San Diego Law School, Law School Admissions
Q: I recently graduated from college and wish to attend law school. My biggest concern is my GP
A: It's not a 4.0. From what I can tell law
schools are simply looking for the best with little regard for those who
are less than the best. I haven't taken the LSAT yet for fear I may not
get accepted into a school of my choice; not an Ivy League of course. My
grade point is decent just not perfect. What are my chances of getting
accepted? How can I better my chances? Or am I wasting my time?
A:First, you should take a diagnostic LSAT to assess your likely
score. Most of the major LSAT prep course companies will let
you take a free diagnostic LSAT just to see if you might be a
candidate who a course would benefit. If you are already scoring
well enough to get you into the school of your choice, then
obviously you wouldn't need to take a prep course.
Then, visit:
The Boston College Online Law School Locator
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/svp/carct/matrix.html
An excellent resource for pre-laws that helps them determine
schools within their index range, based on the common LSAT + GPA
formulas many law schools use.
You have little chance of knowing what schools you can get into until
you either take the LSAT or take a bunch of mock tests from prep
books. The LSAT is generally the major factor in admissions (depending
on the school).
Although I must say that with practice your LSAT percentile (which is
really what determines your actual LSAT score) will be close to your
SAT verbal percentile--that's IF you do a lot of practice on the logic
games and logical reasonning sections. This is because there are
certain special methods, skills , and vocabularies which are important
for the LSAT, but after learning these, it basically comes down to
what kind of reading skills and vocabulary you have--how many words
you've read in your lifetime.
Most applicants are admitted on the basis on an index score,
calculated by a formula, such as,
INDEX SCORE = (GPA times some school-dependent constant) + LSAT +
another school-dependent constant.
If you are at or above the index score for any given school, you are
in. (However, this is less certain for IVY League schools, but still
the major factor by far).
So, the bottom line is that you need to take the LSAT. By the time you
are well into your study program for the LSAT, you should have a good
idea of what your LSAT score will be and therefore which school
you'll be able to get into.
Then take a look at the admission grids for the schools you like in
the Official Guide to US Law Schools (by LAw Services, which is
available at chain bookstores--you don't even have to buy it: just
check out the pertinent schools). You look at the percent admitted for
any school for a given GPA-LSAT bracket, e.g., for Cornell it might