ACCOUNTABILITY POST: Grade Farming

[PreLawCoastie]

Hi all! It's me,  your least favorite non-degree  seeking student.

I leave for OCS in January, which means I need to finish my undergrad journey. For those of you following, I finished the requirements for a bachelor's degree in Poly Sci at Penn State (which, combined with my 204 earned credits resulted in an end to my financial aid) on my PSU transcript last May, and have been working on extra classes to raise my uGPA for future Law School plans. Unfortunately, I got deployed last semester at UMPI and only completed 3 courses, so this is my last chance. For those interested, my courses and grade breakdowns going back to high school (the LSAC is a sadistic organization)

My current uGPA, by my own math, is 3.739. I'm enrolled in one class at penn state to finish a history minor this semester, and will almost certainly get an A in that, raising my uGPA to 3.746

With 9 As at UMPI this semester, my uGPA will be a 3.80. The median at my target school, Columbia law, is a 3.90 and will likely be even higher by the time I apply. The 25th percentile uGPA is a 3.81.

It will take me 51 A's to hit that median score, or about one UMPI course per day. For reference, I work about 40 hours a week, stand duty twice a week on top of that, and am also working on my PT scores for OCS an hour a day and taking swim lessons four times a week. Any advice?

Take a look at my progress here: https://imgur.com/a/2EwR5VW

[LevelUP]

I'm not going to say you can't get into an Ivy League college, but it's very difficult. Grades alone won't be the deciding factor in whether you get accepted or not.

There's a detailed 10,000+ word blog post that explores this topic in depth:
https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...ool-Part-2

You can also listen to a 7-minute audio version here:
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/8...df14/audio

Since you attended both PSU and UMPI, I'm curious how the quality, rigor, and time commitment compared between the two.

[PreLawCoastie]

I'm not going to say you can't get into an Ivy League college, but it's very difficult. Grades alone won't be the deciding factor in whether you get accepted or not.

There's a detailed 10,000+ word blog post that explores this topic in depth:
https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...ool-Part-2

You can also listen to a 7-minute audio version here:
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/8...df14/audio

Since you attended both PSU and UMPI, I'm curious how the quality, rigor, and time commitment compared between the two.

Night and day. UMPI is of course shorter, but the level of feedback from the professors and quality of material is laughable at times. I had a back and forth with Dr. Hinson last semester - two of the slides in the Marxism course are literally just copy and pasted articles from communist and socialist group websites with no attribution. The rumor is that he grades with AI, so when i replied that i didn’t cite the articles in my milestone because he’d plagiarized them he he got very offended and said he would “pass those concerns on to the dean.” Never heard anything.

All the PSU courses ive taken with two exceptions - the theatre and musical theatre survey courses - have been identical in workload and rigor to a full semester state school course. Of course the grading and expectation vary from professor, but you really do need to read, research and put effort in.  And, you know, they don’t plagiarize the course material…

If I can get my GPA and LSAT where they need to be, I don’t see why I wouldn’t be competitive for a T14. PSU is a perfectly good if not elite school, I’ m a legacy at Columbia, will have a masters by the time i apply, and the miltary organizations are very active and tend to be a good soft. Am i missing something here?

[LevelUP]

I'm not going to say you can't get into an Ivy League college, but it's very difficult. Grades alone won't be the deciding factor in whether you get accepted or not.

There's a detailed 10,000+ word blog post that explores this topic in depth:
https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...ool-Part-2

You can also listen to a 7-minute audio version here:
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/8...df14/audio

Since you attended both PSU and UMPI, I'm curious how the quality, rigor, and time commitment compared between the two.

Night and day. UMPI is of course shorter, but the level of feedback from the professors and quality of material is laughable at times. I had a back and forth with Dr. Hinson last semester - two of the slides in the Marxism course are literally just copy and pasted articles from communist and socialist group websites with no attribution. The rumor is that he grades with AI, so when i replied that i didn’t cite the articles in my milestone because he’d plagiarized them he he got very offended and said he would “pass those concerns on to the dean.” Never heard anything.

All the PSU courses ive taken with two exceptions - the theatre and musical theatre survey courses - have been identical in workload and rigor to a full semester state school course. Of course the grading and expectation vary from professor, but you really do need to read, research and put effort in.  And, you know, they don’t plagiarize the course material…

If I can get my GPA and LSAT where they need to be, I don’t see why I wouldn’t be competitive for a T14. PSU is a perfectly good if not elite school, I’ m a legacy at Columbia, will have a masters by the time i apply, and the miltary organizations are very active and tend to be a good soft. Am i missing something here?

