A very uninteresting GPA question.

vorodm01

Hey guys,

I am graduating from college in the Spring of 2017. My projected GPA will be around 3.7 or 3.69.
Does it make a difference for law school admissions to have a GPA of 3.7 as opposed to 3.69?

Thank you.

Sprinkles

Not as much as a 3.5/6 vs. 3.7 imo.

Alex

@vorodm01 said:

I am graduating from college in the Spring of 2017. My projected GPA will be around 3.7 or 3.69.
Does it make a difference for law school admissions to have a GPA of 3.7 as opposed to 3.69?

Thank you.

Yes. It does make a difference. How much? Probably not too much, but it does depend on your target school's GPA percentiles. I know for some of the top schools where the GPA 50th%-tiles are right around a 3.7 it would make more of a difference.

Sprinkles

Honestly @"Alex Divine" I think you'd know more about t14 than me lol. Would they really hold someone accountable for not even a whole point away from their median or 75th percentile?

vorodm01

@"Alex Divine" And that was exactly where I was getting: 3.69 is "around" 3.7. So I was curious, how much of a difference does 0.1 point make in the first place. Since, I would think that 0.1 GPA point is a pretty negligible difference. Would someone really think that 3.68 is that much better than 3.67 GPA?

Alex

@montaha.rizeq said:
Honestly @"Alex Divine" I think you'd know more about t14 than me lol. Would they really hold someone accountable for not even a whole point away from their median or 75th percentile?

Yeah, the cut-offs seem pretty sharp for some of the T6/T14. Now of course, the deviations are going to be contingent on LSAT scores, but if we are talking all things being equal, being even a .01 below the medians can matter a bit. You can see this by playing around with MyLSN.info. Again it is the "how much" it matters question that I can't quantify. And all points don't seem to be equal either. It seems a lot like comparing a 169 to a 170. Getting over that 170 hump seems to really have a difference. This difference is of course magnified when talking about the top schools.

@vorodm01 said:
@"Alex Divine" And that was exactly where I was getting: 3.69 is "around" 3.7. So I was curious, how much of a difference does 0.1 point make in the first place. Since, I would think that 0.1 GPA point is a pretty negligible difference. Would someone really think that 3.68 is that much better than 3.67 GPA?

I know, I see what you are saying. Though a 0.1 is not negligible vis-a-vis law school GPAs. Perhaps you mean .01? If so, that makes obviously much less of a difference.

The thing is that how much it matters isn't static; like I said, it is going to depend on the your target schools and LSAT to some extent.

If you apply to a school where the median GPA is a ~3.69 it will matter less than it does if you apply to Columbia where the median is 3.7.... See what I'm saying. It is relative to an extent. Also, the higher your LSAT the less the GPA being a .01 away from 3.7 will matter as well.

If you'd like to give me an idea of your target school(s) I can better quantify exactly how much it will matter.

My GPA is exactly .01 below Yale's 50th%tile and I wondered the same thing for a while. So I kind of asked around and did some research on Mylsn.info and played around with some numbers. It does seem to matter, but the closer your LSAT is to the 75th%tile the less it seems to matter.

Sprinkles

You da man Mr. Divine!

Alex

@montaha.rizeq said:
You da man Mr. Divine!

combsni

It depends on the school and strength of the cycle. Especially at the top 14 Schools, other factors play a large role in whether you get in. I had a friend get in to Georgetown with a 3.0 and 163 but other things put him over. Granted he had one year where he had under a 2.0 and he explained to the university that both of his parents died but he also had very strong letters of recommendation, was the president of a fraternity, and had very good internship experiences.