Scientific research- important or not? Community college transfers vs LSAC

olioliber

Hi!
Two questions:
One: I have been doing neuroscience research for 2.5 years and have 3 publications (coauthored) coming out. One possibility in Nature. My worry is that all of this will only make a mediocre soft for law schools. Any of you have had experience with how do law schools count this "extracurricular?"

Two: I received an associate degree in dental hygiene from a community college. They had a completely different grading system ( A-93% , B85%) no +_... how will this transfer on LSAC? Also I retook 3 classes and only have the second grades showing on my transfer to the 4 yr college. The first takes show as zero hours zero credits.
Thanks!
Anxious lsater

Positive

as far as I understand, the admission committee will mostly look at your LSAC gpa(cumulative gpa for all colleges you attended) but not degree gpa(where you earned your first BA/BS, in your case, your gpa after earning your associate degree from CC).

That said, your community college will be converted to a 4.0 gpa scale in calculating for LSAC gpa. A- will be 3.67 and B will be 3.0

Please refer to the below for more information:
https://www.lsac.org/aboutlsac/policies/transcript-summarization

TheMikey

Your community college stuff will count. LSAC has their own formula/rules when converting your LSAC GPA, you can go to their website to refer to that even more if you want.

Your softs are average I believe. Most of your admissions outcome will be based on LSAT/GPA, but your softs could be helpful. But yeah, I don't think schools will see your softs as anything but average, which is not a bad thing because from experience I know it's hard to have them think of someone's softs as above average lol

olioliber

Ok. I do know the LSAC rules and understand that they will count everything. What I'm asking about is how do they count a PROFFESIONAL cc program that has a DIFFERENT grading scale than regular cc and 4 yr college?

TheMikey

@oberdysz said:
Ok. I do know the LSAC rules and understand that they will count everything. What I'm asking about is how do they count a PROFFESIONAL cc program that has a DIFFERENT grading scale than regular cc and 4 yr college?

oh, sorry if I misunderstood.

the credits that you received from that professional program, did they count towards your overall undergraduate bachelors degree? if yes, then no matter what grading system that school or program has, LSAC will convert it based on their own rules just like other UG classes.

olioliber

Can someone also explain to me how the retakes work?

TheMikey

@oberdysz said:
Can someone also explain to me how the retakes work?

The classes you retook, they were retaken at the 4 yr college but you took them first at the CC, correct? but only the retakes are shown on your 4 yr transcript right? the main question is, are the first time grades shown on your CC transcript though? if so, it doesn't matter if the first time grades aren't shown on your 4 yr transcript since you must submit all transcripts and they will definitely be counted. Now if for some reason your first time grades are not on your CC transcript (which would likely not be the case), then they won't be factored into your LSAC GPA.

From LSAC:
All grades and credits earned for repeated courses will be included in the GPA calculation if the course units and grades appear on the transcript. A line drawn through course information or a grade does not eliminate the course from GPA calculation if the course units appear on the transcript.
https://www.lsac.org/aboutlsac/policies/transcript-summarization

olioliber

They were retaken at cc and only one grade transferred . The other shows 0 for credits and 0 for grade. And thanks for replies btw!

TheMikey

@oberdysz said:
They were retaken at cc and only one grade transferred . The other shows 0 for credits and 0 for grade. And thanks for replies btw!

No prob, just trying to help

Hmmmm. The actual grade says 0 instead of like A,B,C, etc? if so, I don't know if people here might be much help in clarifying that, especially considering that program had a specific grading system, so I think your best bet for that question would be to call LSAC and ask them. They're pretty helpful when it comes to answering stuff like that, so just give them a call!