For Canadians - OLSAS calculating your GPA incorrectly...??

kshutes13

Hi all,

Just went onto OLSAS (for those who don't know, it's the Canadian system where you submit law school applications in Ontario) because I heard that the calculation they make for your GPA went up.

...... It says I have a 3.48 GPA. I've heard that OLSAS can bring down people's GPA, but I graduated my university "With Distinction" which meant that I had an overall 80%+ average over my four years at uni. According to the OLSAS chart, that should warrant a 3.7 GPA. (I am in column #3 - https://www.ouac.on.ca/guide/olsas-conversion-table/)

I'm pretty nervous because I relied on having that GPA as a strong part of my application, as I know I won't be getting a super competitive score on the LSAT. I've already messaged OLSAS but they haven't gotten back to me yet.

Has anyone had experience with this? Is this the GPA that Canadian law schools use to consider your application, or do they still calculate it themselves/look at your transcript?

LivePumpkin

Hey, I’ve heard of others experiencing similar problems and contacting OLSAS usually resulted in a fix. Did you try and manually calculate your OLSAS GPA (calculating it per course and divide it by the number of courses you have taken)? And considering it’s almost the holidays, they may not be answering until January.

kshutes13

@LivePumpkin said:
Hey, I’ve heard of others experiencing similar problems and contacting OLSAS usually resulted in a fix. Did you try and manually calculate your OLSAS GPA (calculating it per course and divide it by the number of courses you have taken)? And considering it’s almost the holidays, they may not be answering until January.

@LivePumpkin They eventually answered me and said it wasn't an error ... it was simply how OLSAS converts GPA -_- They said rather than calculating a four-year average by percentage and then converting that percentage to a GPA (i.e. 80% overall = 3.7 GPA), they calculate the average of every single grade by GPA standards (i.e. Course X was a 3.5, Course Z was a 3.8, Course Y was a 3.3) and that becomes your 'overall' GPA. Just annoyed because they also said that it's up to each individual law school if they just want to take the GPA that OLSAS provides, or go look at the transcript themselves. So I could very well be screwed!!

I haven't calculated by OLSAS GPA yet... I'll get on that tomorrow and see if I come up with any different results.

PARHAM1373

Same issue for me

ParnianS

I have the same exact problem. I graduated with distinction from my university with an 82.5% average over all 4 years - which should be considered a 3.7 cGPA, though reported by OLSAS as 3.55. I'm going to be calling the Canadian universities I applied to see if they use the OLSAS cGPA or calculate their own - I'll try and post it here if I figure it out!

doyouevenLSAT

mine was exactly the same as u of t's calculator.

BlaineC30

They're going to use the OLSAS gpa.

kshutes13

@ParnianS said:
I have the same exact problem. I graduated with distinction from my university with an 82.5% average over all 4 years - which should be considered a 3.7 cGPA, though reported by OLSAS as 3.55. I'm going to be calling the Canadian universities I applied to see if they use the OLSAS cGPA or calculate their own - I'll try and post it here if I figure it out!

@ParnianS That's such a bummer. Hopefully they can see past it. What Canadian schools did you apply to? If you end up hearing back from them, let me know what they say. I applied to Osgoode, U of T, Western, Queen's, Ottawa and UBC.

kshutes13

@BlaineC30 said:
They're going to use the OLSAS gpa.

~le sigh~