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Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - Printable Version

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Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - PendragonG - 02-03-2014

I have been studying the forum for weeks and would like to thank everyone for their contributions.
Especially those that continue to help others after graduating.

My goal is to apply to Law School so I want to establish a good number of credits with a GPA.

I am starting from zero credits and have started taking StraighterLine courses.
I see from this forum that COSC give grades for SL courses and uses them in calculating there GPA.

It appears that TESC would be the most flexible school to obtain a BA due to only requiring 18 UL credits and giving UL credits for classes that the others count as LL.

Since I do not have any previous credits to count toward a GPA, My current plan is to apply to COSC and graduate with an Associate’s Degree using StraighterLine classes and the cornerstone class to give me a GPA with COSC.

Then take the remaining SL classes and transfer them to COSC, to get them listed on my COSC transcript.

Then transfer to TESC and complete the classes needed to graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree. I know that my GPA from COSC will not transfer to TESC and I understand that the transcripts will state that the classes were taken at SL. I am not attempting to launder the credits through COSC to hide SL as the source but want to establish a GPA based on the SL classes. I am thinking that since I will have an Associate’s Degree from COSC it will help to establish a Grade for the SL courses even though they will be transferred to TESC.

My thought is that LSAT will use the COSC transcript and the TESC transcript together to calculate a GPA

I am looking to do mostly StraighterLine and other self-paced online classes as opposed to tests.

Please let me know your thoughts and please do not hesitate to let me know the holes in my plan.

Thank you,

Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - EI2HCB - 02-03-2014

Dont forget that Excelsior Exams can also be transferred in as letter grade courses as well as some DSST exams. The issue is will your law school accept SL or CLEP or DSST you should check that out before you do too many courses. My local University will only allow 50 credits to be awarded that way. So do you research.

Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - Zombie - 02-04-2014

The LSAC (Law School Admission Council/Committee) establishes your GPA, not the individual law schools. I would put a special emphasis on the LSAT if most of your credits are competency-based (CLEP DSST etc.). Or you could run the scores through Excelsior, which assigns grades to many of the tests.

Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - jobee - 02-04-2014

What you are describing is called credit laundering, and I am not sure how many people have had success doing this from Charter Oak to TESC. What major are you studying? If you are studying certain subjects and are sending SL grades to COSC, then you may be missing out on the upper level credits that TESC awards some classes.

Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - jobee - 02-04-2014

Depending on your major, there may be only a limited amount of SL classes that can be transferred to Excelsior with a grade. The rest need to go through ACE. Here is the Excelsior agreement with SL https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AmKpJMpyfVXRdGdkYjNKQVBCbXVDT0pWY0tSWGlMU1E&output=html

Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - sanantone - 02-04-2014

jobee Wrote:What you are describing is called credit laundering, and I am not sure how many people have had success doing this from Charter Oak to TESC. What major are you studying? If you are studying certain subjects and are sending SL grades to COSC, then you may be missing out on the upper level credits that TESC awards some classes.

The OP is not trying to launder credits. The OP is just getting an associates degree from COSC because COSC gives grades for SL courses. Then, the OP wants to transfer to TESC to easily finish a BA. The OP knows that TESC will accept the SL courses, but will not grade them. Since law schools will more than likely require transcripts from all colleges attended, they will calculate a cumulative GPA based on the OP's COSC and TESC transcripts.

Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - Jonathan Whatley - 02-04-2014

Don't assume that because COSC (or Excelsior, or any undergraduate school) ascribes a grade to credit from an external, noncollegiate source – or even from credit-by-exam from a college – LSAC or a law school will also ascribe a grade to the same credit.

In this post I showed that the American Medical College Application Service appears to exclude grades for credit-by-exam, and very likely exclude grades for noncollegiate-source credit like Straighterline, from their GPA calculations even if such grades appears on the college transcripts they receive.

Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - cookderosa - 02-04-2014

jobee Wrote:What you are describing is called credit laundering, and I am not sure how many people have had success doing this from Charter Oak to TESC.

That would be "zero."

However, this isn't really credit laundering. This is simply a case of earning an AA at one school and then earning a BA at a second school.
My only caution to the OP is to be very clear of all the ins/outs/ups/downs of the law school application process. It took me several months to really learn the med school application process. After you have a solid understanding, you can THEN create a shorter-faster-cheaper path to meet your goal.
Sadly, sometimes people come here and get so revved up that they FOUND a path to a shorter-faster-cheaper degree, that they miss the big picture- which is that your degree needs to fit YOUR goal/path, not the other way around. Good luck! There have been members here that went to law school, the archives are probably going to be interesting reading for you.

