Also, if you have already received a rejection, and suddenly find out that you did much better on a later LSAT,generally law schools won’t reconsider your application. You will have to wait until the next admission cycle ( which is the following year) for the new LSAT scores to be considered. Likewise, if you apply to a law school while telling them that you are taking the upcoming LSAT, they will wait for the latest scores before making a decision. Once a decision is made, it is usually final, although I have seen a few law schools allow for an appeal if made within 30 days of the decision.

Also ALWAYS check with “Law School Predictor.” This is a tool that you can find using Google that will give you a pretty good estimate of your chances for admission at most law schools. You need to know your GPA and LSAT score. I have found this tool to be fairly accurate. The only exception is that some lower tiered schools such as Florida Coastal and NOVA, Widener et. al. have an summer qualification program as an alternative admission for lower LSAT applicants. These programs give an intensive 6 week law school course and admit about 30%-50% of the students from these alternative programs to the law school. The calculator doesn’t factor in those types of schools,which are fairly few in number.

Even worse, these alternative admission programs don’t give law school credit since the student isn’t officially admitted to the law school. This is not due to the schools being cheap but rather due to the ABA requirement that law school credit can only be given to admitted students.

One notable exception to this is Ohio Northern. They have a summer program for kids that have high GPAs but lower LSATs. However, with this program you are officially an admitted student. Thus, their summer program does qualify for law school credit.

My suggestion is to opt out of these alternative programs that are simply qualifying for law school admission since they are simply cash cows for the universities sponsoring them. The only reason to accept them are:

1. You REALLY want to go to that particular law school and it was the only choice since you didn’t get in via regular admission, OR

2. You didn’t get accepted into an ABA accredited law school, and the alternative admission program was your only choice. Even then, I probably would reconsider law school and suggest retaking the LSAT.

My final point (until I can think of other omissions) is that some non-ABA accredited law schools might be a good alternative IF you practice in the state that the law school is located. An example would be Mass College of Law that is NOT accredited by the ABA. However, if you go there and pass the MASS bar, you can practice in Mass and some other states and eventually become able to practice in most states via reciprocity. These non ABA accredited schools are much cheaper too. I normally don’t recommend these because you are limited as to where you can practice and your credits don’t transfer to an ABA school if you ever want to transfer.