Derek: Hi there! My name is Derek Meeker and I am a Senior Law School Consultant for Admissions Consultants, a consulting firm for aspiring college, business, medical, graduate and law school applicants. Today, I am going to be answering some questions about the law school admissions process.
Male: When admission’s committees look at my transcript, do they just look at my total GPA?
Derek: They look at everything. They are going to be looking at your grade trends actually. So, they will look to see if your grades were consistent or if you improved over the four years that you were in college or if your grades actually got worst.
So, what I would advise is if there are significant changes from semester to semester or year to year, you would want to provide an addendum with your application and discuss what was going on in your life at that time that may have affected your grades and caused them to be lower. It is not that uncommon actually for students to start out with lower grades whether it is because they are adjusting, just adjusting to college being away from home for the first time. Another common thing actually would be the applicant starts out as a Pre-Med or Science major and realizes that it is not for them and then they change their major and their grades get much better.
So, if anything like that applies to you, maybe there was a semester in which you were ill and that affected your grades. But anything that stands out in your transcript as a significant drop in grades, you will definitely want to address it in an addendum.
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