Addendum?

[jrskub]

First, I would like to say how much I appreciate what you guys do here at powerscore. I scored a 148 as my diagnostic the day before starting your October online course and my December official score was a 163. I did not believe that kind of improvement was possible in that short of a time. I could not be more ecstatic and a large portion of the credit should go to you guys.

now to my question. I have 3 or 4 waived classes and 3.11 GPA in psychology at a small school in West Tennessee. The reason for the lackluster transcipt was due to the fact that my goal in entering college was to play D1 baseball. I played and maintained a scholraship for all 4 years, to which I am very proud of. However, my GPA suffered for it. The waived classes are do to baseball in that I would overload my schedule and then drop out of courses later in the semester that interfered with my baseball schedule. I also decided I did not want to be a psychologist and wanted to get a degree that was more suited to business. I could not switch my degree because I was out of state and my scholarship would not cover what I needed in extra classes. So i took 17-19 hours every semester along with baseball so i could take courses like accounting and business law. This helped me transition into business after college, but again my GPA suffered for it. So what i want to know is if i should include this in addendum? or how much of it i should include in an addendum?

Also, I was curious as to if there were any seminars or research you guys have that would help explain the addendum writing process? the personal statement seminar by Dave Killoran was incredible helpful for my personal statement.

Thank you for your time

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hey jrskub,

First of all, thanks for the kind words! They mean the world to us, as you can probably imagine

To answer your question, an addendum wouldn't hurt, especially if you have an upward trend in your grades. You bring up good reasons for why you suffered academically, but admissions officers want to be sure that this pattern won't repeat itself in law school. Your LSAT score is strong, and you can bring it up as evidence that you can excel under pressure. There is a specific reason (or, rather, a series of reasons) why you didn't do as well as you had hoped; if you don't discuss them, admissions officers will be left to draw their own conclusions. You don't want that.

Check out the resources we have on writing addenda here:

What's the Deal with Addenda
Law School Admissions: Addenda
PowerScore LSAT Forum Post of the Day: GPA Addenda Effectiveness Against the T14

Hope this gives you a place to start! Good luck!