Rejected from Law School, second undergrad?

[BirdLawProfessor]

So I’m still waiting to hear back from 3 schools. But I’ve been rejected from others and I’m not sure this is my year. I applied for another undergrad as a backup plan and the date to accept is coming up. 
 

I want to raise my GPA, OLSAS calculated my GPA at 2.54. And while my last two years are certainly better than that, the GPA is holding me back. I scored a 163 on the LSAT. 
 

My question is: will OLSAS recalculate my GPA with a second undergrad partially done? I’m going back to prove what my GPA could be, now that I’ve found the career I want. However I wouldn’t love to spend the full 4 years completing it, instead I would like to reapply for law school after a couple semesters proving what I can do. 
 

Is this a viable plan?

[Ilovelamp]

As someone who did a second undergrad and got accepted this year (with a 162 LSAT) here are my thoughts! 
 

First, there are schools who take your latter 2 years, which is why I got accepted in the first place. I looked at which degree would take the most courses from my first degree, usually you can transfer up to around half your courses which is what I did. I then focused those two years of my second undergrad on my grades and EC’s. This was a lot of work and $$ but it did work out for me, I got in on the first try! 
 

Having said that I think for OLSAS schools Queens is the only school that will accept the latter two, so if you are set on an Ontario school it may be tough! They did calculate both degrees separately (as they were with different schools), but as long as you take a full course load for those two years they take that as the last two.
 

Good Luck!

Edited June 22, 2022 by Ilovelamp

[BirdLawProfessor]

Okay this sounds awesome! When you were speaking about transferring your courses from your first degree into your second I’m a little confused. Did you graduate with your first degree? And did you finish your second degree with the courses you transferred over? 

 

I'm just concerned that by not finishing my second undergrad, I won't be able to upload and affect the OLSAS calculation. 

[Mal]

Please cultivate options beyond "law school", whatever you do. Being a lawyer is great albeit all-consuming... but only if you get good work. If you struggle in law school and in practice, I would rather do almost anything else.

[Ilovelamp]

1 hour ago, BirdLawProfessor said:

Okay this sounds awesome! When you were speaking about transferring your courses from your first degree into your second I’m a little confused. Did you graduate with your first degree? And did you finish your second degree with the courses you transferred over? 

 

I'm just concerned that by not finishing my second undergrad, I won't be able to upload and affect the OLSAS calculation. 

Yes I graduated with my first degree and transferred half of those courses to my second degree. I did graduate with my second degree but not before I was accepted.

 

I would call the schools you are looking to apply to if you are worried about that, the admissions officers are very helpful!

[TheAEGIS]

First, what @Mal said.

Second, a second degree is a huge commitment in terms of time and financial resources.
I would only recommend that as a last resort. I assume you recently finished undergrad and have few other obligations?

But without knowing your L2 stats or your target schools its hard to say if you need to do an entire second degree.
As an alternative, you could complete a handful of courses to raise your L2.

Getting your L2 into the mid to high 3's with that LSAT would have some schools interested.

[Taiko]

OLSAS will include undergraduate level courses taken post degree in your GPA calculation. You don't have to complete the degree for them to be included. At least that's what OLSAS did for my application. I took the course at Ryerson's (now TMU?) Chang School of Continuing Education. You might want to consider that option rather than investing in an entire second degree. That way you could pick only courses that interested you, only take as many as you needed, and you could make sure they were all upper year classes. You could even do a certificate. But you'd have to make sure that the courses you selected were degree level courses. Not all are. Also, if you are applying to non-Ontario L2 schools (Alberta, Dal, etc.) you might want to double check that they will count those credits. The transcript will indicate that they are continuing education courses and out of province schools may not be aware that they are degree level. If you live outside of Toronto or Ontario, TMU does offer distance options.

Edited June 23, 2022 by Taiko

[Ice]

You haven't listed the schools you applied to or would be willing to go to, but I still think my advice will be helpful:

I think the only option for you is to honestly just two years at a full semester and apply to L2 schools along with wherever else you want to apply to, but definitely every L2 school (Alberta,Calgary, Dal, TRU etc).

It just doesn't make sense to do those two extra years and just giving yourself more debt and delaying the time till you have your JD degree. You may want to stay in Ontario and thus L2 won't help much, but I think it's still worth it to go to a L2 school and work your ass off to transfer after 1L if you're hellbent on being in Ontario. I think you'll also feel really burnt out doing another 4 years of undergrad then if you get accepted 3 years of law school then 1 year of articling/Bar prep till you achieve your goal. Just do the two years and get accepted somewhere and go from there