Focusing on establishing GPA for Law School - PendragonG - 02-04-2014

EI2HCB Wrote:Dont forget that Excelsior Exams can also be transferred in as letter grade courses as well as some DSST exams. The issue is will your law school accept SL or CLEP or DSST you should check that out before you do too many courses. My local University will only allow 50 credits to be awarded that way. So do you research.

The Law School I am planning to apply to accepts any Bachelor's Degree and they state that they accept Board of Regents degrees.

Zombie Wrote:The LSAC (Law School Admission Council/Committee) establishes your GPA, not the individual law schools. I would put a special emphasis on the LSAT if most of your credits are competency-based (CLEP DSST etc.). Or you could run the scores through Excelsior, which assigns grades to many of the tests.

I am not planning to test out of any classes at this time. All of the classes will be either StraighterLine, COSC or TESC.
If I were to Test Out of Classes - From my understanding, COSC assigns grades to them also, the same as EC.

jobee Wrote:What you are describing is called credit laundering, and I am not sure how many people have had success doing this from Charter Oak to TESC. What major are you studying? If you are studying certain subjects and are sending SL grades to COSC, then you may be missing out on the upper level credits that TESC awards some classes.

As Sanantone clarifies below, I am not trying to credit launder. My SL 'transcript' would be sent to COSC and TESC directly from SL. I have thought about the upper level credit issue but am thinking since SL will be sending them directly to TESC it shouldn't matter that COSC has given me lower level credit for Business Ethics for example.

jobee Wrote:Depending on your major, there may be only a limited amount of SL classes that can be transferred to Excelsior with a grade. The rest need to go through ACE. Here is the Excelsior agreement with SL https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AmKpJMpyfVXRdGdkYjNKQVBCbXVDT0pWY0tSWGlMU1E&output=html

I could not determine for sure if Excelsior issued a grade and included SL classes in their GPA calculations. I did get the impression that all of the courses would be sent to EC directly from SL even those not on the Course Equivalency spreadsheet. As you have graduated from Excelsior, I would definitely be interested in hearing more about how EC handled SL course. I was originally leaning toward EC because I had the initial impression that they would be the best fit to establish a GPA.

sanantone Wrote:The OP is not trying to launder credits. The OP is just getting an associates degree from COSC because COSC gives grades for SL courses. Then, the OP wants to transfer to TESC to easily finish a BA. The OP knows that TESC will accept the SL courses, but will not grade them. Since law schools will more than likely require transcripts from all colleges attended, they will calculate a cumulative GPA based on the OP's COSC and TESC transcripts.

Thank you for reply and for your contributions to this forum.

Jonathan Whatley Wrote:Don't assume that because COSC (or Excelsior, or any undergraduate school) ascribes a grade to credit from an external, noncollegiate source – or even from credit-by-exam from a college – LSAC or a law school will also ascribe a grade to the same credit.

In this post I showed that the American Medical College Application Service appears to exclude grades for credit-by-exam, and very likely exclude grades for noncollegiate-source credit like Straighterline, from their GPA calculations even if such grades appears on the college transcripts they receive.

In reviewing the LSAC page: Policies Related to Transcript Summarization

LSAC does not exclude exams:
"AP or CLEP courses are summarized and included in the GPA if the undergraduate school transcript shows grades and credits for them."

So hopefully they would not exclude StraighterLine course from GPA calculations either by the logic you have stated.

cookderosa Wrote:However, this isn't really credit laundering. This is simply a case of earning an AA at one school and then earning a BA at a second school.
My only caution to the OP is to be very clear of all the ins/outs/ups/downs of the law school application process. It took me several months to really learn the med school application process. After you have a solid understanding, you can THEN create a shorter-faster-cheaper path to meet your goal.
Sadly, sometimes people come here and get so revved up that they FOUND a path to a shorter-faster-cheaper degree, that they miss the big picture- which is that your degree needs to fit YOUR goal/path, not the other way around. Good luck! There have been members here that went to law school, the archives are probably going to be interesting reading for you.

I am working on learning the LSAC process and have been reviewing the archives and have read the posts of others who went onto Law School.