Imagine two UCLA students earn the highest grade their professors award.
One receives an A. The other receives an A+.
Both students earned the best grade available in their respective courses, as some professors do not offer A+ grades, and UCLA doesn’t require them to. For Bruins who want to go to law school, this seemingly unimportant dissimilarity harms their application.
The Law School Admission Council oversees key aspects of the law school application process, including administering the Law School Admission Test and compiling transcript summaries through its Credential Assembly Service.
Before distributing academic records to law schools, the CAS converts an applicant’s grades into a standardized point system. An A+ is valued at 4.33, while an A is valued at 4.0. But at UCLA, whether students have the opportunity to earn an A+ can vary by professor.
Without the opportunity to earn the 4.33 grade-point value, these students may receive LSAC grade point averages lower than equally successful applicants whose institutions or professors award A+ grades.
As an institution that offers undergraduate, graduate and law school programs, UCLA should recognize how LSAC’s grading policy can disadvantage its own students and standardize whether professors do – or don’t – award A+ grades to students.
LSAC’s transcript summarization guidance acknowledges that law school admission committees are aware a grade earned at one college may have a different weight from the same grade at another institution.
However, this context is not reflected in the applicant’s LSAC GPA. Admitting students with lower LSAC GPAs can reduce the median GPA reported for a law school’s incoming Juris Doctor class. Relying on individual admissions officers to identify and account for differences among grading systems does not guarantee every applicant will receive equal consideration.
A standardized GPA should measure a student’s academic achievement, not whether their institution or professor happened to offer a grade above an A. Until UCLA addresses this disparity, two students who both earned the highest grade available to them will continue to appear unequal on paper.
Emily Mardirousi is a rising fourth-year political science student.
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