This is something that happens to many law school applicants every single year—you’re going about preparing for the admissions process, assuming that your GPA is the number on your college transcript (reasonably so), then you send in your transcripts to LSAC, they process them and give you your CAS report, and that document gives you a “Cumulative GPA” (importantly, this is the number that law schools will care about and will use to calculate their medians for ABA reporting and rankings purposes)... that’s either slightly or drastically different from your transcript GPA. So what causes this to happen? We’ll go over each of the possibilities below, one or more of which likely apply to your situation.
First, the basics. All LSAC member law schools (i.e., all ABA-approved law schools) have agreed to a standardized grading scale so as to make transcripts across undergraduate institutions uniform. This grading scale exists on a 0.00 to 4.33 scale, and it includes all credits you receive from an accredited U.S. or Canadian undergraduate institution prior to receiving your undergraduate degree (or your first undergraduate degree, if you have multiple). While LSAC requires (and law schools will fully review) any graduate school transcripts or international undergraduate transcripts, those are generally far less important than this cumulative undergraduate GPA calculated by LSAC. The scale LSAC uses is as follows (note that Pass/Fail grades are not factored in).
Law School Letter Grade to GPA Conversion Table
| Letter Grade | LSAC Value |
|---|---|
| A+ | 4.33 |
| A | 4.00 |
| A- | 3.67 |
| AB | 3.50 |
| B+ | 3.33 |
| B | 3.00 |
| B- | 2.67 |
| BC | 2.50 |
| C+ | 2.33 |
| C | 2.00 |
| C- | 1.67 |
| CD | 1.50 |
| D+ | 1.33 |
| D | 1.00 |
| D- | 0.67 |
| DF/DE | 0.50 |
| F/E or WF/WNC | 0.00 |
*Note: You can find conversion information on alternative grading systems (including 1 to 5 and 0 to 100) here.
So, beyond any GPA conversion differences between LSAC and your undergraduate institution, what types of scenarios can lead to your cumulative GPA being different from your degree GPA?
Factors that Can Make Your LSAC-Calculated Cumulative GPA Different from Your Degree GPA
Scenario 1: Community College, High School Dual Enrollment, or Other Prior College-Level Schooling
LSAC’s GPA calculations factor in all undergraduate coursework prior to earning your first undergraduate degree, so that includes high school dual enrollment, community college, schools from which you transferred or dropped out, and summer or evening courses you took at a different institution.
This can make a GPA go up or down from what you might have expected, depending on the grades that you earned in these other programs. It may feel unfair that those grades are factored into the GPA that matters for law school, especially if they’re from 10+ years ago, and we encourage you to consider whether you should write an addendum to explain some of the surrounding factors and why those grades aren’t representative of your true academic abilities. Unfortunately, the hard number of your cumulative GPA is still going to take on the most importance (along with your LSAT score) when law schools are making a decision on your application.
Scenario 2: Repeated Classes or Academic Forgiveness
When students fail a course, some institutions allow them to retake the class (sometimes called an “Academic Forgiveness” program), after which only the second grade is included in their GPA. LSAC will factor in both grades, including the F as a 0.00, which can significantly weigh down your average. Again, you may want to consider writing an addendum in this situation, especially if you were encountering any specific extenuating circumstances or life challenges during the first semester you took the course.
Scenario 3: A+ Grades
Different undergraduate institutions handle A+ grades in different ways. Some don’t give them at all, others allow them but still only factor them into GPAs as a 4.0, the same as an A, and some—as LSAC does—count them as a 4.33. If you’re in that middle group, and if you received any A+ grades, then your LSAC-calculated cumulative GPA may well turn out higher than your degree GPA. If this is the case, be grateful for your good fortune (plenty of schools don’t give A+ grades at all), and congratulations!
Scenario 4: International Undergraduate Work
Transcripts from institutions outside of the U.S. and Canada are not factored into LSAC’s cumulative GPA, and if you don’t have 60 graded credits of U.S./Canadian undergraduate work, you won’t get a cumulative GPA from LSAC at all. Instead, you’ll receive a qualitative designation of “superior,” “above average,” “average,” or “below average,” which does not have the same importance as a cumulative GPA. In this case, schools will holistically evaluate your transcripts, but your LSAT score will be an even more important factor.
If you do also have 60+ graded credits from a U.S./Canadian undergraduate institution, just keep in mind that your international grades won’t factor into your GPA unless they are study abroad credits that appear with grades on your U.S./Canadian institution transcript as well.
Scenario 5: Alternative Grading System
You won’t receive an LSAC-calculated cumulative GPA if your undergraduate institution didn’t give letter or number grades, instead only offering qualitative assessments. As with international students, in this case, your transcript will still be evaluated in a holistic manner by admissions offices, but that won’t factor in to the same degree as a cumulative GPA would, and your LSAT score will be what matters the most.
Scenario 6: Not Enough Credits
If you don’t (or don’t yet) have 60 or more graded credits from a U.S. or Canadian undergraduate institution, LSAC will not calculate a cumulative GPA for you. The most common situation in which this happens is when students transfer in quite a few AP or IB credits from high school and then apply after only two years of undergrad as they plan to graduate in three years. If this applies to you, know that law schools will see the GPA on your transcript and take that as a general indicator of what your cumulative GPA will end up being—assuming you’ll be graduating and matriculating to law school with 60+ credits, at the point that you reach that number, LSAC will calculate your cumulative GPA, and that will still factor into the medians of the law school where you matriculate. (Do know that law schools may be more cautious, generally, about admitting younger applicants, who typically have less academic and professional experience and for whom law schools may have concerns about maturity and/or employability.)
Note on Graduate Degrees
As we mentioned above, your undergraduate GPA is the GPA that schools use to calculate their medians, and those are the numbers that go to the ABA and to U.S. News for rankings purposes. That number will be a major factor in determining your chances of admission to various law schools. Graduate degrees do not hold that same level of importance—instead, they are one of many “soft” factors that law schools will use to evaluate your candidacy in addition to the hard numbers, your LSAT (or GRE) score and your cumulative undergraduate GPA.
As a soft factor, the fact that you have a graduate degree may help, depending on the degree and circumstances. If your graduate degree was high-level (e.g., PhD, MD) and/or in a field known for being particularly rigorous, that can speak to your general academic aptitude, and sometimes it can suggest employability (e.g., if you have a PhD from MIT, that will be highly differentiating and likely elevating, especially if your goal is to go into patent law).
We should also note that, broadly, graduate school GPAs tend to be on the higher side (at least in this context of law school admissions, especially at elite, highly competitive law schools), so it’s typically not particularly differentiating to have, e.g., a 4.0 in a master’s program, and it almost certainly won’t outweigh your undergraduate cumulative GPA regardless.
Summary
Before you start determining your school list, make sure you know what your LSAC-computed cumulative GPA will be. This will tell you exactly what law schools care about most from your undergraduate record, and along with your LSAT score, it will give you a nice starting point to select the band of law schools to which you plan to apply.