Gustavus Adolphus College

The Admissions Process

How your application fares depends on how your record compares to other applicants to your law school. There are 196 American Bar Association (ABA)-accredited law schools as of June 2007. Below are some thoughts for students who may wonder about their chances of admission.

Many law schools accept students with less than stellar academic records. Nonetheless, not everyone who applies to a particular law school is accepted. There are strategies for middle-range and borderline students to improve their chances for acceptance. Becoming a resident of a state can put a candidate in a different pool for state-supported law schools. Taking a year or two off for service or work allows you to include your final semester’s grades and gives you a broader range of experience that may appeal to admissions committees.

If your GPA is really hurting your chances, waiting a year or more before you apply can help. The more distance you put between you and your undergraduate GPA, the less impact it has on your application. If your GPA is low, but your LSAT is high, you might want to consider this option. Letters of recommendation from professors who attest that your ability is not reflected in your overall GPA can help. If your GPA has steadily risen or has been high except for an aberrant semester, you might explain the reasons in your personal statement, calculating the rise in GPA in the statement.

If your LSAT score is low, but your GPA is high, you may be able to argue convincingly that your standardized test performance is not indicative of your abilities. If your SAT scores were also low, you might compare your predicted undergraduate performance based on those SATs to your actual, higher performance. Showing that your SATs were a poor indicator of your college success may help convince some admissions committees to discount your poor LSAT performance.

Night law school might be an option for some students. Some law schools are less stringent in accepting night students; some students may need to explore night school because they will need the income of full-time employment. Night students receive the same degree as do day students, although it takes longer and the students may not have the same opportunities at law reviews, moot court, clinics, and other activities. You might check out William Mitchell College of Law. Perhaps the most famous night law school graduate was William Mitchell’s Warren Burger.

Another option offered by some schools to first-year students is mid-year or summer entry. The competition may not be as steep; check with the law schools for information about your prospects. For example, Hamline University School of Law has a program to help selected students transition to law school.