I have a 3.75 GPA, but I tanked the LSAT - I got a 145. Any suggestions?

stephen t

Well, that is not good. I got a 171 on the LSAT and taught LSAT review for Kaplan to prospective law students. You can get into a law school with those scores and 2.0 GPAs, they just want your tuition, some law schools don't even require an LSAT, Birmingham School of Law for one, several others, but I assume with the GPA of 3.75 you thought you would be going to a Tier 1 school, maybe even Harvard Law, that isn't going to happpen. You could re-take the LSAT again and I think they average the scores, but what if you did worse or the same?
Maybe it is a lesson. Maybe you should not go to law school. If you go to law school and tank your first semester, you are pretty much doomed to high debt, low pay and uncertain job prospects. I went to a Tier 1 law school and saw one of my classmates sellings shoes in the mall after graduation, that was eye opening and scary, another one was working as a waiter after law school graduation, somehow I did not see those kinda of pics or stories in the glossy law school admission catalogues.
With a 3.75 GPA, depending if you met the science requirements, you would have to take the MCAT, you could go to med school. Getting a med degree or dental degree at all from a low ranking school is much better than being anything but top of the class and law review from a high ranking law school.
You need to ace everything, undergrad, LSAT, First Semester, Law Review to even get a shot at the big bucks. Like I said, go to law school, mess up first semester and you are cooked. If you are smart you will understand what I say next, law pay is not accurately reflected as an average or median. It is not a bell curve like most other professions. For some reason, the small percentage, that go to the top schools, are top of the class, get on law review/journal, get paid like 150K to start, although everyone who graduates law school knows the same junk, everyone else mostly gets crap law, unless your family owns a law firm, which is either no job, temp work, low pay, grunt work, dead end jobs, or you can try to hang your own shingle and try your luck with none of the skills they teach you in most law schools. You don't have some very small percentage of docs making 200K and then the vast majority stuck at 35K-50K, in serious debt, and happy to have a job. There is a glut of attorneys, and more and more get poured out into an oversaturated job market, I hear NYC wants to open 4 more law schools, it is an over-rated career. Healthcare is where the $$$ and security is concentrated and unlike lawyers the economy is in short supply of these job candidates, no one is begging for more lawyers, the demand is there for the following jobs, doctor, dentist, pharmacist, nurse, physical therapist, etc. and they can command high wages and benefits and will continue to do so, if you have any interest in that field I would go that route.

Shane

The LSAT is a bit**! Hard to give you advise. What was the area you had a problem in? I personally tanked in the analytical reasoning section, but totally killed in the games and reading comp section. I got a 148 the first time around and took it again a year later and scored a 159. I concentrated in the section that I tanked in, but I still did the exercises in the areas that I did well in (I personally loved the games section and still do them for fun.) The reason why I continued working on those sections I did well in was not to forget key words I should look for in the reading comp section and especially not forget how to do the games.

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