<p>I don’t want this thread to sound apologetic, but I do have some questions about GPA.
This semester, I’m a freshman (pretty concerned one, too) and took challenging courses. I thought I could handle them, but I guess it was just my ego talking. I go to a good liberal arts school (top ten) and enrolled in three honors classes (out of four). My GPA will be around a 2.8
I’m regretting my course choices because if I had taken a lower level math course – I took honors multi-variable calc, though I’m a poli sci major – dropped down a few levels in foreign lang, and hadn’t taken the honors section of political science, I could easily have pulled off a great GPA. But I didn’t… and I’m wondering if I’ll suffer now because of it.
Thanks guys</p>
<p>For the most part, law schools don’t care and they often don’t even know about the difficulty of the classes you take. This does not work in your favor, but the good news is your status of mid-year freshman; you have sufficient time to raise your GPA.</p>
<p>yellowburst,</p>
<p>One of the best $50 you will ever spend will be on the purchase on the following 2 books;</p>
<p>How to Get into the Top Law Schools by Richard Montauk (which is a very comprehensive book over 500) that discusses the process from beginning to end. Chapter 8 discusses your academic credentials here is an excerpt:</p>
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<p>the other book I recommend is Anna Ivey’s Guide to Law School Admissions. It is a quick read, but has a lot of useful information.</p>
<p>Anna Ivey (former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School) also has a blog. This is her advice to Freshmen/Sophmores.</p>
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<p>Yeesh, that’s a great post sybbie!:)</p>
<p>hey thanks, sybbie! that’s good info
i got my transcript and i ended up with a 3.083, which isn’t great, but at least it wasn’t a 2.8.
Blaze, are you sure that law schools don’t take into account the types of classes i take? it seems ridiculous that I struggled to get a B- in calc three honors, when i could have spent half the effort in calc one or two and aced it (i got a five in calc bc and a 780 SAT I math score, so calc 1 or 2 would have been fairly easy). surely, a B in advanced spanish looks better than an A in intro spanish? or a B+ in honors gov than an A- in intro gov?</p>
<p>Ideally, one should be rewarded for taking a challenging course load. Unfortunately, law schools largely ignore the level of difficulty of your course load and focus on that one number called GPA. They are numbers driven, and they strive for a high ranking in US News. </p>
<p>A good example is a comparison between an applicant with a 170 LSAT and a 3.7 GPA in a fluffy major and an applicant with a 170 LSAT and a 3.3 in a difficult major. The applicant with the 3.7 GPA is in much better shape, even though he/she may have gotten a 3.3 or worse had he/she taken a difficult major.</p>
<p>Imagine being a law school admissions counselor and having to find some objective way to assess each and every course that each and every university in the country had to offer. It’d be impossible to do in a reasonable, fair manner. What would you do, control for SAT score and then assess GPA? Take surveys to see how much time they took? Assume that engineering classes are easier than computer science, or vice-versa? What would you do about the politically-correct ethnic studies departments, which are considered easier, since penalizing them would open you up to charges of discrimination?</p>
<p>I can see where one might argue, “Well, they should try and improve at least a little.” But it’d be an impossible task to do even reasonably well, and putting in all that work to be accused of a biased process – well, better to do no work and preside over an incomplete one.</p>
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<p>Still, there are some programs that are reputed for their difficulty or ease. Admissions officers at top law schools know about these programs. Social studies at Harvard is an example that Anna Ivey cites as being fluffy in terms of grading, and it is a program that top schools know about.</p>
<p>…is one of the few selective majors at Harvard. Its grads do quite well. I only know a few–most of whom have gone to either Yale or Harvard Law. They’ve done very well there too.</p>
<p>Yes, top law schools know about it …in a good way. The median earned gpa tends to be high because the bottom half the class can’t major in social studies. (And, for the record, neither I nor my favorite law student were social studies majors at Harvard.)</p>
<p>Again, though, let’s say H’s SS progam is known to be fluffy. Do you penalize them? What about all the fluffy, unfamous programs out there? Do you punish Harvard for being well-known? Etc.</p>
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This is relatively easy to do. Just say a GPA in Engineering is worth .2 over a normal GPA. You could make it exceedingly complicated if you wanted to compare classes, professors, schools, etc. However, the simple fact of the matter is that Math/Physics/Engineering is pretty tough and the absolute minimum they should be awarded GPA wise is .2. If the school has bad results after 1-2 years with this technique they can simply adjust this additive to be smaller (or greater). This is a very simplistic system and I’m sure they do similar things for differences in schools.</p>
<p>Why .2? What about MIT vs. Harvard engineering? What about unknown majors? What about the implicit penalty for classes in ethnic studies, the politically correct darling of many legal types? What about the de facto bias that will occur against women and minorities, who are fewer in those fields?</p>
<p>You just can’t do those things without having the evidence to back them. You can’t arbitrarily set cutoffs like this without getting criticized – yes, unfairly, but what are you going to do – from the litiginous (sp?) types who pay attention to the admissions process.</p>
<p>And, moreover, this will affect your all-important (sarcasm) US News ranking, since you’ll be doing something other than taking the numerically strongest class available to you.</p>
<p>The .2 is arbitrary. It could be .1 or .3 or .5 or 1.0. Whatever the school eventually decides. If this GPA boost doesn’t help improve student quality then they can eliminate it easily.</p>
<p>Why can’t any school simply do this on a whim? They aren’t gonna get sued. GPA differentiation via major is certainly less inflammatory than AA, and virtually all schools do that. </p>
<p>You are making problems out of very small issues. Unknown majors? Is it a technical major? If yes, give it a boost. If not, don’t. MIT vs. Harvard engineering? Give them the same boost. Admission policies have inherent unknowns, trying to eliminate them will be futile.</p>
<p>And all schools routinely do stuff to not take the numerically strongest classes available. AA, etc.</p>