International student concerns

amukherjea310

Hi.
Just joined the 7Sage.
I am from India. Currently in my second year of undergraduate studies. Would it be a wise option to pursue law in the US after my undergraduate?
Any help regarding this would be appreciated.

Alejandro

If you want to. I don't see why not! You are certainly at the right place if you want to maximize your LSAT score

Alejandro

It's going to be very hard though. So you have to commit to it 100% and all the hard work that comes with it.

Sprinkles

Would your UG degree transfer as a bachelor's degree when coming to the US? If so I don't see an issue. There's many international students pursuing law in the US.

amukherjea310

@montaha.rizeq yes it will transfer as a bachelor degree. So I'm hoping there will not be a problem.
Thankyou for encouragement. @Alejandro will surely work hard.

Rigid Designator

A tip from one international student to another - pay careful attention to maintaining your best grades at all times, regardless of whether it matters or not in your native grading system!

In the UK many courses, including my own, weighted your 3 years of study in their determination of your final overall degree classification (roughly 1:3:6). This resulted in many of us just writing off first and second year as 'coasting' years where grades didn't matter.

When credit assembly services (CAS) convert your grades to a US GPA they will not bear this in mind. All those Bs and Cs in first and second year count for just as much as all the As in your third year do. Though the UK (and other places) might discriminate between your years of study, the US doesn't, and nor will the CAS.

This mightn't apply to your case, but on the off chance that it does, and since you mention you're in second year, I thought it's worth mentioning.

And to answer your specific question - absolutely give it a shot! Being an international student shouldn't hold you back at all (all things being equal).

amukherjea310

@"Rigid Designator"
I will be sure to keep this in mind. I still did not quite understand the grade conversion yet. Pretty much novice you see. However, I have a score of 8.44 on a 10 GPA in my first year. Hoping to increase it this year of course. And push it above the 9 border. However, is this alright?

Rigid Designator

@"amukherjea310" I used http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/GPA-Calculator/ to estimate mine. Just chose the correct country from the drop down menu and it's easy to input everything from there.

And whilst I don't know that grading system, 8.44 out of 10 sounds good. Either way, the harder you work on improving it in your last 2 years the better. Every little really helps! Even improvements of as little as .1 (in the US grading system) can push you over a school's median GPA or in to their 75% percentile, both of which can make a big difference to your application.

amukherjea310

@"Rigid Designator"
Thankyou for sharing that. On conversion it showed 3.72. I'm guessing that's alright?

Rigid Designator

@"amukherjea310" yes, that's great! Plus you clearly have time to make it even better. Once you're hitting 3.8 and 3.9 you're going to be competitive almost everywhere (with an appropriately good LSAT). If you want to see how competitive it would make you at a particular school just try looking for that school's entering class profile. It's usually easy to find through their website or Google. That will give you an idea of whether your GPA would be in the top 50% of their class, or the top 25%. If you can get a GPA above the school's median that puts you in a strong position to make a good application.