The most common reason is how LSAC handles retaken courses. Your school may have replaced a failing grade with your retake score, but LSAC counts both attempts. The original grade stays in the calculation. Both grades drag your CAS GPA down.

LSAC also includes every undergraduate institution you attended, not just your main school. Community college credits, transfer coursework, and dual enrollment classes all count. Your school may have left some of those out of its own GPA calculation. LSAC doesn't.

The third factor is academic forgiveness. Many schools let you retake a class and wipe the original grade from your GPA. LSAC doesn't honor those policies. If the grade appears on your transcript, it's in the calculation.

There's one case where your CAS GPA can actually come out higher: if your school awards A+ grades. Most schools count an A+ as a 4.0. LSAC converts it to 4.33 using its grading scale, which can nudge your number up. For most students though, the retaken courses and credits from multiple schools push it down.

If your number came out lower than expected, plug it into the admissions predictor to see where you realistically stand.

Here is how the LSAC converts grades

Yes. "CAS GPA" and "LSAC GPA" are two names for the same number. CAS stands for Credential Assembly Service, which is the official system LSAC uses to collect and process your application documents. When LSAC runs your grades through that system, the result gets called either a CAS GPA or an LSAC GPA depending on who's writing about it. You'll see both terms on admissions forums, prep sites, and school websites. They mean the same thing, so don't let the different names confuse you.

No. According to LSAC's transcript summarization rules, graduate and professional school grades are not included in your CAS GPA. The cutoff is your first bachelor's degree conferral date. Everything completed before that date counts. Everything after does not. That said, law schools still see your graduate transcripts. You're required to send them to LSAC, and admissions committees will review them. A strong grad school record can help your application as a soft factor, but it won't move your CAS GPA number. If you want personalized guidance on how to position graduate work in your application, 7Sage's admissions consulting team works through this with applicants regularly.

Yes, but not before you submit your transcripts to LSAC. Once you subscribe to CAS and send your transcripts for processing, LSAC will show you your CAS GPA. Applying to schools is a separate step you take after that.

The catch is cost and time. Subscribing to CAS and submitting official transcripts takes money and typically several weeks to process. This calculator lets you get a reliable estimate right now, before any of that. It uses the same 4.33 grade scale and credit-hour weighting LSAC applies, so your result here should be close to your official number. Once you have your estimate, compare it against real school medians to start building your list.

Yes, and this surprises a lot of applicants. LSAC includes both the original grade and the retake grade in your CAS GPA. Your school may have removed the first grade through a forgiveness policy, but LSAC's rules are clear: if both grades appear on your transcript, both count toward your GPA. That applies even if your school's own GPA only reflects the second attempt. There is one exception. If the original grade was fully removed from the official transcript document, LSAC won't count it. The rule is simple: if it's on the transcript, it's in the calculation.

Very accurate. The calculator uses the same 4.33 grade scale and credit-hour weighting that LSAC applies to every applicant. For standard letter-grade transcripts from U.S. institutions, your result will match your official CAS GPA.

One exception: if your school uses a non-standard grading system such as high pass / pass / low pass, this calculator doesn't apply. Those systems don't use letter grades, so there's nothing to convert. If that's your situation, check the LSAC Interpretive Guide to Undergraduate Grading Systems to understand how your transcript will be handled.

No. Law school admissions is holistic review, not a cutoff system. A low CAS GPA makes a strong application harder to build, but it doesn't make one impossible. Your LSAT score carries significant weight, and a high score can partially offset a below-median GPA at many schools. Work experience, a compelling personal statement, and a well-written GPA addendum all give context to a difficult academic stretch. The 7Sage admissions predictor shows how applicants with your specific GPA and LSAT combination have actually fared at each school. That's more useful than any general rule of thumb. If you're concerned about your number, our free admissions resources are a good place to start building a realistic school list.