grade trend

[prelaw12]

How much will a ridiculous upward grade trend weigh on admission? My gpa is a 3.48 and my last 3 semesters i received a 4.0 while taking 18 hours for 2 of those semesters and 19 for the third semester. How Much of a soft factor is this? I started out my college career pretty rough. I received 3 d's and an f. But i have since retaken all of those classes in which i got bad grades and received A's in all of them. Does this dilute the importance of the rough start?

[legend]

I could be wrong I am just an anonymous internet poster, but in my experience schools care about the numbers. They claim to care about soft-factors, major, etc, but U.S. News looks only at the GPA/LSAT no further so most schools tend to only care what U.S News thinks. Check out lawschoolnumbers.com and you can see the reality at play. There may be a few schools that will actually look at the application in depth, but they are significant minority. However, if your still in undergrad there is no shame in taking a few easy classes and picking up a few A's along the way to boost the GPA, and that artificial inflation can make up for the D's you received.

Good Luck!

[Anti09]

If you have an extenuating circumstance that contributed to your low grades, by all means explain to them in an addendum.  If you were just lazy and didn't do well, they'll have less sympathy.  Upward grade trend obviously looks better than the alternative, but it still looks worse than someone who consistently performed throughout school.

[fortook]

I'm not so sure a GPA addendum is a good idea with a 3.48.  I mean, the first thought I had when I read your post was "Flame".  Will admissions think the same? Idk.

Focus on your LSAT. A 3.48 isn't super great, but it is good enough to stand on its own.