GPA Addendum or not?

[mattm]

Hello,

I was wondering. similar to how some students experience LSAT anxiety and see their test scores drop from PT, I unfortunately had grades anxiety this fall ..if I were to get lower grades this semester ( possibility of two C's ) which had never happened to me should insert a grade addendum for the Fall 2014 semester...I think three factors played into my poor performance

1. Burnout _ I was anticipating a September?Dec LSAT take and therefore put in a lot of hours throughly reviewing over the summer ( at least 25 hours per week) and additionally took two summer online courses for school ....Additionally was a LSAT retaker so i had been studying since Feb and had school 6 days a week most of the school year ( counting a 3 hour LSAT course on Sundays)

2. Uncertainty about LSAT Accommodations Status- I was anxious when applying for accommodations for Dec 2014 LSAT as I knew even though they meant well, LSAC is very stringent about whom they give extended time to and only recently changed some of their policies due to a lawsuit...the wait on my status basically took the entire semester from visiting my eye doctor in September to applying, being denied, and applying for re consideration....I wrote a bit about this in a previous post in the LSAT Prep- General Questions Forum

3. Grade Stress due to being a "splitter' for T 14 schools in the admissions cycle- - Even though there is more to admissions than simply grades and LSAT at the top schools, from my research I knew there were some GPA's that are simply too low even with a stellar LSAT and application....I am currently at the bottom 25% of the T14 schools GPA which has given me stress because of the difficulty of my undergrad school to get good grades as it is competitive....while a 3.55 isn't stellar it is good enough to be in the top 20% of my undergraduate school ( I may attach that part if i choose an addendum) ....I never really though I would be in this position to consider T14 schools when I started off at a 145 diagnostic in Febraury or even as I was planning on a June 2014 take ( 154 test day drop)...but recent scores have been great, latest PT was a 171

Is an addendum overall needed in this case if my grades don't turn out so well this semester?....I have mixed thoughts on this as law schools may question my ability to handle the stress in law school, but on the other hand I do not have a history of stress, medication, or any red flags in that area and being human things like that do happen

Regardless, I definitely feel I have learned a lesson through this and will try not to let it happen again

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hey Matt,

Let me give it to you straight: no, these aren't good reasons to include in an addendum seeking to explain subpar academic performance.

The purpose of an addendum is to explain any unusual circumstances that can legitimately be said to have affected your performance in school (or on the LSAT). Worrying about the LSAT and uncertainty over your chances of admission into law school are not legitimate reasons for falling behind in your studies. Admissions officers are well aware of the stress and anxiety experienced by most applicants to law school. What they look for is evidence that you can handle the pressure, not that you cave in under it. At best, your addendum will fall on deaf ears. At worst, you will do more damage than good. Some may even interpret your addendum as an attempt to shift the blame on the admissions process - and, indirectly, on the law schools themselves.

The only way anxiety can be used as a way to explain a subpar academic performance is when it's a serious, medical condition for which you receive regular treatment. Even then, it may raise some eyebrows considering the nature of the legal profession, and the stress levels associated with it.

My honest advice would be to buckle up and do your absolute best not to let those grades go below a B-. You may get lucky and receive an offer of admission before your Fall grades become available, but if you need to get off a wait-list (for example), subpar grades can mean the difference between a rejection and an acceptance.

Good luck!

[mattm]

Is the LSAT Accommodation process, not LSAT itself a legitimate part of the addendum or still not even then?.....I wasn't really concerned about the LSAT since I know one can retake if not satisfied and most schools take the best anyways......my main concern was about wether or not I would get extended time on the LSAT ( w/o extra time and under standard conditions, I wouldn't be able to get a score that's representative of my abilities as I lost the reading vision in one eye which slows me down while reading)...or does this again imply even If I don't want it to sound that I am blaming it on the process

And what about the first point of burnout? The first time it has happened to me in school, but then again I can still see a red flag if I say that then schools may think I am not ready for three years of hard work

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Matt,

Let me add to Nikki's spot-on answer. He basically included all three categories in his answer, but to answer your specific questions, points 1 and 3 are very similar because burnout and anxiety are pretty closely related. An addendum about burnout or stress from the accommodations process would actually raise more questions than it answered, because law school itself is a rough academic experience. If you are burned/stressed out from studying for the LSAT and its related aspects, then a law school would naturally ask how you would fare in the stress cauldron that is law school (meaning you are totally right when you reference the red flag idea). Secondarily, pretty much every law school applicant can claim a fair degree of stress/anxiety, so you are making an argument based on something that is true for pretty much every applicant. And, when you stack that up against addendums about problems that were far more serious and less common, you aren't going to compare very well.

