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Should I take a 5th year or get my masters?


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lawgirl13
  • Applicant
Posted

Hi guys. I’m currently in my last year of undergrad but my cgpa is not competitive at all (OLSAS Scale 3.14) and my LSAT is a 153 which I plan to retake and reapply to law schools for the next cycle. I was thinking whether I should do a 5th year for my undergrad and raise my gpa to make that more competitive or if I should do a masters to help my softs as I know those grades won’t help my gpa. I’m looking at masters in public policy and administration but if you guys have any recommendations on masters that may be better suitable please let me know! Would it look bad if I did a 5th year with a bunch of bird courses? Should I do my masters instead? I’m lost, anything would help!

CroffleKing
  • Law School Admit
Posted

I'd recommend looking closely at the schools you are targeting, and also consider being more open to targeting schools you haven't considered yet if they do take into account your masters GPA. UCalgary, for example, does look at your graduate level grades and includes those in your last 2 years for your GPA calculation (they word it as 'may/may not' but from what I gather it seems they routinely include it) I do not know if they weigh those grades differently internally compared to undergrad but they do look at them. There are a number of other schools who take a similar approach across the country, you just need to find them. This might change your thinking on this.

Also, depending on where you want to go and your timeline, you might be better off doing an MPA program, getting a few years work experience in that realm, bringing up your LSAT score, then re-applying with work experience to schools that either really like that in their typical admission stream or offer a different admission stream altogether for candidates that they would consider mature. I'm thinking Osgoode and Ottawa for Ontario schools who seem to like candidates with life experience/offer a different admission stream. Osgoode would be tough to crack still unless you could really get that LSAT more into the mid to high 160s. Ottawa might be easier to attain with a high 150s to low 160s and making a strong case through their mature student category.

As a side note - my opinion is that an MPA might be a good plan for you compared to doing a victory lap in undergrad - an MPA is usually 1 year unless you do a thesis based route, and it would make you a lot more employable if you decided not to pursue law or the door does not open for you. It's good to have a back up, and who knows- you may find a really cool job in public policy, non-policy related gov roles, or politics and that become a bright path to follow. 

In any case, best of luck. 

  • Like 2
lawgirl13
  • Applicant
Posted

I really appreciate your time and thorough explanation. This has helped tremendously, thank you so much!

 

  • Like 1

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