Addendum Advice

[RyanM12]

Hello,

I was wondering while there certainly are other parts of the application ( softs such as the Personal Statement, LOR, Work Experience, Diversity factors, and the LSAT exam).....What do you recommend for applicants that go to undergrad institutions where there is a lot of grade deflation such as a Reed University or the University of Chicago?

For instance a 3.25 is the benchmark for honors at Chicago, which speaks to the rigor of the program since at many universities a 3.25 is only a little above average for law applicants and usually a much higher GPA is required for honors.

https://college.uchicago.edu/advising/d ... and-honors

( I do not go to either of these two schools, but these are well known examples of schools with rigorous grading policies)

I'm not sure how to go about this since it seems like excuse making since the explanation would be of an external nature ( rigor of undergrad institution) rather than the much more commonly used personal explanations ( such as lack of maturity, or depression, family situations)

Should I write a short explanation, or forgo an explanation and improve the other portions of my application? From my research, even though law schools have to somewhat play within the confines of the US News rankings, I feel undergrad rigor does in fact play a factor and is somewhat of a "soft factor" that will be noticed by admissions committees and therefore could be beneficial to me.

Thanks!

[David Boyle]

Hello,

I was wondering while there certainly are other parts of the application ( softs such as the Personal Statement, LOR, Work Experience, Diversity factors, and the LSAT exam).....What do you recommend for applicants that go to undergrad institutions where there is a lot of grade deflation such as a Reed University or the University of Chicago?

For instance a 3.25 is the benchmark for honors at Chicago, which speaks to the rigor of the program since at many universities a 3.25 is only a little above average for law applicants and usually a much higher GPA is required for honors.

https://college.uchicago.edu/advising/d ... and-honors

( I do not go to either of these two schools, but these are well known examples of schools with rigorous grading policies)

I'm not sure how to go about this since it seems like excuse making since the explanation would be of an external nature ( rigor of undergrad institution) rather than the much more commonly used personal explanations ( such as lack of maturity, or depression, family situations)

Should I write a short explanation, or forgo an explanation and improve the other portions of my application? From my research, even though law schools have to somewhat play within the confines of the US News rankings, I feel undergrad rigor does in fact play a factor and is somewhat of a "soft factor" that will be noticed by admissions committees and therefore could be beneficial to me.

Thanks!

Hello RyanM12,

Good question! I'm not sure how it could hurt to make some brief mention of it, maybe. If it's a really long explanation, "I don't have a 4.0 because MY CLASSES ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOO HARD HERE BOO HOO [plus 10 more pages of whining]", that might come off as a little whiny. Maybe a brief explanation, along with some evidence (e.g., the school admits in writing somewhere that it does grade deflation and grades people really hard), could be helpful.
After all, if you don't explain the problem at all, then the issues you talk about might arise, e.g., they think your imperfect GPA is because you're not a good student, instead of because of grade deflation.

Hope this helps,
David

[Clay Cooper]

Hi Ryan,

I think David's advice is good.

Might you also be able to provide a class rank with your application? If grade deflation occurs at your school, your GPA ought to correspond to a higher class rank than it would at other schools, and the admissions committee members would be likely to notice and pay heed to a piece of concrete, mathematical evidence that your GPA is better than it may seem out of context.

Hope that helps!

[RyanM12]

Hi Ryan,

I think David's advice is good.

Might you also be able to provide a class rank with your application? If grade deflation occurs at your school, your GPA ought to correspond to a higher class rank than it would at other schools, and the admissions committee members would be likely to notice and pay heed to a piece of concrete, mathematical evidence that your GPA is better than it may seem out of context.

Hope that helps!

Thanks! I had a few follow up question to your great answers

Which GPA Category out of the above 3 is usually best in cases to explain the school's rigor?...I am not sure if I can get an exact class rank but my university's grade distributions are public information which a law school could see through a basic internet search.

1. The University's GPA- While it captures the entire student body...the drawback is it lumps the whole body without drawing distinctions between different colleges/majors and law schools may still apply common assumptions such as Liberal Arts majors ( my college) should have higher GPA's than STEM majors which often have lower grades..( which is not the case at my school the cumulative GPA of the College of Engineering and The College of Liberal Arts is virtually identical) .

2. My College GPA- In the College of Liberal Arts, I feel night be the best option to go with as it is both more specific than the university as a whole and with 7,000 LA students there are enough data points to be representative of where I stand

Grade distributions

3.0 and above - top half of the class
3.25 and above - top 1/3 of the class
3.5 and above - top 20% of the class.....( I fall within this group at a 3.55 University GPA, Higher LSAC since I transferred)
3.75 and above - top 10% of the class

( These are all very close to the university's grade distributions)


3. Or thirdly the GPA of law school applicants from my UG that I can see from my LSAC Academic Summary Report - I am not sure however if this would be the most representative group to explain the rigor of my university since there is a significant disparity between the mean university GPA and the mean of law school applicants from my university. ( 3.0 mean vs 3.2 mean for law applicants or in other words while a 3.25 would put you in the top 1/3 of the university, it would place an applicant nearly at the mean for law applicants.)

Lastly, is my GPA "too high" to write an addendum?....My LSAC GPA will land somewhere in the Upper 3.6X-Lower 3.7X range and my University GPA is a 3.55 ( current senior). I am concerned that the LSAC GPA might be too high to write an addendum

Thanks again!

[Clay Cooper]

Hi Ryan,

I am not sure that I understand all of what you wrote, but here are my thoughts:

If your college does not abide by the general trend of LA GPA'd being higher than other schools within a university, this might be worthwhile to note. Certainly reporting your GPA as compared to other law school applicants from your school would seem to be unnecessarily casting it in a negative light.

I'm not sure precisely what you mean by LSAC GPA - especially as contrasted with the others you mentioned.

Finally, I don't know that any GPA is necessarily 'too high' for an addendum - but if any are, a 3.55 is likely to be among them.

Hope that helps, please feel free to enlighten me about what an LSAC GPA is and how it compares to other GPAs - my understanding has always been that the LSAC will have your transcript and GPA and that those are the numbers law schools are asking for on applications when they refer to GPA.

[RyanM12]

The LSAC GPA - basically calculates any type of credits taken after college including things like taking college credits while in high school. This is one is the one law schools care about the most ( This is the one that gets reported to the ABA and is reported in the UNSWR rankings )

The University GPA- only calculates the credits earned at that particular university and while my transfer credits go towards my degree plan, they will not go towards my school's GPA calculations

So because I transferred after my freshman year and taken a few CC courses for summer school, I currently will have a LSAC GPA between the Upper 3.6 X and lower 3.7X range by December graduation and a 3.55 University GPA. So, since the LSAC GPA is pretty high and will be given the most emphasis in admissions, I wonder if it is even worth mentioning the grade deflation at my school.

Hope this helps to clarify the differences for anyone else needing assistance!

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Ryan,

Given where your GPA is, and the type of hoops you'd have to go through to make your point, I'd skip writing an addendum on this topic. Having spoken to a number of admissions officers in the past few years, the use of addenda as a GPA explanation mechanism is rising, and part of that is occurring because students who really don't need to explain anything are writing separate essays. At a certain point, I think it starts to harm your chances unless you have a really compelling reason.

In addition, with those schools where GPA inflation/deflation is a known factor (two that come to mind are Standford and Georgia Tech), most adcomms are aware of that occurrence and consider it when making evaluations of candidates. So, if, as I gather form your earlier comments, you go to a school with a rigorous policy, they may well know about it (the bigger the name, the more likely that is the case).

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!