Law School GPA Calculator
Calculate your LSAC GPA for law school applications. LSAC recalculates every undergraduate grade including repeated courses from all institutions you attended.
How LSAC Calculates Your Law School GPA
LSAC collects all undergraduate transcripts, converts every grade to a 4.33 scale, then normalizes to a 4.0 scale for reporting and every course attempt counts, including repeated courses that your university may have replaced.
The Law School Admission Council is the central processing service for law school applications. Just as AMCAS handles medical school applications, LSAC handles law school applications. Every accredited US law school requires applicants to subscribe to the LSAC Credential Assembly Service (CAS), which recalculates GPA and forwards it to every school you apply to.
LSAC first converts your letter grades to grade points on a 4.33 scale: A+ earns 4.33, A earns 4.00, A- earns 3.67, B+ earns 3.33, B earns 3.00, B- earns 2.67, C+ earns 2.33, C earns 2.00, and so on. LSAC then multiplies each grade point value by the credit hours for that course to get quality points, adds all quality points, divides by total credit hours, and normalizes the result to produce the official LSAC GPA that every law school sees.
The 4.33 Scale and What It Means for Your GPA
The 4.33 scale gives A+ grades slightly more weight than A grades. A student who earned mostly As with a few A+ grades will have an LSAC GPA above 4.00 before normalization. After normalization to 4.0, an all-A+ record effectively produces a 4.0 LSAC GPA, not 4.33. The normalization process means the 4.33 scale primarily affects the relative weighting of different letter grades rather than producing a GPA above 4.0 on the final report.
For practical purposes, you can estimate your LSAC GPA by entering your grades at standard 4.0 grade point values. The result will be very close to your actual LSAC GPA. The largest discrepancy occurs when your record contains many A+ or A- grades, since the 4.33 scale treats A+ differently from A while the standard 4.0 scale treats them identically.
All Grades Count: No Grade Replacement
Law school applicants frequently discover their LSAC GPA is lower than their university-reported GPA because LSAC includes every course attempt. A student who repeated a failing grade at a school with grade replacement policy will find both grades in the LSAC calculation. This is not a mistake or an oversight. LSAC policy explicitly requires including all grades because law school admissions committees want the complete academic record.
The implication for pre-law planning: use the Cumulative GPA Calculator to estimate the impact before deciding to retake. Retaking a D to earn an A will raise your LSAC GPA because the A (4.0 quality points per credit) outweighs the D (1.0 quality points per credit) when averaged together. But retaking a B to try for an A is risky if there is a chance of earning a B- or lower on the second attempt.
LSAC GPA vs University-Reported GPA
The gap between LSAC GPA and university GPA surprises many applicants. Common sources of discrepancy include: repeated courses where your university applied grade replacement but LSAC did not; courses taken at a community college that your university excluded but LSAC included; plus/minus grades that your school converted to whole-letter grades but LSAC kept as plus/minus values; and graduate courses taken as an undergraduate that may be weighted differently.
Applicants can estimate their LSAC GPA before applying by gathering every transcript and manually calculating the GPA using LSAC rules. This prevents unpleasant surprises when the LSAC Credential Assembly Service report arrives. Many applicants use this calculator by entering all courses including repeated ones to get a realistic estimate.
Transfer Applicants and Law School GPA
Students who transfer to law school after completing one or more years use their law school GPA rather than undergraduate GPA for transfer applications. Law schools process transfer applicants independently and look at first-year law school academic performance as the primary indicator of fit. For initial law school admission, however, LSAC GPA from undergraduate study is what matters. The LSAC CAS report includes a summary of your undergraduate performance that every admissions committee sees.
Law School GPA Targets by School Tier
GPA expectations differ substantially across T14 schools, top 50 programs, and regional law schools. Matching your LSAC GPA to the right tier produces a realistic and balanced school list.
T14 Law Schools
The T14 designation covers the 14 law schools that have historically ranked in the top 14 and rarely move in the US News rankings. These include Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, Penn, NYU, Virginia, Michigan, Northwestern, Cornell, Georgetown, Duke, and UCLA. Yale and Harvard report 25th percentile GPAs of 3.82 and 3.84 respectively. Stanford's 75th percentile is 3.99. An LSAC GPA below 3.6 makes T14 admission very difficult without exceptional LSAT performance.
Top 25 to Top 50 Programs
Schools ranked 15 to 50 include strong regional and national programs that place well into large law firm hiring. These schools often admit students with LSAC GPAs in the 3.5 to 3.8 range depending on LSAT score and other application factors. State flagship law schools in this tier sometimes offer significant GPA flexibility to in-state applicants, admitting students with 3.3 GPAs who bring strong LSAT scores and compelling personal statements.
Regional Law Schools
Regional accredited law schools outside the top 50 serve local legal markets and often admit students with LSAC GPAs of 3.0 or above. Some regional schools consider applicants with GPAs below 3.0 when the LSAT score is strong or the applicant demonstrates significant professional achievement. Regional schools typically place graduates into state court systems, government work, and small to mid-size law firms in their geographic area.
LSAT and GPA Tradeoff
Most law schools use an admissions index score that combines LSAT and LSAC GPA. The weights vary by school, but a common formula assigns roughly two-thirds of the index weight to LSAT and one-third to GPA. This means a 10-point LSAT improvement typically moves the index more than a 0.3-point GPA improvement. Applicants with GPAs in the 3.2 to 3.5 range often find that maximizing LSAT score is their highest-leverage strategy for improving admissions outcomes at competitive programs.
Grade Scale Reference
LSAC uses a 4.33 grade scale before normalizing to 4.0. For estimation purposes, the standard 4.0 scale below gives a close approximation of your LSAC GPA.
Worked Example: LSAC GPA Calculation Across Two Schools
A transfer student with 30 community college credits and 90 university credits earns an LSAC cumulative GPA of 3.67, higher than either school's GPA alone.
| School | Credits | GPA | Quality Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community College (2 years) | 30 | 3.50 | 105.0 |
| State University (2 years) | 90 | 3.72 | 334.8 |
| Totals | 120 | — | 439.8 |
LSAC recalculates GPA from raw transcripts, not institutional GPAs. The 3.67 result may differ slightly from what each school reports. LSAC includes all attempted undergraduate coursework, including grades from transferred courses, repeated courses (both grades count), and non-degree coursework. A single F on a 3-credit course from a community college adds 0.0 quality points to the 120-credit denominator, lowering the LSAC GPA by approximately 0.09 points from an otherwise 3.67 baseline.