LSAT and GPA: How do they affect your admissions chances?

Your LSAT and GPA are going to have more impact on your chances of getting admitted to Law School than any thing else. Guess what? Nothing else even comes close.

Here’s the deal. There are hundreds of potential majors out there, from biology (yes biology majors apply to law school sometimes) to political science. It’s just a fact of life. The biggest reason it works this way is that there are absolutely no pre-law requirements for any potential law student.

In fact, law schools care for your major about as much as they care about your blood type. It just doesn’t matter to them. There have been a bunch of studies done over the years about what majors make the best law students. Let me sum them up for you. There is no best major.

Now that’s what I call diversity.

What this all means is that you could literally major in bowling management (it actually exists) and still wind up in the top of your law school class.

Why LSAT Scores and GPA Matter to the Admissions Committees

With all of those majors out there, the various admissions offices need some “objective” way to gauge incoming students. There are really only two ways to do that.

First, they take GPA. There does happen to be a relationship between your GPA and your success in law school. So that one’s easy. It is also equally easy to pick out students with higher GPAs. Doing so is human nature.

However, there’s an even better way to sort potential students. That method is forcing all the potential students to take the same exam, i.e the LSAT.

Think of the LSAT as a filter. LSAT scores provide the admissions committees another objective way to pick between GPAs (yes, even the LSAC CAS GPAs!).

Looking at it another way. Let’s say that two students with the exact same GPA apply to law school. Everything about them is the same, at least on paper. But, their LSAT scores are different. 9 times out of 10 (and I can’t explain that 1 in 10), the committee will choose the student with the higher LSAT score.

So, there you have it. While there are a bunch of parts to the admissions process, there is nothing more important, or weighted, than your GPA and LSAT score.

If you are still in a position to improve your GPA, check out our video below!