I almost have all of the required credits for my BA in Liberal Studies from Thomas Edison State College. Now I am looking to the future and wondering if I've screwed up. Almost all of my credits were earned via CLEP and DSST's. TESC doesn't offer GPA equivalents for such exams. I've now come to understand that law schools generally accept students based upon GPA and LSAT score. If you consider the 8 community college credits I have counting toward my degree, I'm a 4.0 student. But that's only a small percentage of my credits and they're CC credits. I've done reasonably well on all of my CLEP and DSST exams so far. The lowest score I'd have if I were in Excelsior for those would be a B. But I have no idea if that'll even matter. The vast majority are pass/fail at Excelsior too. It seems to me that since I'm not trying to get into Harvard, as long as I do really well on the LSAT, it hopefully will make up for the "questions" of my degree type. Is that true? Do I *need* to do extremely well on the LSAT to have any shot at all at a good school? By good I'm thinking of something in the top 10 to top 30. Or do I not even have a shot there if I ACE the LSAT? Anyone know about all of this? I'm trying to figure out how to proceed. Thanks!
I got into a tier 1 law school with an AIU online degree. Plus alot of my credits were military transfers and clep courses. Mind you not as much as TESC degree but not quite traditional either. As far as getting into a 10 to 30 school then yes you will need to do well on the LSAT, probably 168+. Of course you would need to do that regardless of your degree pedigree. If you beat the 75% at the school I don't think you will have a problem since they care almost exclusively about GPA/LSAT combos. I did however run into a snag at Vanderbilt (17th at the time) based on my degree. When I spoke to an admissions committee member about my rejection they mentioned the fact that they felt my academic rigor was lacking. That was the only school that I should have had a chance at numbers wise that flat out rejected me. A few did waitlist me that I thought I would get into but that doesn't hurt as bad. In still ended up at a tier 1 and I haven't had any trouble competing with my classmates that went the brick and motar route(a few ivy leaguers as well). So basically do well on the LSAT and see what happens.
