Latin honors?

ilovethelsat

Hi,

I'm about to graduate from a top ten school. I'm taking a couple of hard classes this last semester and my GPA has the potential to suffer a bit. Worst case, I'll graduate with a 3.85 unweighted (without the A+s included) and a 3.92 weighted (CAS GPA, with the A+s included), which will put me in the cum laude group. I'm a bit nervous because I had the potential to graduate with a 3.88 and magna cum laude. Does cum laude vs. magna cum laude vs. summa cum laude matter in the admissions process for law school? In other words, can a cum laude (as opposed to magna/summa) get into a top 3 law school (assuming they have a high enough LSAT of course)?

Thanks so much!

MissChanandler

Different schools have different cutoffs for the various honors. What matters is your actual GPA, not so much the honors. A 3.92 is better than a 3.88 because it's a higher GPA, not because it comes with the higher Latin honor

eRetaker

Agree with @MissChanandler , latin honors makes negligible difference. The only reason a magna might do better than a cum laude is because of the GPA difference, not because of the title. In your case, a 3.92 is above every school's median so just do decently well on your LSAT and you should see some very good results.

Cant Get Right

I don't think the answer to the question should have much impact on your efforts. If law schools do care about latin honors, you should invest every effort in acing those tough classes. If they only care about the GPA, you should invest every effort in acing those tough classes.

ilovethelsat

Yes, all of that makes sense! Thanks everyone!!