How screwed am I, and what advice could you offer?

[LeveragedSellout]

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I'm a junior at a top 25 school, and I've got a high gpa. I haven't taken the LSAT yet, but I expect to do well on them, given my "A" in Symbolic Logic and my propensity for exceling on standardized tests.

With that said, however, I'm afraid I may have screwed myself for law school. I went abroad last fall, and my program required a 3 page assignment, graded pass/fail. There were extenuating factors at play, but I won't go into them here. All that matters is that I made a stupid, reprehensible mistake, and copied small parts of it from another source.

Although my school did not count the required course for credit, and it doesn't appear on my transcript, I went before the honor board last month. I expressed my remorse and disgust, and combined with the extent of the violation, they gave me a semester of social probation (instead of the customary year-long suspension).

My question to you all is: am I done for? Should I even bother applying to schools like Duke or GUCL next year. I believe I would have been a good candidate outside of this incident, but now I'm scared to death. How should I handle this black eye? I truly am sorry for my infraction, and this is absolutely not indicitive of my character, but I wonder if this will even matter...

Thanks

[Diecisiete]

You're going to have to attach an addendum explaining the situation and go from there. I'm pretty sure its standard to do so for any violation like this, so it doesn't matter if its a top school or not. Certain schools (Harvard, Stanford, Columbia just to name a few) require a Dean's Certification letter so it might come up there too. Regardless, just plan out a thoughtful and thorough addendum and that should help your situation.

[kenny32]

It really doesn't pay to start worrying about things like this before you've taken the LSAT.

That said, an addendum will probably suffice.

[Nimmy]

If you explain what happened and what you have learned from the experience I don't think it can hurt you.  I'd be more worried about your attitude toward the LSAT.  I had a roommate just like you, great GPA at a top public school, very intelligent, done well in logic classes, and he bombed his first attempt at the LSAT.

[ImpactPlayer]

My question to you all is: am I done for? Should I even bother applying to schools like Duke or GUCL next year.

You shouldn't even be worrying about this until after you take the LSAT.  And you shouldn't even be thinking about which schools to apply to when you don't know your LSAT score. 

Write an addendum. 

[iscoredawaitlist]

My question to you all is: am I done for? Should I even bother applying to schools like Duke or GUCL next year.

You shouldn't even be worrying about this until after you take the LSAT.  And you shouldn't even be thinking about which schools to apply to when you don't know your LSAT score. 

Write an addendum. 

Ditto to this. You think you'll do well on the LSAT, and you may. But take a practice test under STRICT timed conditions, and then maybe you'll have some idea of your options. But the truth ist hat even that's not very indicative of how well you'll do.

[LeveragedSellout]

My question to you all is: am I done for? Should I even bother applying to schools like Duke or GUCL next year.

You shouldn't even be worrying about this until after you take the LSAT.  And you shouldn't even be thinking about which schools to apply to when you don't know your LSAT score. 

Write an addendum. 

Ditto to this. You think you'll do well on the LSAT, and you may. But take a practice test under STRICT timed conditions, and then maybe you'll have some idea of your options. But the truth ist hat even that's not very indicative of how well you'll do.

Fair enough, but it seems that you've given this advice with the assumption that my infraction hasn't categorically disqualified me from the law schools I've mentioned. That is important. I'm pretty confident that I'll nail the LSAT, but yeah I guess I shouldn't get ahead of myself. Thanks for the insight. I'll pose this question again after I've finished making quick work of the test.

[attic4fp]

Fair enough, but it seems that you've given this advice with the assumption that my infraction hasn't categorically disqualified me from the law schools I've mentioned. That is important. I'm pretty confident that I'll nail the LSAT, but yeah I guess I shouldn't get ahead of myself. Thanks for the insight. I'll pose this question again after I've finished making quick work of the test.

Make sure to check your answers, though.

[Gopherit]

.

[Navygirl]

Actually...we aren't the ones you should be asking.  If you want to know if this would disqualify you from certain schools, then call them.  Admissions staff are pretty helpful if you have a question, and if you pose it as a question about your application and your concerns, you should get some helpful feedback.  If you want to easily (and sometimes anonymously) speak with school reps, visit a law school forum (one that lsac puts on...just about every law school shows up, and at least, all the law schools that would be your "top" choice if you do as well as you think) and you can ask them anything there...they are more than willing to talk to you and help you out.  I went to the DC forum last year and found it very helpful. 


With that said, I agree with everyone else about your LSAT score.  I was consistently scoring in the high 160's (166-169) every time I took the practice exam, and even took a prep class (scoring the same on those exams) but when it came time for test day, I must have done something horribly wrong, because I ended up with a 158.  Don't get too cocky about your exam before you take it...that only sets you up for failure.