You can get into a T14 school with a strong LSAT score. Being a legacy will also give you an edge at Columbia. I was wondering if you were spending too much time worrying about grades and not enough time studying for the LSAT. Anyway, it seems like your plan is good overall.

It was kind of funny how you called out the UMPI professor for not citing articles—such drama!

[PreLawCoastie]

I'm not going to say you can't get into an Ivy League college, but it's very difficult. Grades alone won't be the deciding factor in whether you get accepted or not.

There's a detailed 10,000+ word blog post that explores this topic in depth:
https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...ool-Part-2

You can also listen to a 7-minute audio version here:
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/8...df14/audio

Since you attended both PSU and UMPI, I'm curious how the quality, rigor, and time commitment compared between the two.

Night and day. UMPI is of course shorter, but the level of feedback from the professors and quality of material is laughable at times. I had a back and forth with Dr. Hinson last semester - two of the slides in the Marxism course are literally just copy and pasted articles from communist and socialist group websites with no attribution. The rumor is that he grades with AI, so when i replied that i didn’t cite the articles in my milestone because he’d plagiarized them he he got very offended and said he would “pass those concerns on to the dean.” Never heard anything.

All the PSU courses ive taken with two exceptions - the theatre and musical theatre survey courses - have been identical in workload and rigor to a full semester state school course. Of course the grading and expectation vary from professor, but you really do need to read, research and put effort in.  And, you know, they don’t plagiarize the course material…

If I can get my GPA and LSAT where they need to be, I don’t see why I wouldn’t be competitive for a T14. PSU is a perfectly good if not elite school, I’ m a legacy at Columbia, will have a masters by the time i apply, and the miltary organizations are very active and tend to be a good soft. Am i missing something here?

You can get into a T14 school with a strong LSAT score. Being a legacy will also give you an edge at Columbia.  I was wondering if you were spending too much time worrying about grades and not enough time studying for the LSAT. Anyway, it seems like your plan is good overall.

It was kind of funny how you called out the UMPI professor for not citing articles—such drama!

It was intense! He seems like a nice enough guy, and everyone else online seems to tolerate him, but clearly we don’t get along. I just cannot tolerate academic dishonesty like that.

Do you know if UMPI’s A+ is recognized by the LSAC? When I pull it up on IGUGS it doesn’t show up as an option, but they wouldn’t just ignore it right? Even a few A+s would help a lot.

[LevelUP]

I'm not going to say you can't get into an Ivy League college, but it's very difficult. Grades alone won't be the deciding factor in whether you get accepted or not.

There's a detailed 10,000+ word blog post that explores this topic in depth:
https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...ool-Part-2

You can also listen to a 7-minute audio version here:
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/8...df14/audio

Since you attended both PSU and UMPI, I'm curious how the quality, rigor, and time commitment compared between the two.

Night and day. UMPI is of course shorter, but the level of feedback from the professors and quality of material is laughable at times. I had a back and forth with Dr. Hinson last semester - two of the slides in the Marxism course are literally just copy and pasted articles from communist and socialist group websites with no attribution. The rumor is that he grades with AI, so when i replied that i didn’t cite the articles in my milestone because he’d plagiarized them he he got very offended and said he would “pass those concerns on to the dean.” Never heard anything.

All the PSU courses ive taken with two exceptions - the theatre and musical theatre survey courses - have been identical in workload and rigor to a full semester state school course. Of course the grading and expectation vary from professor, but you really do need to read, research and put effort in.  And, you know, they don’t plagiarize the course material…

If I can get my GPA and LSAT where they need to be, I don’t see why I wouldn’t be competitive for a T14. PSU is a perfectly good if not elite school, I’ m a legacy at Columbia, will have a masters by the time i apply, and the miltary organizations are very active and tend to be a good soft. Am i missing something here?

You can get into a T14 school with a strong LSAT score. Being a legacy will also give you an edge at Columbia.  I was wondering if you were spending too much time worrying about grades and not enough time studying for the LSAT. Anyway, it seems like your plan is good overall.

It was kind of funny how you called out the UMPI professor for not citing articles—such drama!

It was intense! He seems like a nice enough guy, and everyone else online seems to tolerate him, but clearly we don’t get along. I just cannot tolerate academic dishonesty like that.

Do you know if UMPI’s A+ is recognized by the LSAC? When I pull it up on IGUGS it doesn’t show up as an option, but they wouldn’t just ignore it right? Even a few A+s would help a lot.

I believe A and A+ are the same at UMPI as they are worth 4.0.  A+ is 97-100.

Here it says LSAC converts A+ to 4.33
https://www.joinleland.com/library/a/und...admissions

So, I guess that would be a way to hack the grading system.