Your eye injury is relevant insofar as it may have affected your grades for a time. You could easily blame a grade dip on it, but if you claim it is a continuing problem, we go right back to whether it would impair your ability to successfully complete law school (and that is something that would warrant an addendum). So, you walk a tightrope there. The problem is, it doesn't look like your current possible grade dip can be blamed on your condition, since you've now had it a while.

Unfortunately, what that adds up to is, as stated above, you don't have a strong case for an addendum about lower grades this semester. You'd need a different angle in our opinion.

Sorry

[mattm]

What about if my eyesight in the left eye improves after college/my GPA is locked in?

I decided to withdraw from the December LSAT as my accommodations were messed up as noted in the other post

i ultimately decided to postpone law school for fall 2016 to focus on my health/eyesight to successfully do well in law school....i decided health and quality of life were more important than rushing into another semester of school...

Since my college is located 3 hours away from my eye doctors back at home, I have only been to visit them over the holidays and have not had much time to focus on health......the only thing I did was pursue glasses but with school coming around the corner, I only had one try to see if they helped (they didn't )

I feel taking a cycle off in my case so I can pursue contacts, surgery, glasses since i will be back at home instead of rushing off to law school.

In a hypothetical case where my left did heal and I could read out of it again after college ...is this something you would mention?


Dave, I though for legal reasons law schools couldn't discriminate against candidates with disabilities in admissions..... unless they do so subtly because they will never explain why you were denied, so i would never be the wiser

Thanks

[mattm]

^ and if my eyesight could be a concern for admissions committee members what does this mean about my LSAT and if I need an explanation for a massive score jump.

i got a 154 under standard conditions in June..since I didn't feel like reading out of one eye hindered me...all undergrad exams were taken under normal conditions but differed from the LSAT in that they were short question stems and short responses.....I noticed eyesight would become a hinderance after June exam after doing awesome in LR and LG in PT but RC was a struggle ( because on there I have to scan the passages quickly and the passages are split over two pages)...after this I went to my eye doctor and he absolutely recommended extra time

My latest PT was a 171 with the caveat of extra time on RC

If I got extra time and a very high score ( 168+ ) .....do I need to address this discrepancy between scores or should I just apply w/o an explanation

( i know that was a lot to cover addressing these various points and i appreciate the help)

[Dave Killoran]

Ok, what's happening is we're getting into tricky ground, and what matters most is how it's actually presented to the committee. Without your full app in front of us, it's tough to say exactly what the best course of action is because we are to some extent guessing. However, that said, here a few thoughts on the points above

Your eye condition is a reasonable explanation for both a change in LSAT score as well as a lowered overall GPA. If you can do better on the LSAT with accommodations, then that possibly warrants an explanation as to how that is the most representative score for you, not the 154. However, it depends on the exact scores as well as other factors. for example, a second score of 164 would probably not require explanation, whereas a second score of 174 probably would.

Where I get some confusion is your GPA timeline. Your initial post in this thread discussed an addendum for two Cs this term and not having grades that low previously. But these two Cs come well after your 2012 accident, which means that your accident it isn't a viable explanation for this term. However, if you want to make the argument that your entire GPA since 2012 is lower overall due to your situation, that makes more sense if the numbers show a marked change after that point.

As a corollary to that point, if your overall GPA was lowered by your accident, and you can confidently say your eye condition will improve, then you can make the argument that not only are those grades not representative of your ability, they also don't reflect how you'd perform in law school. That's not really a separate point, but a part of the prior one, so it would be in the same addendum.

As for whether the law school would discriminate against you based on your eye condition, no, I'm not suggesting they would. In fact, they are very careful not to discriminate. But, asking questions about your ability to cope with stress and burnout isn't discrimination; it's part of the analysis they make with every candidate. If you hand them a reason to be suspicious, they'll use it.

