to see where I was at initially. I made a 146, I was pretty upset. I want to make a 160, is this 14 point jump reasonable to assume I can do that with 4 months of preparation? I’m sorry but I don’t know much about the test in that aspect. Any thoughts?

Anyone game for a PS swap?

I'm about to hand my PS off to my LOR people and feel like it needs a final and brutal review. Anyone interested in a swap?

Comment below and i'll PM you!