Career Center, Career Files, Pre-Law

How LSAC Recalculates Your GPA For Law School Admissions

Everything prelaw students need to know about the Credential Assembly Service (CAS) GPA Calculation.

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The LSAT is a stressful time in any pre-law student’s life. You spend months prepping for a four-hour exam that will determine your future—the schools to which you’ll be admitted, the amount of scholarship money you’ll receive, the salary you can expect upon graduation, and the attractiveness quotient of the spouse with whom you’re likely to mate. What could be more harrowing than that?

For some, it’s the LSAC GPA calculation.

You spend four hours earning your LSAT score and four years earning your GPA. That’s a whole lot of hard work going into a single number. And now, after getting attached to it, you learn that the LSAC (actually a division of LSAT, the Credential Assembly Service or CAS) is going to recalculate it.

Most people know how their undergraduate institution calculates their GPA, but everyone typically assumes the worst for the recalculation, as if CAS will decide that your B+ in Art History was really a C. The good news is that for most of you reading this, your fears are unfounded and you will see little to no change in your GPA. For some of you, however, there could be a CAS bullet coming your way. Let’s look at the process to see where you fall:

WHAT WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE CAS GPA CALCULATION

Every grade you earn before your first bachelor’s degree is awarded will be included.

High school classes at a community college for credit? Yep.

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Study abroad classes? Yep.

Classes that you subsequently retook to earn a better grade? Unfortunately, yes. Should you be on the receiving end of a zinger from CAS, this is typically where it lands. Ohio State might forgive the fact that you initially flunked Calculus and count only the B you earned the second time around. CAS? Not so much. Both will count.

Summer classes you took at a community college to pad your GPA? Definitely.

When we say any grade awarded before that first bachelor’s degree is included in your GPA recalculation, we mean it. You’ll have to send in transcripts from every post-high school institution you attended.

So if you went to a single undergraduate school, your GPA most likely won’t change at all. Most schools factor in the study-abroad grades, so those shouldn’t cause much of a change. But some community college classes, or classes retaken for a better grade, will affect your GPA.

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WHAT WON’T BE INCLUDED IN THE CAS GPA CALCULATION

The CAS does not take into account any class taken after your first bachelor’s degree was awarded. So no classes you took after graduation to boost your GPA will be factored in (if someone told you that would help, they were wrong). Neither will Master’s or Ph.D. program grades be included. You can submit transcripts for those programs, but they won’t factor into your LSAC GPA. (Seems unfair to us, too.)

Also, grade inflation and major/class difficulty won’t factor into your GPA calculation. Your GPA will be determined straight from the grades you earned. It’s up to the law schools to determine if they want to weigh the GPAs from schools with notorious grade inflation (ahem, Brown) the same as those from tougher schools (hello, Princeton). Neither is the difficulty of the major factored in. An A from an engineering class counts the same as an A from a Communications class, though the former may require quite a bit more work in addition to being graded on a curve.

Another exception: remedial classes (as long as they’re noted on your transcript) won’t factor into your GPA.

Finally, grades you earn after submitting your transcript won’t be included. While you’re technically required to update your transcript whenever new grades are released, few follow through with this until law schools ask for a final transcript after they’re already enrolled. If your GPA is boosted by a semester your senior year, by all means send them in. But if you’ve indulged in a few too many senioritis tailgates, then waiting might be a better option.

HOW CAS CALCULATES YOUR GPA

CAS uses the same process to calculate your GPA as your undergraduate institution, with some (small) exceptions.

CAS simply multiplies each of your grades by the number of credits for that class, adds them all up, and then divides by the total number of credits. Voila! GPA. No major GPA. No concentration GPA. Just overall GPA.

What might change your GPA here? A+s, for one. If your school doesn’t factor A+s (4.33) into your GPA, but they appear on your transcript, you’ll see a boost in your GPA. Yes, it isn’t particularly fair to those of you who can’t earn an A+ at your undergraduate institution. Nope, there’s nothing you can do about it (short of transferring).

OTHER FACTORS THAT PLAY A ROLE IN YOUR GPA

Withdrawals/Incompletes/Similar Notations: If your school considers them punitive withdrawals (they’ll usually note this with a WF or similar marking), they’ll count as an F.

Pass/No Pass: If you receive an NP, it will count as an F. If you receive a P, it won’t factor in. And, for the most part, schools won’t care about a few Passes here or there. So if you’re going to do poorly in a class, it’s better to switch that to a P/NP class than receive a grade below your GPA average.

Today’s LSAT advice comes from our friends at Blueprint LSAT Prep, featuring the online LSAT course Blueprint: The Movie — which remains open for enrollment for the 2013 December LSAT until Nov. 1.

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