Going back to the original point, I think what Nikki was saying (and I agree with this) is that the reasons you listed above for a GPA addendum were a bit trite (sorry, not trying to be offensive there, just trying to be helpfully honest!). In my opinion, the law school would penalize you for trying to explain lower grades this semester in that particular fashion. That isn't to say there may not be other aspects that need or warrant explanation via addendum, but I feel like this particular angle would not just fail, but backfire.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!

[mattm]

Yes, thanks for the clarification....i may go for an addendum for entire GPA explaining my eyesight issues in college if my left eye improves heals over the gap year I take off

What if I can't numerically show in the GPA a difference between the before and after of the accident?....My spot is tricky with having only one year of college before the accident, 3 years after....with having only one year prior to the accident and when i could read out of both eyes, each class is weighed much more heavily ( first semester was a 3.25 due to some tough classes and second was a 3.75 before the accident so overall 3.5 prior to the accident) , I have about the same roughly exact GPA before after

I have noticed I have had to work more and spend more time studying even though grades were the same so I'm not sure if I can/should indicate that...All coursework prior to the accident was at a community college, all coursework after at a Tier one research university...so i think it is a combination of both factors why more time spent studying more competitive college ( which is good) and the lack of reading vision in one eye slowing me down

I do believe it has had a detrimental affect on my reading speed or else my eye doctor would have probably just suggested that I study harder instead of recommending extra LSAT time...I may go the route of a self report and explain it

I will have plenty of time to think this over as health comes first, so thats why I'm not applying until Fall 2016....now talking through this with you, if an addendum is placed It would certainly for the accident/decreased vision after 2012 not for one bad semester since I need to pick my battles carefully with addendums

[Dave Killoran]

I need to pick my battles carefully with addendums

Yes, you've got the right mindset here! Addendums are typically for things that are important but can't be or aren't easily explained elsewhere. One addendum is atypical (that's not bad, just that most apps don't have them), so you want to be careful with them.

What if I can't numerically show in the GPA a difference between the before and after of the accident?....My spot is tricky with having only one year of college before the accident, 3 years after....with having only one year prior to the accident and when i could read out of both eyes, each class is weighed much more heavily ( first semester was a 3.25 due to some tough classes and second was a 3.75 before the accident so overall 3.5 prior to the accident) , I have about the same roughly exact GPA before after

I have noticed I have had to work more and spend more time studying even though grades were the same so I'm not sure if I can/should indicate that...All coursework prior to the accident was at a community college, all coursework after at a Tier one research university...so i think it is a combination of both factors why more time spent studying more competitive college ( which is good) and the lack of reading vision in one eye slowing me down

This requires some care, and perhaps the argument to be made is that your grades would have been even higher had you not had the accident. In other words, you learned a lot from your first year and were poised to do much better, but the accident set you back and while you worked hard to compensate and ultimately did well, it still restricted you from fulfilling your true potential. If you could then truthfully say the condition is getting better or will disappear, it paints a picture that your academic performance is unfairly characterized by your GPA, and that your grades once in law school would be able to reflect your true abilities.


Otherwise, it looks like you have time to consider all this, which is good. So, keep working on that GPA and LSAT score, and hopefully once all that falls into place you'll be well situated for application season. Thanks and please let me know if I can help in any other way!

[mattm]

Perfect, Thanks Dave and Nikki for the insight....This helped a lot and brought a new perspective I hadn't really though of adding an addendum for my undergraduate GPA and typing this conversation has brought up new things I had not really thought of


I do believe overall I do have a case for an addendum if my eyesight improves as this would be the perfect case to explain things that could not be seen in my application if I had just submitted w/o addendum.....I would actually point out the improvement between a 3.25 GPA my first semester and the 3.75 my second semester and phrase it in a way that I was poised to build off during the rest of my college career that strong 3.75 but then the accident happened, and while I compensated through it, my grades were not completely indicative of my abilities/ and ability to perform well in law school

And on Dave's advice, any addendum would be from a truthful perspective as lying to get an admissions edge would do me no good for two main reasons, even if I did get into Dream School X I would be at a disadvantage due my lower eyesight, and also lying is taken very seriously and not worth failing the Bar/ Raising Character and Fitness concerns on there....I'm not saying I wouldn't go to law school with my condition,...but I feel I definitely feel it would be prudent to sit out a cycle to see if I can get healthy instead of rushing straight off into law school without attempting to fix the vision in my left eye