[davewill]

My recommendation would be to stop chasing diminishing returns trying to raise your GPA by fractional points, and instead focus on earning commendations and recommendations during OCS, or from your service in general, to polish up your application.

[PreLawCoastie]

My recommendation would be to stop chasing diminishing returns trying to raise your GPA by fractional points, and instead focus on earning commendations and recommendations during OCS, or from your service in general, to polish up your application.

I understand that, but unfortunately it's not statistically backed. As LevelUP pointed out, the difference between even slight differences in GPA and LSAT scores have a huge effect on law school admissions. They are by far the most important factor in admissions. The assumption with a T14 is that everyone will have fantastic softs; recommendations, experience, awards etc. Because of the way schools compete uGPA and LSAT play a huge roll. https://7sage.com/admissions/lesson/affe...aw-school/
 
Take a look at the stats here - notice the huge drop from T14 to non-T14. https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/

I'm also not applying for at least two more years - I have three years of service after OCS - so this is really what I can work on now.

Thank you!

---

I'm not going to say you can't get into an Ivy League college, but it's very difficult. Grades alone won't be the deciding factor in whether you get accepted or not.

There's a detailed 10,000+ word blog post that explores this topic in depth:
https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...ool-Part-2

You can also listen to a 7-minute audio version here:
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/8...df14/audio

Since you attended both PSU and UMPI, I'm curious how the quality, rigor, and time commitment compared between the two.

Night and day. UMPI is of course shorter, but the level of feedback from the professors and quality of material is laughable at times. I had a back and forth with Dr. Hinson last semester - two of the slides in the Marxism course are literally just copy and pasted articles from communist and socialist group websites with no attribution. The rumor is that he grades with AI, so when i replied that i didn’t cite the articles in my milestone because he’d plagiarized them he he got very offended and said he would “pass those concerns on to the dean.” Never heard anything.

All the PSU courses ive taken with two exceptions - the theatre and musical theatre survey courses - have been identical in workload and rigor to a full semester state school course. Of course the grading and expectation vary from professor, but you really do need to read, research and put effort in.  And, you know, they don’t plagiarize the course material…

If I can get my GPA and LSAT where they need to be, I don’t see why I wouldn’t be competitive for a T14. PSU is a perfectly good if not elite school, I’ m a legacy at Columbia, will have a masters by the time i apply, and the miltary organizations are very active and tend to be a good soft. Am i missing something here?

You can get into a T14 school with a strong LSAT score. Being a legacy will also give you an edge at Columbia.  I was wondering if you were spending too much time worrying about grades and not enough time studying for the LSAT. Anyway, it seems like your plan is good overall.

It was kind of funny how you called out the UMPI professor for not citing articles—such drama!

It was intense! He seems like a nice enough guy, and everyone else online seems to tolerate him, but clearly we don’t get along. I just cannot tolerate academic dishonesty like that.

Do you know if UMPI’s A+ is recognized by the LSAC? When I pull it up on IGUGS it doesn’t show up as an option, but they wouldn’t just ignore it right? Even a few A+s would help a lot.

I believe A and A+ are the same at UMPI as they are worth 4.0.  A+ is 97-100.

Here it says LSAC converts A+ to 4.33
https://www.joinleland.com/library/a/und...admissions

So, I guess that would be a way to hack the grading system.

Yeah they generally do count an A+ as a 4.33, so it's a huge benefit. People on the law school forums love to complain about it. But looking at iGUGS, which shows how the LSAC converts the grades, there's no entry for an A+ from UMPI.

https://transcripts.lsac.org/TranscriptK...129999.htm

Compare this to ASU, a common degreeforum school that offers an A+. This does have an entry on iGUGS for A+. https://transcripts.lsac.org/TranscriptK...129999.htm

My guess is either they know an A+ is equal to a 4.0 (they would, but I thought that was specifically a Yourpace thing.) Or they simply haven't recieved a transcript with one from UMPI before. Wasn't there someone on this board who went from UMPI to law school?

[slaterjack]

Just a side note reminder that more often than not at UMPI you can not move onto the next section of a course unless the last one has been graded, so you may have to wait 1, 2, 3, or even 4 days for a professor's response which can get a bit frustrating when trying to speed through a course that has for example 5 sections.

[ss20ts]

Just a side note reminder that more often than not at UMPI you can not move onto the next section of a course unless the last one has been graded, so you may have to wait 1, 2, 3, or even 4 days for a professor's response which can get a bit frustrating when trying to speed through a course that has for example 5 sections.

Yeah the days of completing a course in a day or 2 are long over.