Study Abroad and LSAC GPA

Mr. Krabs

Hi 7sagers,

I am a few years out of UG and finally ready to apply to law school (hoping for fall 2018 start). My UG institution submitted my transcript the other day, and I payed for the CAS earlier this morning to get the ball rolling. I'm a little confused about my LSAC GPA and transcript. During my junior year, I studied outside of the Untied States from August to June. Although my UG grades are not calculated with the study abroad grades, they are listed under the category of "TRANSFER CREDIT ACCEPTED BY THE INSTITUTION" with the credit information and alphabetical grade listed next to each class. For example, Economic Development is listed with 1.00 and T A-. The T denotes that it is a transfer credit. Since this was a year's worth of study it's a significant amount of credit...

Now, when I got to my Academic Summary Report on LSAC, the LSAC GPA is calculated using my other three years of UG, not the year I spent abroad. The year I spent abroad isn't even listed in the yearly row at the top of the report. Even though my total credits add up to the right amount, it looks like I wasn't doing anything for an entire year. I called LSAC earlier today, but they weren't very helpful. They said LSAC will only calculate things in your GPA if the courses were taken at U.S. institutions or a foreign institution on one of the list of approved schools.

Is this something I should consider writing a short addendum so admissions know I wasn't sitting around for a year doing nothing? Anything else I can do?

Victoria14

Hmm, I think an addendum would be your best bet. Particularly if your GPA is lower then it would've been if you factored in the year abroad. Granted, I'm also commenting cause I want to see what others say! Good luck!

Maddie D.

Hi there. What I did was ask my study abroad institution directly to mail my transcripts to LSAC (mistakenly believing that I had to). Today LSAC got back to me and noted that they'd received the transcripts from my foreign institution and that a letter would be added to my file since a) those credits were not required because I attended the institution for a year or less and b) the school didn't convert the grades and is presumably not on the list of approved institutions. Those grades did not factor into my LSAC GPA but the letter will accompany my file and a "courtesy copy" of the abroad transcript will be sent to institutions since LSAC now has it on hand. Now, I really don't think you'd have an issue here either way, but if that bit of acknowledgement would make you feel more comfortable, that may be something to look into. It's just worth restating that I requested those transcripts by mistake and I really didn't need to. I'm not sure if I'm permitted to paste text from LSAC emails on here but if you'd like, I can send you a copy of what that email said via DM about my abroad transcript.

Mr. Krabs

Thanks for your responses! This is really a frustrating policy. I'll post another comment on here if lSAC provides any additional guidance.