How important is difficulty of schedule in law school admissions?

[sybbie719]

<p>Please go back and read through Taylorsmith’s answer.</p>

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2. Will a person who takes a relatively easy courseload (presumably because a large amount of AP credit allows them two) who graduates in four years or less be given some slack in terms of law school admissions for their less rigorous schedule? This is the predicament I am in right now. I have a ton of AP and retroactive credits now as a second semester sophmore, so I’m only taking 13-15 credits semester but will easily graduate on time at this rate.

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<p>Answer:</p>

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</p>

<p>Low-credit courseloads, as well as light content couseloads may definitely impact an applicant in the admissions process. Bluedevilmike is correct in that **law school admissions officers don’t usually look up the difficulty of coursework, but at the same time, our familiary with reviewing transcripts from certain schools comes into play, and we know when an applicant is taking an advanced level class, or an upper-level seminar. **Often times, an applicant asks for a letter of recommendation from that class’ professor, making it easy to figure out. We also are familiar with a transcript where an applicant loads up on electives such as “jogging”, which wouldn’t be calculated in the LSDAS GPA anyway.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Take a balanced program of coursework, **with at least one or two seriously challenging courses per semester. **</p></li>
<li><p>Be concerned with GPA, but not to the point that it results in a less-than-balanced-program. Its too simplistic to just say “you need a high GPA” because you don’t know what your LSAT is, and if your LSAT is lower, you’ll need to show that your academic program has some meat to it.</p></li>
<li><p>Be less concerned with double majors and minors, and focus more on taking classes with topics and areas of interest that expose you to a range of both legal topics, and non-legal social science, science, and humanities themes.

</p></li>
</ol>

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3. What law school do you represent?

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I am fine letting a moderator know, but I will not name my school pubically once this is verified…at least at this particular point in time. The goal here isn’t to promote my school.

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<p>There are also a number of threads which address the graduating early issue:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/384537-age-graduating-early-little-twist.html#post4592806[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/384537-age-graduating-early-little-twist.html#post4592806&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/362168-maturity-level.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/362168-maturity-level.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/262349-3-year-undergraduate.html#post3219373[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/262349-3-year-undergraduate.html#post3219373&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/152163-graduating-early-college.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/152163-graduating-early-college.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/100637-ba-vs-bba-graduating-3-years-just-lots-questions.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/100637-ba-vs-bba-graduating-3-years-just-lots-questions.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;