<p>Mmm…okay @bluebayou, the second part I disagree with. Every law school admissions officer I’ve talked to, as well as the prelaw advisor at my school, has mentioned the emphasis law school admissions place on the undergraduate transcript itself, from the degree-granting institution. On the CAS report, they’ll be able to see the GPA that that institution gave (3.89) and how it compares to other students at that school, in addition to the “cumulative GPA” from all undergraduate institutions. They’ll also be able to gauge the difficulty of coursework from the transcript (for example, from if the applicant took mostly intro courses vs. higher level).</p>
<p>You know, UPennWharton2014, if the community college won’t change your grades to W’s, you might consider writing a short (2-3 sentence) addendum describing the situation.</p>
<p>Anyway, the part that I especially disagree with is the phrase “borderline auto reject.” Most law school admissions officers seem to care much more about LSAT than GPA because of the ambiguity of the latter figure in terms of strength of program, difficulty of coursework and major, etc. A 175 LSAT is extraordinary and while it might not guarantee admission, it makes for a very strong application, regardless of GPA and soft factors. </p>
<p>The majority of top law schools assert that their approach to application review is holistic which, by definition, means there are no metrics or systematic numeric cut-offs. Obviously you don’t see the top schools taking many candidates who have below say, a 3.4-3.5, but it absolutely does happen.</p>
<p>@ariesathena Yes, yes. As I’ve established, I had not read the specifics of LSAC’s policy when I posed that question. Before reading it, the idea of their requiring students to submit pre-college transcripts struck me as counterintuitive to their purposes, my reasoning being that if law school admissions officers purport to not caring much about graduate school GPAs, that they wouldn’t particularly care about high school summer college courses either.</p>