Low Law School GPA...How Damaging?

[Smiler]

So I was hoping someone could comment on the weight that adcoms will place on my low law school gpa. I currently have a 2.9 but it is very possible that it will drop to maybe 2.7ish. I am planning on staying in law school though and then working for 1-2 years before commencing my postbac studies. My undergrad gpa (non science major) was 3.86, so there is quite a contrast between the 2 gpa's, but law school gpa is different than college gpa. In fact, the curve at my law school is a B (3.0). Hypothetically speaking, and setting aside my future mcat score and EC's, how big of a problem will my law school gpa be if I get around 3.5 in postbac? Also, I am interested in both DO and MD programs. Thanks.

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[JKinSC]

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[yankswin2011]

So I was hoping someone could comment on the weight that adcoms will place on my low law school gpa. I currently have a 2.9 but it is very possible that it will drop to maybe 2.7ish. I am planning on staying in law school though and then working for 1-2 years before commencing my postbac studies. My undergrad gpa (non science major) was 3.86, so there is quite a contrast between the 2 gpa's, but law school gpa is different than college gpa. In fact, the curve at my law school is a B (3.0). Hypothetically speaking, and setting aside my future mcat score and EC's, how big of a problem will my law school gpa be if I get around 3.5 in postbac? Also, I am interested in both DO and MD programs. Thanks.

I think you should try to get your law school GPA up just because you don't want them wondering why you struggled in law school. You can do all the explaining you want about how the grade curve was 3.0 but honestly, when they have so many applicants, they may miss this 3.0 curve. In general, anything lower than 3.0 kinda looks bad. Obviously, you can explain your way out of it but the best remedy is to have a strong GPA so you don't have to explain yourself at all. Since you're still in law school, you have time to improve your GPA. I think a 3.2-3.3 is sufficient, but you never want to apply to medical school with a law school GPA around 2.9 --> at the end of the day, no matter how great of an excuse you have, they have so many qualified applicants that they don't have to take a "risk" on you. Good luck.

 

[Dr Oops]

I dont think it will be a big problem they usually dont give as much weight to other grad grades. As long as you do well in your post bacc i dont see it being a problem. Although, make sure that your grades are low because you just dont care about law school and not because the work is too hard. If you dont do well in the postbac youve blown your last chance at a US med school.

 

[yankswin2011]

I dont think it will be a big problem they usually dont give as much weight to other grad grades. As long as you do well in your post bacc i dont see it being a problem. Although, make sure that your grades are low because you just dont care about law school and not because the work is too hard. If you dont do well in the postbac youve blown your last chance at a US med school.

I wouldn't tell them that your law school grades are low because you "judt dont care about law school." Saying that you didn't care about law school yet spent a lot of time and investment getting into law school shows poor judgment. You're going to show up in the interview and say, yeah, my low GPA in law school was because I just didn't care about law school, not because I didn't work hard. Wow, that's poor judgment again.

They can easily infer that, well, heck, if this guy didnt care about law school, there's a possibility (however small) that he might not care about medical school once he got in. I mean, there's so many qualified applicants out there that medical schools don't need to take a "risk" on you to find out whether you will or will not do well. Unfortunately, law school is more comparable to medical school than a grad degree in philosophy, in the sense that you are going up against the best and the brightest and if you couldn't hack it in law school, it's the same crop of overachievers in medical school, you might not be able to hack it in medical school. You should be the best possible applicant you can be and any doubts or question marks on your record should be mitigated. At the end of the day, a low GPA does not instill confidence.

It's like going on a job interview saying oh I got fired from my last job because I just didn't care, not because I didn't work hard. It's a hard argument to make and prevail on.

It's better to say, hey, I gave it my all, worked extremely hard but did not get a good grade -- this was a sign that maybe law wasn't meant for me. That's a much easier story to justify because science/medicine is an application in reasonable certainty whereas law is an application in advocacy/persuasion/writing so it's 2 entirely different skillset. Law is about oral argument, persuading others through reasoning and logic, thinking quick on your feet, public speaking, spinning the story that favors your client, being dynamic and charismatic in front of an audience (i.e. Obama). Medicine is not.


The other story just reeks, when the going got tough, I just gave up.

 

[JDMD2016]

Hello Smiler,
I am in much the same situation. I am currently studying for the California Bar and plan to start my postbacs in Fall. It is honestly hard for non-lawyers to understand the law school GPA issues, I am in the same boat although I had a fairly decent rank.

I have asked this to several sources and their answer was that it comes down to bostbac grades and mcat when calculating the academic value of your application. I plan on dedicating no more than couple of sentences in my personal statement to the law gpa issue. In law school, if you miss law review, grades pretty much don't mean much after that in most cases...good thing is that in my experience, medschool admission committees are not completely naive to the horrors of law school grading processes since so many of us are jumping the ship lately.

 

[Law2Doc]

... It is honestly hard for non-lawyers to understand the law school GPA issues, I am in the same boat although I had a fairly decent rank....

Truism: A low professional degree GPA can hurt you more than a high professional GPA will help you. Med schools will focus on the uGPA (+ postbac) and BCPM as your GPA. But they do have the notion that grade inflation is pretty rampant at the graduate level, and so if you come out of law school with a C average, or otherwise a below average grade, that will be frowned upon. How much? No way to say -- there are not enough law grad applicants for there to be an established metric on this. But there are enough law schools out there where the average grade finishes with a 3.3, such that anything below that gives the sense that you might be someone who struggles in advanced educational paths. So yeah, if you still have coursework to complete in law, I would double down on the studying and try to eek up that GPA. Take some easy electives to fluff up the GPA if that's an option. So in summary -- come out of law school with an A or B, nobody will care. Come out of law school with a C or below, it will hurt you. Come out of law school with a record of having failed stuff, I doubt med schools are going to like your chances in their perhaps more demanding professional program.